Hi Steve, I think you have some other facts wrong here.
You said:
“Amendment 52 is a perfect example. The delegates voted to remove the words “repair harm and damaged relationships” in the INTERDEPENDENCE value. Both the Study Commission and the UUA Board chose to ignore the vote of the delegates and left the words in the final version of the value. There were other options they could have chosen. But they did not. That is not democratic.”
Amendment 52, and the discussion about it, can easily be viewed in this same discuss.uua.org platform, here: Amendment 52 to Article II - Proposed by John Millspaugh
The amendment you’re describing doesn’t exactly remove that language, so much as it does re-arrange some of the wording around repair and harm. The amendment process was always, transparently, known to be one in which the Study Commission would continue to work to draft and incorporate, but possibly modify further, all the amendments that passed at GA 2023, often in conversation and consultation with the proposers. Then, the final edited draft was released with plenty of time for the proposers of any of the amendments to organize and submit another amendment, if they still weren’t happy with it – obviously no one involved with the original amendment 52 were concerned enough with the text to want to do that, or if they did, they weren’t able to get enough support. Both scenarios reflect a functioning democratic process.
You can clearly see that the current language of Interdependence is different than the pre-amended, pre-2023 version, although it doesn’t exactly incorporate Amendment 52 as written. Again, that is according to the process that was transparently laid out. And there was ample opportunity to amend it further at this GA, an option which has not been utilized.
Hope that clarification of the Amendment process assuages some of your concerns about the democratic process in our denomination, now that you have fuller facts.