 When you tell someone that you are a Unitarian Universalist and they ask you, what's that? What do you tell them that we are? I know that this is a question that many of us struggle to answer. Even I struggle with how best to answer it in certain contexts and I think we can agree that answering it is basically my job. It can come up at dinner parties, on first dates, at random moments at work, or holiday events with family members. And the question can also arise when we are entirely alone. What does it mean that I am this thing called a Unitarian Universalist? How does it matter for this moment that I find myself in for this crisis I am facing, for this decision I am struggling to make? If you have had this question before and felt like you botched the answer, you may be hoping that I am going to offer you some easy, authoritative answer to give. The next time the father of your child's new friend asks why your family isn't free on Sunday morning. And if you are hoping for that perfect and objective formula for you to memorize and recite, I'd like to say this to you now. Hi. You must be new here. I'm Kelly, and I'm one of the congregation's ministers. If you decide to stick around and I hope that you will, you will find that one of our major hallmarks is the conspicuous absence of rote, obligatory answers to life's most important questions. That might not be everything that we are, but it is a definitely deep and critical part of who we are. So no, I don't believe that there is one perfect answer, and if there is, I certainly don't have it. When I am asked to define Unitarian Universalism, my response is very greatly based on the context and the people that I'm talking to, how much time I think I have with them, how much interest I think they have in the answer and what shared vocabulary of meaning exists between us. But there are certain themes that I return to with frequency, and one of these is what makes our religion distinct from nearly every or every other tradition. To my understanding, there are three key elements unique to us. The first is how theologically inclusive we are. Most religions explicitly require a belief in some particular understanding of the divine, some single god or pantheon of gods. A few are non-theistic or anti-theistic and are defined by what they don't believe in. But you can be a Unitarian Universalist fully and completely, no asterisk, no conditional belonging, and believe in one god or many gods or LOL. Our movement is not predicated on any orthodox belief about the source of ultimate meaning. Our second distinct quality is the centrality of democratic practice to who we are. I don't mean that folks who practice any other religion or no religion at all cannot be just as committed to democracy as we are or more so. I mean that the principle that all people deserve a fair and equal voice in the decisions that most deeply affect them is in the core of our faith in a way that no other tradition I am aware of makes so clear or so explicit. And finally, our third unique quality, as I understand it, is our traditions not just willingness but determination to change and adapt over time. We have evolved from a loose collection of obscure Christian heresies into a pluralistic free association of people who unite to seek meaning and work for justice, guided by the spirit of love and aided by the fire of reason. And that process of growth and transformation is ongoing. It is a thing in our faith not to be feared or forestalled but to be embraced. This is the reason for my message to you today. Across our country, we have, across our history, we have attempted many different times and with varying degrees of success to frame into words some collective sense of what Unitarian Universalism is. You likely have some sense of what are commonly called the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism. That particular language has some official, although limited, status for us as a movement. Some of you have heard me talk before about how there is currently an ongoing project which could lead to rewriting that language that is familiar to many of us. We have now reached the point in that process where there is an explicit proposal for what that new language would be. So I'm going to give you some background, go over some of the major changes and outline the process for deciding whether to adopt them or not and how you can get involved in it. I know that some of this may be a bit dry for some of us, but our shared commitment to practicing democracy makes it critical that we all have access to the clear, accurate information that we need in order to participate. So, before we were Unitarian Universalists, we were Unitarians and Universalists. On both sides of our history, there were numerous attempts to organize ourselves at the regional, national, and occasionally international level. And those sorted organizations tried more than once to articulate a collective answer to the question, what does it mean to be Unitarian? What does it mean to be a Universalist? To pick just two examples, the Western Conference of the American Unitarian Association, a body that covered Wisconsin and the whole of the Upper Midwest, adopted a statement entitled Things Commonly Believed Among Us, The Opening Lines of Which Were. We believe that to love the good and to live the good is the supreme thing in religion. We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matter of religious belief. On the Universalist side, there was the Winchester profession of faith, the language of which was more directive and more explicit in its Christian character. It literally opens with a section called the Creed. But over time, this document was amended so that in its final form it ends with something called the Liberty Clause, which says in part, neither this nor any other precise form of words is required as a condition of fellowship. For a long time, we have tried to put who we are into words. For just as long, we have had to acknowledge that no consensus is perfect and that there is something in our faith that calls us to keep the door open to the differences we can never fully set down on the page. The Unitarians and the Universalists came together in 1961 and formed the Unitarian Universalist Association of congregations, of which this congregation is one member. They wrote new bylaws for their new organization, which, though they've been amended many times, are still the ones in use today. Article 2 of that document has a special designation. It's the place in the bylaws where statements about the institution and what it is for live. Article 2 is both harder to rewrite than any other section of the bylaws because the words in it are so important, and at the same time, the bylaws require us to consider revising the words in Article 2 at least every 15 years. So these words matter enough that they shouldn't be changed lightly or with minimal consideration, but because they matter so much, we also must reconsider them periodically so that they don't become stale or irrelevant. Article 2 is where the official wording you know as the seven principles lives, although there are also several other important statements there that we don't invoke nearly as much. They were not there from the beginning, though. The 1961 version had six principles. Some of their themes match those of the current seven, but they don't line up one to one at all. They also assumed agreements on a number of things I don't believe we agree about any longer if we ever did, such as the phrase Judeo-Christian. It's another sermon entirely, but please just do not use that term. The word God and the masculine as a synonym for the universal with terms like the dignity of man and ideals of brotherhood. Agitation for change, most especially by our feminist foremothers, led to a massive revision that was adopted in 1985. This is where the number seven and the current wording of the principles comes from. I grew up learning this wording in Sunday school. I cannot remember a time when I did not have it memorized. But that's me. You do not have to memorize the principles in order to be a Unitarian Universalist. You don't even have to like them. I have colleagues, other ministers, who have said for decades that they found the wording bland, or dry, or uninspired. It's important to understand that while this document is a touchstone for our tradition, each of us has an absolute right to have their own relationship to it. Unitarian Universalism is infinitely more than just these particular lines on a page or any others for that matter. I will bet you one dollar that if you know exactly one of the seven principles, it is the first one, inherent worth and dignity of every person. That if you know only two, the second one is the seventh principle, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are apart. And that if you know just three, the third one you know is either the fourth or the fifth of free and responsible search for truth and meaning or the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. We lean more heavily on some of the seven than on others when we talk about our faith and what it is for and about. By the way, if you think that I just lost that bet, see me after the service to settle up. Now if you have a silver and gray hymnal and you turn past the first several pages to the back of the cover page, you will find this wording printed there. Most or all of the copies that we have here were printed in 1993, the original printing of that version of the hymnal, and the wording of the principles did not change between 1985 and 1993 and still to this day has not. But the other massive change in 1985 was the addition of the sources, statements about where we draw the inspiration for our tradition. That wording can also be found on that page of the hymnal, at least the original five sources can be because in 1995 we added a sixth source and even if you happen to have a more recent printing of the hymnal like the one that I have at home that I got when I went to college, it will still most likely be out of date on the sources because in 2018 we revised the second source. It used to read, words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion and the transforming power of love. The revision changed the beginning of that sentence to the words and deeds of prophetic people. This change was made in an effort to acknowledge that the human family cannot be reduced to two binary gender categories and to include the people in the wider world and among us who were being left out of the phrase women and men. I will tell you, I strongly supported that change and I have no ambiguity about the importance of making it. And I also know how hard-fought the change from the male-centric wording of 1961 was and how important having the word women and having it first in that construction was to many of the advocates of the 1985 revision. Every sort of change in life, even the best and most necessary ones comes with loss. As we consider making a new change, it is important that we attend to that truth and neither dismiss it nor allow ourselves to be imprisoned by it. So finally, we come to the current proposal. This was drafted by a team of volunteers, both lay and ordained from across the country who were charged by the board of the Unitarian Universalist Association to gather information and input and propose a potential change to Article 2. This was in keeping with the periodic cycle of re-examination that our bylaws require. The last time a major revision of Article 2 was voted on was 2009 and it failed to pass. The charge to this commission was to offer new wording that would make clear that love is central to our faith. This has been the concern raised most consistently in any class I have ever done a deep study of the principles with that love does not appear in them anywhere, although it does appear three times in the sources. They were also given the specific mandate to draft language that would emphasize the consequences of things commonly believed among us. Not just what do we hold dear, but what does that call us to do? They worked for over two years, holding listening sessions, sending out surveys and gathering ideas. As some of you know, they shared some draft language this past June and sought feedback on it. A more full draft last November and collected more feedback on that and from that work, they now have made a formal proposal. So let's get to the heart of it. I'm not going to read the entirety of their proposal to you. The assorted other things that Article 2 covers are absolutely worthy of your time and attention, but in the interest of focus right now, I'm just going to cover this section which would replace the current principles. Let me be clear one more time that this wouldn't erase those principles. If the new language is approved, they will simply move into the realm of other important documents from our history, such as the Winchester profession and the six principles from 1961. This new proposal has an image that goes with it, a sort of flower motif with love at the center and six other words on the petals surrounding it. This is it now on the screen. Here then is the proposed wording of what the document calls values and covenant. I hope that you will listen in this moment with open hearts and minds and the understanding that there is space and time to consider and reconsider these words and develop your own thoughts on them. As Unitarian Universalists, we covenant congregation to congregation and through our association to support and assist one another in our ministries. We draw from our heritages of freedom, reason, hope and courage, building on the foundation of love. Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of love. Inseparable from one another, these shared values are. Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence. We covenant to cherish earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care and respect. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships. Pluralism. We celebrate that we are all sacred beings, diverse in culture, experience and theology. We covenant to learn from one another in our free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We embrace our differences and commonalities with love, curiosity and respect. Justice. We work to be diverse, multicultural, beloved communities where all thrive. We covenant to dismantle racism in all forms of systemic oppression. We support the use of inclusive democratic processes to make decisions. Transformation. We adapt to the changing world. We covenant to collectively transform and grow spiritually and ethically. Openness to change is fundamental to our Unitarian and Universalist heritage is never complete and never perfect. Generosity. We cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. We covenant to freely and compassionately share our faith, presence and resources. Our generosity connects us to one another in relationships of interdependence and mutuality. Equity. We declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness. We covenant to use our time, wisdom, attention and money to build and sustain fully accessible inclusive communities. Breathe with me for a moment, will you? So what is different here? A great deal, certainly. Not a set of principles, but of values and a covenant grounded in those values. Part of the explanation offered for the image being integral to this proposal is to get away from a numbering scheme and any implied hierarchy. Each of these values hinges on the other ones. They are inseparable from each other in the words of the authors. The structure has both similarities and differences. It is still basically a seven-point list, after all. The format is a set of one word, one word value, followed by a sentence to elaborate on its meaning and one or two more sentences to describe what holding that value together requires of us in practice. That means this document is considerably longer than the existing seven principles, but it can also be shorthanded to a list of seven values, which is quite a bit shorter. In terms of the deepest points of sameness, let me point out that this new composition includes words directly referencing the first, fourth, fifth, and seventh principles, far and away the ones most commonly referenced among us. I want all of us to explore our own feelings and thoughts and develop our own opinions about this document. In matters... We say about ourselves to each other and to the larger world. And I do not believe that there is or can be just one right perspective on this as on so many other things. But you also called me as one of your ministers, which means that I owe you my perspective on things that matter. And my perspective on this proposal is that although it is a massive change to words that I deeply love and which I have had in my heart for nearly the whole of my life, I also find many new things to love in this document. The emphasis on collective action, on what we owe to each other and the world, strikes me as speaking to the reality of this moment in time, when so many of the values we hold dear are under withering assault. Just as importantly, I find that for me, this proposal retains the most critical themes of the seven principles. The things that I absolutely could not bear to lose. And in at least some cases, improves upon them. I would lift up in particular the phrase inclusive democratic processes as an improvement on the democratic process. Because democracy is a principle, not a single formula. And all too often in our world, the trappings of occasional elections are used to paper over and maintain profoundly anti-democratic systems of power and exploitation. You can find links to the entire report from the study commission, which includes their full proposal in the red floors, as well as on our congregation's social media pages. In the coming months, I'm going to be encouraging our existing journey circles and any other formal or informal groups of FUS folks who might like to, to take some time to engage intentionally with this document together. Now, here is what will happen with this proposal procedurally. The power to change the UUA's bylaws rests with the General Assembly, which is an annual gathering of delegates from each of the roughly 1,000 member congregations of the UUA. It happens every year in June. This year, it's in Pittsburgh. Delegates to the General Assembly will debate this proposal. They will be able to propose and vote on amendments to it. I think it is very likely that there will be amendments and that some of them will pass. So this document is the starting point, but not necessarily what will be arrived at finally. They will then vote on the proposal as amended. If it fails, that is the end of it. The story is finished there. If it passes, it's not over. We will spend the next year as a movement considering this now amended wording. The text will be pretty much fixed at that point. There will be space to make some grammar corrections. That's really about it. And then there will be another vote at the next GA, a year and a half from now. It will need a two-thirds majority in order to pass. Otherwise, again, it will just be over with no change made. Our congregation's participation in this process depends on the willingness of members to serve as delegates. We are entitled to 21 delegates. I am not aware of us ever having fielded a full slate, although that is pretty normal for a very large congregation such as ours. It's a huge ask to take at least three or so days off of work and travel to Pittsburgh. I know. It is, however, also possible to attend online and still vote and propose amendments and make your voice heard in all the different ways that an in-person delegate would be able to. If you're willing to do that, you can register for as little as no dollars. The association is working very hard to eliminate as many of the financial barriers to participation as possible. If you are interested in being a delegate or in finding out more about it, please contact Janet Swanson, our Director of Membership and Adult Programs. You can find her contact information on our website. About 15 years ago, during a different cycle of reconsidering the principles which did not lead to any changes, I attended a listening session on the process. One of the other participants described the principles as the world's longest mission statement and wanted to prioritize getting the number down from seven to four or five. My zeal flaring, I opined that this is not the world's longest mission statement. It is among the world's shortest pieces of Scripture. Scripture written unabashedly by human beings, never complete and never perfect. Scripture which is meant to be rewritten according to the needs and understanding of those who keep it sacred. But Scripture, none the less.