Please consider voting for this. I would deeply mourn the loss of a sense of how UUism began and what sources we have drawn from in the past and still do, as well as being open to new sources. Remember we have the opportunity to have the wording reworked over the next year to make it better, but this tells the A2 commission that we want to include these in the final product. Almost everything else in the revision I support, but please let’s not lose this important aspect of being a UU
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I am so sorry to the creators of this amendment that of your 9 minutes, 2 speakers were out of order (one listing other amendments, another speaking against a completely different amendment - which I don’t believe ever got corrected). I know the moderator is working hard but that was disheartening. Thanks for all your work.
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I like that our sources are in our hymnal and I would love to see it updated in a future edition with the language of this amendment. I do think that we need to keep Article II focused on just those things that all UU congregations must share. People have pointed out that any list is necessarily incomplete and, as such, I think is not a strong contender to be part of Article II. Include it somewhere, but not in Article II.
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Original post deleted because it was NOT Rev. Walker who made the comments I referenced previously.
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Thank you for your thoughtful work to make this list of sources inclusive and broad. My primary concern with the amendment is actually earlier in the text where you suggest changing “sacred and secular understandings that help us live into our values” with “the full depth and breadth of sacred and secular human knowledge.” I am concerned about the damaging human knowledge this could include that does not reflect UU values, as well as the absence of direct inspiration from nature by specifying “human knowledge” vs. the broader “understandings” which includes direct inspiration from nature. That said, I still respect and appreciate your thoughtful list of sources.
I caught this as well. It should be clarified that Amendment 51 does not single out or even mention Jewish and Christian teachings, and is intentionally inclusive of many religions and wisdom traditions. The remarks also noted that a list was limiting. I believe those of us who worked on this amendment shifted from enumerating specific sources (which would have been limiting) to describing broad categories of sources, while also describing some new broad concepts that are not included in the existing six sources. We also intentionally retained language regarding expanding our wisdom, with the realization that any list of specific sources will always be incomplete.
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Hi Wendy, I am a supporter, not the proposer, but I believe the intent was to focus on “life-affirming wisdom” from these sources of knowledge, as expressed in the second sentence. The A2SC could take what was submitted and do further wordsmithing if this amendment were to pass.
The first and fifth sources in #51 do speak to the direct inspiration from and experience of nature; you may wish to revisit those to see if your second concern is addressed.
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I am writing in support of this amendment. Although my prime concern is to keep the discussion about sources alive in the coming year. I do like the sweep of this amendment.
I do not understand the objections from the Article II team to this amendment, primarily That the list is not exhaustive or that world religions are lumped together. Especially since one objection to the amendment is the addition of “full depth and breadth”. “Does that mean MEIN KAMPF?!” Rev Cheryl Walker challenged us. Ironically that was my very response to the commission’s first proposed ‘inspiration from various sacred and secular sources”. If the problem is the prevalence of Judeo-Christian tradition, why not include it in ‘world religion?’
Enumerating the sources validates, not excludes, our chosen vehicles of spiritual development. I personally would like to see female-centered religion, for example, added, but where did I learn about that? My UU church.
However, the proposed breadth of the amendment show something central to our faith.
People from other religious traditions might see a real conflict between accepting the personal experience of transcendent mystery and the science-based rationality of humanism; others would see a conflict between humanism and the judeo -Christian tradition, and a conflict between that and other world religions, much less nature-based religions. But I love that we can hold these together. That even following a Christian wisdom tradition, I have more in common with Unitarian atheists than with other Christians. And that as a Unitarian, following Buddhist practices is supported. I am not sure that the ‘let’s listen to each other’ form of ‘plurality’ really replaces that.
When there is no written guide, unwritten rules often take over with even fiercer policing. I think today’s speakers’ disparagement of the language of direct experience speaks for how loud disparaging people might make people of one or another of these perspectives feel erased.
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We took care to qualify that statement, as we did each of our sources. We feel that Rev. Cheryl Walker quoted that phrase out of context. We qualify that in the very next sentence with " the life-affirming wisdom we draw upon" I don’t think many people would consider Mein Kampf as a source of “life-affirming wisdom”
I would also like to note that the third Con speaker, Rev. Madelyn Campbell, out and out confused our amendment with amendment #1. She explicitly critiqued “the sources as they stand now” as “Eurocentric” then references Christianity and Judaism. Our sources are not the sources as they stand now and we do not mention Christianity and Judaism at all partly because we were trying not to be Eurocentric.
Many people in the chat objected to the confusion and yet no mention was made of it was made by the moderator(s).
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I had an unexpected opportunity in the Virtual Emcees Meetup to ask Rev. Cheryl Walker directly about the issues we noticed. She clarified she was NOT the one who brought up the Jewish-Christian and Earth-centered traditions issue. I also mentioned the concern re: Mein Kampf and how we included “life-affirming” in the second sentence. She said that Mein Kampf was taken directly from a comment someone gave to them when they had a similarly unqualified first sentence. That is why they changed the language in their proposal.
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I want to correct the record–Rev. Walker only mentioned Mein Kampf, not the Jewish-Christian and Earth-centered traditions. And she has told me that the mention of Mein Kampf came from someone who commented on a similarly non-specific sentence that the A2SC had originally used. That’s why they used more specific language in their report.
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Hi Emily -
No excuses. I just want to acknowledge that I did not mean to be out of order. I did not appreciate the rule to not draw in other amendments in discussing any one amendment.
I want to also recognize that this “discussion forum” allows for a lot of interpretation and effort and I feel we need to explain to folks, that for the time being, there just is not enough listening/response band-width on the part of the SC/moderator to take it all in or a method, for the delegates that can choose to be responsive to the online format, to concur and narrow their offerings.
we need to improve what our bylaws allow us to do together and I think our leadership is working on this as well.
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Unfortunately, and redress now would come to delegates after the vote closes, presumably in tomorrow’s daily e-mail.
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Yes, I didn’t mean to call you out personally.
Having talked about all this in the forum for so long l, the 9 minutes flew – and the whole presentation was confusing. Each amendment known by two numbers but most never read aloud? But also it’s a case of a lot of people with good intentions, working in good faith, trying to go fast to fit more in. Its frustrating but no one’s fault
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They are, and I think we are in a “cart before the horse” situation, where we should have updated the by-laws, at least regarding GA, before tackling an Article II revision.
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too bad you could not edit the post with the correct speaker, rather than delete the post. The incorrect comment made by the other CON speaker should have been corrected. It’s a shame, because I wonder how many delegates will actually READ the proposed amendments before voting? I hope they all do.
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I am posting the following comment on Kerry’s behalf:
I would like to address Rev. Cheryl M. Walker’s remarks as well. The “full depth and breadth” language is not mandatory to our amendment, and I planned to remove it in light of some Article II Commission language, but left in in after some feedback from a Reverend (see thread 147):
"We respect the histories, contexts, and cultures in which the wisdom we draw upon was created and is currently practiced. With care and compassion for every person’s individual path, we discern and build upon the sources of Unitarian Universalism as we move forward.”
I like this version. I actually like “depth and breadth” and for me the “which the wisdom we draw upon” clarifies what we’re respecting for me.
As Janet and the Reverend note, we addressed possible misinterpretations with language that follows. Words may be interpreted differently–see the discussion of “Worth and worthiness” on another amendment thread or the clarification given by the author of the short-form amendment that has been prioritized, #5. (I would note that we also like both the shorter amendments, the lyrical one by Rev. Johnson and a group of other ministers and the one by Becca Boerger, which shares much language with ours as they were workshopped together. But we believe more specific inclusion is necessary.)
As to “Human knowledge” or “understandings,” human knowledge is meant to refer to knowledge experienced or acquired by humans, but that word choice is not integral to our amendment either and would be fine to change.
I would like to address what I feel is the most substantive issue raised by Rev. Walker, the “list” aspect. We refrained from listing religions for reasons noted on this thread and elsewhere and followed the Commission’s lead on this. We do hope that further collaboration will occur on the religious sources (such as on the “earth-centered” source that was removed) but agree it must happen by well-qualified people over a period of time, just as the Commission described.
However, we do specifically name key categories of sources–just as the Commission had to name key values when creating that list, even if intended to be unnumbered.
Just as UUs may draw on these values in determining, “who we are in the world,” we would point out that we continue to draw on–in the present, not “historically”–those key Inspirations or Sources we described (not listed). As Janet’s presentation noted, drawing on secular AND theistic sources explicitly is a very distinctive feature of Unitarian Universalism. We hold that this is a vital and not excisable component of our freedom of belief and our welcome.
I have also listened to many UUs, starting with the ten or so feedback sessions I attended, and in the many discussions I have since participated in for the sole purpose of trying to determine how we might best reconcile and synthesize language and approaches that do retain what is most important to all of us.
As noted, my first draft of this amendment to the Commission in November/December of last year and submitted in feedback form to the Commission. Many UUs spoke to the need to include secular language as well as religious language (although a suggestion was made that secular is “included” in scared). That’s because this is PART of who we are, and I assume that’s why “secular” was added back in the second draft.
However, our attempt to listen to all feedback and balance the sources and their considerations does not privilege science, reason, or humanism over any theistic sources. We place them in balance, and indeed, “list” theistic sources first. Our language, while not perfect, addresses many additional considerations that were raised by UUs in the continuing conversations. (Please see answer 2 above for details of history.)
We addressed religious trauma as well as cultural appropriation. The secular sources are qualified to balance many considerations (for more detail, see answers above). Finally, we added–or I should say “brought back”–the Creative Arts, a Source that gained widespread support between 2006-2009.
This amendment does not fear or seek to repress change. On the contrary, it asks us to take this change further. And it has come from deep listening to many, many UUs from a diversity of opinions and beliefs.
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I have alerted the Commission and the Board and ask for this to be addressed, thank you, @Sally .
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I am a professional religious educator who respectfully opposes this amendment. The language that has been offered by the commission reflects back to the pluralism of our faith listed among our values and reinforces our openness to consider a wide list of resources that help inform paths to finding our way to our own truth and meaning.
Hi Judith,
Thanks for your respectful comment.