to the General Assembly, 2000
Rev. Dr. John Buehrens, President
Nashville, TN, Friday, June 23, 2000
Thank you. At the Millenium March, literally thousands upon thousands of people raised their hands when I asked them if they had ever attended an event at a UU meeting house. I felt honored for us all to be the only head of an historic denomination asked to address America's most recent March for Equality.
People sometimes ask me about Unitarian Universalism's over-arching mission as a religious movement. And I say this: To help each of us fulfill our spiritual, moral, human promise, and to do so not just for ourselves, but so that others -- unjustly marginalized --can have their chance too to help shape history, and not just be pushed around by it.
People ask, "What have been your personal goals as President?" And I say this: First, to help overcome our movement's own tendency to 'self-marginalization.' To lift up UU visibility and public witness. To help make us the indispensable catalyst for interfaith cooperation in a world of diversity that's yearning for justice.
So this year I also helped lead the interfaith worship on the Mall in Washington for the Million Mom March against gun violence. With friends from People for the American Way, and with Welton Gaddy of The Interfaith Alliance, I helped to organize a new network called Progressive Religious Partners, resurrecting some of the spirit of interfaith cooperation of the early civil rights struggle, which began here in Nashville just as the UUA was being born nearly forty years ago.
I've also been building on the work of my predecessors for international interfaith cooperation. Last November, in Amman, Jordan, when 1500 senior religious leaders gathered for the 7th World Conference on Religion and Peace, founded by Dana Greeley, I was honored to be chosen to preside at all business sessions. And just earlier this month I was in Japan, visiting Buddhist and Shinto leaders who are key partners with us in both that organization and its parent, the International Association for Religious Freedom.
We founded the IARF at a General Assembly a hundred years ago this year, so it was appropriate for me to introduce our Japanese partners to the IARF's new General Secretary: the former director of Quaker Peace and Service of Great Britain, Mr. Andrew Clark. He's here today. Please get to know him. Andrew, wave hello to the folks!
On this continent, both in Canada, where the IARF held its triennial Congress at Vancouver last summer, and in many US communities, UU congregations can be found supporting interfaith cooperation through education, service, worship, and organizing. How many know your congregation is doing that? [Hands are raised.] So when people ask, "What have we done to implement the Statement of Conscience on interfaith cooperation we passed last year?" I can honestly say, "Lots!" In Washington D.C., Meg makes interfaith coalition building absolutely central to all the many issues she juggles.
Getting Unitarian Universalists more mission-focused, however, often reminds me of metaphors other than juggling. Let me now show you another video clip, a commercial that I hope amuses you as much as it did me when I first saw it during the Super Bowl this year:
[Herding Cats commercial]
[Using lint roller] Have you ever tried to get a herd of cats to do strategic planning? Well, I have! [Put down roller] It ain't easy, but, like the man said, "Ah wou'n't do no other kinda work."
As I said last year, in many ways we are getting more strategic. We're growing up, maturing as a movement. Building and expanding hundreds of new buildings. Taking far more interest in our young people. Entering a new 'householder' phase of real generativity. So much so that we now have literally five times as many high school age youth as we did eight years ago. Six times as many UU groups on college campuses. Becoming more committed and generous. So much so that our per capita giving to congregational operating funds is up 60% in constant dollars. Add all the capital campaigns, and it has probably doubled. Which is what's happened to our giving to common mission through the Association and its districts. It's doubled. We're making real progress toward fair compensation for the people who work for our congregations.
Recently we finished a seven-year, million-dollar effort to publish Our Whole Lives, giving ourselves and the world a new values-based, comprehensive program of sexuality education for people of all ages. Now we've started planning a whole new generation of RE curricula on our faith and heritage and approach to religious living. We're set to field-test new ads about our distinctive approach to religious education for children. To launch a major campaign of advertising, public relations and witness for Unitarian Universalism. We've thoroughly evaluated and re-thought our programs for establishing new congregations and helping existing ones to grow. So we are getting strategic!
Last January the UUA Board authorized me to start raising funds for a new Campaign for Unitarian Universalism, aimed at gathering the spirit and harvesting the power and generosity now so evident among us. This campaign will allow us both to implement many the strategic initiatives I've been describing and to make key investments in other aspects of our institutional future. Like funds to keep Beacon Press the prophetic force it is in publishing.
The goal is ambitious. Over the next four years, to raise at least $32 million. $8 million to gather our vision and make it more visible to the world at large. $6 million to gather our young people and nurture the promise that is in them. $10 million to grow congregations, to lend them more money when they build, and to gather new congregations more adequately funded. $5 million for ministerial scholarships, continuing education for religious educators, and lay leadership training — that is, 'advanced cat herding.'
And how are we doing? Well, after just six months we have nearly half the goal — over $15 million dollars — signed or verbally committed, by just the first 25 donors. So we can do this! I know it!
People sometimes ask me, "After seven years, aren't you getting tired?" And I say, "Why, pardner, it'd take a bigger denomination than this to wear me down!" But when they also ask, "What are the biggest problems?" I have to say this: many of them are things that the Association has only limited power to ride herd on, that only you out there in the congregations can start to work on: our self-marginalizing preference to feel persecuted and misunderstood rather than called to patient, religious public leadership. The clear need for each of us to become personally, prophetically articulate, in our way, about what this faith means to us.
I have now visited over 600 of our congregations. I must tell you: I still find far too much Sunday morning in-group behavior. Joys and concerns can be done worshipfully, or badly. Announcements the same. But too often we can come across as an exclusive club. One where you have to know the passwords. If we want to grow we need to design every aspect of worship from the point of view of the stranger. Let's also try to remember: our capacity for critical thinking should always be first directed at ourselves, where it can be most useful. Internal bickering or smugness toward other people of faith do us a disservice. When it comes to other people, let's tell the truth, but let's tell it in love.
In that vein, I have a question about the new Statement of Conscience that is on the agenda for this Assembly. This one concerns Economic Injustice, Poverty, and Racism. God knows I want us to work to overcome all three of those things. This year I've been preaching on the subject, often showing people a little chalice, made of papier-mâché.
It was given me by the banghi women of Ahmedabad, in India, a year ago. Banghis are those who in the villages must earn their living by cleaning out latrines, in the cities by gathering up refuse and paper in the streets. Hence the papier-mâché. They gave it to me because, with help from the Unitarian Universalist Holdeen India Program, some 17,000 banghi women in Ahmedabad alone have been organized into a union — which now has a contract with the city to provide all the recycling services, in return for a real living wage.
So half a world away we are doing something about economic injustice, poverty, and racism. But I have to question whether we are doing enough here, among ourselves, closer to home, through enough of our congregations, to pass this Statement yet. This Statement of Conscience is meant to proclaim to the world that we have a developed, shared conscience on what we Unitarian Universalists need to do to overcome economic injustice. But I have to tell you, my travels do not give me much evidence that we UUs have such a collective conscience yet. In a few places, yes. But not very many. For me it's a matter of integrity; we can't say it unless and until we know we mean it. But it is also a practical question. If we don't have the broad-based, grassroots, heartfelt support for this Statement, I worry that next year we won't have much to report back. At least not enough for us to feel good about.
So to be good stewards of our morale, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to do more local study/action projects before passing this Statement. No UUA administration can do all of the work to support a Statement of Conscience; you are the people who have to make it real. So you judge if you feel ready; if your congregation is. It's your decision, of course. Let's just not fool ourselves.
Notice that being a lame duck allows me to do more meddling with impunity. One more point about process. The candidates to succeed me and to succeed Denny are fine, devoted people. But the process is flawed. In particular, ask yourself if it is fair to them or to you that the institution takes so little responsibility for recruiting its key leaders. There's no nominating or discernment process. We treat the whole thing as 'politics.' I experienced it. It can be quite cruel, frankly. I think it would be spiritually and institutionally sounder to have a nominating process, with petitions still possible. As most religious groups do. And no, it would not be 'less democratic.' A good case can be made that active recruitment would help widen the field of potential leaders.
During the one year you've got me as President of this Association, I promise to continue to do everything within my power to help us to truly fulfill the promise that is in us. To articulate and respond to Our Common Call as a people. To strengthen our institutional vitality and collaborative spirit. I want to thank Denny, and Kay, the whole UUA Board and staff, and all of you, for having made these past seven years more productive and fulfilling than I could ever have imagined.
And I want to thank my partner in life, my wife Gwen, for putting up with everything it has demanded of both of us. Lately, especially since I've helping a mother with MS and a father who faces a serious malignancy, she has been more than ever part of my safety net, allowing me to stay up on the high wire, doing the tightrope walk of leadership. I say that remembering a high ropes course Denny and I did together, along with the strategic planning team, a few years ago.
Because if religious leadership is part juggling, part tightrope walking, and part, well, if not lion taming then at least cat-herding, it is also captured in another circus metaphor that Gwen sometimes uses. A theologian who was one of her teachers once had occasion to interview a veteran trapeze performer. "Most people think that the hard part is letting go," said the trapeze vet. "But it's not. It's scary. Any parent can tell you that. But any kid can also tell you how exhilarating it can be. The really hard part, the part that takes a whole life-time of practice is this: learning to let yourself be caught."
We need to work on that, friends. Learning to let ourselves be caught. It may be the spiritual and practical skill that will matter most. It's been a good year. I love you. May God bless and catch you in the year ahead! Amen.
Let me now ask Shelley Jackson Denham to lead us as we close by singing one of her wonderful contributions to Singing Our Living Tradition -- "We Laugh, We Cry."
