Amendment 8 to Article II - Proposed by Teresa Wilmot

General Assembly 2023 Prioritized Article II Amendments
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Bold underlining indicate insertion ; [brackets indicate deletion.]

27 Pluralism. We [celebrate that we are all sacred beings diverse in culture, experience, and
28 theology.
29 We covenant to] learn from one another [in] as part of our free and responsible search for truth and
30 meaning. We covenant to embrace our differences and commonalities with Love, curiosity, and respect. We celebrate that we are all sacred beings, diverse in culture, experience, and theology.

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I like the re-ordering of the sentences in this Amendment.

I still prefer additional changes to the actual wording as detailed in my Amendment #24. I specifically prefer to take out the words “covenant,” “L,” “sacred” and “theology.”

How about this for the last two sentences: “We embrace our differences and commonalities with love, curiosity, and respect. We celebrate our diversity of culture, experience, and beliefs.”

(I would still like to throw in “personalities” as part of pluralism and diversity, but I don’t feel as strongly about that as I do about the other words.)

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This amendment was created by a small group at the workshop and represents a way to emphasis that free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and make clear that pluralism and and learning from each other is part of, but not all of, that search. Teresa submitted it on behalf of the group.

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Nice work Teresa and team!

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I hope that the group would accept Kara’s suggestions as friendly amendments. As it is, I am wavering, but that would make me a definite yes.

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Yes, for me your proposed wording would make a significant difference. I would vote this amendment down without out it (“sacred beings”being the key deal-breaker), but would accept it with the changes you suggest.

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Taking out the religious language, to me, is a no-go and would be a separate amendment. Ours is much more limited.

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The origin of the word theology is in reference to Christianity and today refers to the study of God. The elimination of the word does not remove any belief persons from UU, but the inclusion for some of us in UU, who have strong beliefs and do not believe in God, are going to feel much less welcome. Using the word theology may decrease the diversity within UU.

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Theology does indeed mean the study of god or another way -the study of the nature of god… but my experience in UU circles makes it clear to me that that includes ‘not-god’ and so theists, agnostics, and atheists have theological perspectives… Generally, i spell it as the(*)logy for this very reason-to acknowledge the variety of identities of god including that there is no god…

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