These include strong local and democratic involvement in each congregation, but also a fierce unwillingness to be organized in any authoritative ecclesiastical body. Thus, in 1974, Rev. Just a few years before they had escaped persecution and oppression of religious and secular authorities, coming to the new world to create a new way. Somewhere along the line, our collective understanding of congregational polity became like that Wikipedia definition. They invented, or rather reinvented, what we call congregational polity, that doctrine of the church that insists that each congregation is to be governed by its own members. attending seminary at a non-UU theological school? Just as religion thrives at the intersection of self, community, and Spirit, so too does covenant. In just the same way, the independence of individual UUs is often privileged over interdependent community in our congregations. In a few of our congregations, people become part of the community when they formally enter and are welcomed into mutual covenant with the rest of the community. Members are expected to participate in congregational polity by attending meetings and being informed about issues involving the congregation. The UU Church of Delaware County is highlighted in the current edition of the UUWorld, which will be hitting Unitarian Universalist members’ mailboxes at any moment. Regardless of theological orientation or denominational polity, there are certain basics of creating congregational history that apply. A Report by the Commission on Appraisal, Unitarian Universalist Association. We have abstractified covenant into spiritual cohabitation, the big tent under which we eat at separate tables. Unitarian Universalism proudly identifies congregational polity as a bedrock organizational commitment. Our collective anxiety about this tension and the resulting deification of individual conscience have squashed the rich dimensionality of covenant until it has become synonymous with a vague sense of commitment to a vague set of principles. Perhaps the biggest one is: mission is the reason the church exists. Hanson was ordained by our church, exercising the right of congregational polity. Ours is not some generic story of democracy, poetic self reliance, or liberal religion. Its first articulation in writing is the Cambridge Platform of 1648 in New England. Unitarian Universalist churches practice congregational polity. Every one of our flourishing congregations and communities knows this way. Our congregations may be self-governed but there is literally no such thing as a Unitarian Universalist congregation which is not connected by covenant to the community of Unitarian Universalist congregations. Both are strictly consistent with congregational polity, but there is no question that a mutual covenanting practice lives more fully into the beautiful potential of beloved community. Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is a liberal religious association of Unitarian Universalist congregations. The Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston (UUCR) is governed by congregational polity, meaning that the members of the congregation independently make their own decisions regarding UUCR policies, programming and finance. I believe these essential elements of liberalism actually eroded covenant’s place at the center of our polity. Congregational polity is not fundamentally about autonomy or protecting individuals from spiritual coercion. Their theology was virtually indistinguishable from the churches they left behind in Europe. And, if so, the members would be called, compelled, bound to proclaim it and try to bring it to bear in their whole society.”xv “For any who might suppose our 17th century free-church ancestors talked mostly about original sin, predestination, and hellfire, I am glad to be able to tell you, not one of those topics is even mentioned”xvi in the records of the founding churches. There is no such thing as a Unitarian Universalist by themselves. Touching on important historical material, Wright offers the reader stimulating reflections on vexing liberal religious matters that inform both our present and our future. Our church, like other Unitarian Universalist churches, is governed under the “congregational polity” model, meaning our members make ultimate decisions including the adoption of church bylaws, the election of the Board of Trustees, the adoption of … Countless more have visited our congregations and never come back. We have congregational polity, which means the congregation is responsible for making its own decisions about how we will live out our values. Charles Conrad Wright (February 9, 1917 – February 17, 2011) was an American religious historian and scholar of American Unitarianism and congregational polity.He served on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School from 1954 to 1987 and continued to write for another decade. And as soon as people come together in groups they have to work out how they will be together. It is the architecture that supports shared religious life. This understanding repels healthy people, weakens connections among churches, and perpetuates widespread suspicion about leadership. attending seminary at a non-UU theological school? We hope that this enables lively discussions for your congregational leaders. Covenant lives on as a vestigial metaphor for interconnection in our movement, but that is all. The “congregational way” can help all of us discover the way forward—even in the wide world beyond congregations. Everything their church does and is is about making Love manifest in this time and place.iii They know in their bones that how they are says everything about who they are. Our Association only exists because congregations intentionally decided that they need a way to enact collective religious vision beyond the unit of individual congregations. these cannot be ignored no matter how loud the voices resisting the accountabilities envisioned in our polity. For more information contact [email protected]. Refusal to consider wisdom from the larger community of congregations. Congregational polity is the form of government practiced by the historic congregational churches, including those now associated with the UUA. The problem is that we aren’t clear about the demands our covenant places on us, so it’s no wonder so many of us feel at least vaguely resistant. UUMAN is a self-governing democracy, choosing its own leadership, handling its own finances, and choosing its own delegates to the General Assembly. We must revitalize that which connects us as individuals and religious communities. It also means we choose to be interdependent with other congregations in the Association. The following study guide is intended to accompany the article about the congregation. Our congregations are voluntary associations in that members and friends participate according to their conscience—no one is compelled by creedal requirement, eschatological fear, or priestly mandate to join a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Does our faith not require us to help increase the sum of love and justice in the world? Our people therefore tend to organize themselves around individual conscience, individual discernment, and direct democracy rather than mutually covenanted collective conscience, collective discernment, and collective action. Undervaluation of associational connection. Skinner House, 1997. That is the beating heart of congregational polity. Most people don’t make “Facebook user” an aspect of their identity. Learn what we believe here. How does someone become a UU minister? And here’s my favorite part. Because we claim and are claimed by our faith, participation in Unitarian Universalist community is much richer than the notion of “voluntary participation” conveys. Diversity naturally emerges in polities when there is minimal hierarchy and standardization in systems, and that is certainly true in our case. Individual beliefs may constitute spirituality but they are not religious. Perhaps you will recognize some of these manifestations. The Polity Intensive Class will happen June 19-23 at the site of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly in Spokane, WA. This call, wherever it comes from and however it manifests in our individual lives, is that which compels us to come together. These covenants are engaged liturgically so that the worshipping community regularly remembers the greater good to which they are collectively called. I love it! Moral, ethical, and for some of us theological duty claims and compels us. Correcting misinterpretation and healing congregational systems from past damage are reasons enough to reinvigorate our collective reengagement with congregational polity. We all honor the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Compassion, the Spirit of Justice, the Spirit of Love, Unitarian Universalist Association Peter S. Raible of Seattle’s University Unitarian Church created a collection of materials relating to Unitarian and Universalist congregational polity, or structures of church governance. There’s some disagreement about the origins of the word religion, but all of them relate to how and why people are connected to each other. This failure means that the next time a sister congregation needs help they are less likely to receive it. I came to UU from Mormonism and have been consistently refreshed and enthused by congregational polity. Over-empowerment and even protection of bullying voices. To be an officially recognized congregation in our tradition is to join the Association of congregations. Hubristic belief in congregational specialness. Hardened and cynical from their years of orthodox ministry, they argued with him that he served the congregation first. In a creedless faith that has grown away from the trunk of our original theological trees, this tradition is absolutely essential. It is a guy-wire for exciting new models of ministry. Congregational polity is not the autonomy of individual congregations but the covenanted communion of autonomous churches. They promise to tell hard truths if they see folks acting in ways that are unhealthy. Here’s why we should care: this pervasive misinterpretation of congregational polity, with its emphasis on individual conscience and direct democracy, is a major cause of decline and source of ill health in Unitarian Universalist congregations. In addition to the requirements described above, community ministers must also be affiliated with a local UU congregation to progress from Preliminary Fellowship to Final Fellowship. The faithful people who gathered in Cambridge that sweltering summer knew absolutely that they needed one another if they were to serve God. Congregational polity “Congregational polity” is the Unitarian Universalist technical term for the way in which churches, fellowships and societies of this denomination are governed. Behavioral covenants are the only way most of our congregations experience covenant, and there’s no mistaking the function—to manage unhealthy individual behavior. It drives healthy people away, weakens connections among our churches and beyond, and perpetuates mind-boggling degrees of suspicion about leaders in general and our Unitarian Universalist Association in particular. Congregational Polity is the form of government that makes congregations the basic unit of the denomination. We can ignore those claims, but they endure anyway. Students will discover the mechanics of governance by observing Unitarian Universalist polity in action. You can't be an individual member of Unitarian Universalism.) The five sections of Part One speak to five basic dimensions of congregational polity: theological, historical, comparative, constitutional, and cultural. Please, please, when citing external documents like Dr. Ortega’s “ 5-page essay preemptively defending CRT from its critics ” and “Congregational Polity and the Myth of Congregational Autonomy” by Sue Phillips, give a url link or other information about where to look for such references. Topics similar to or like Congregationalist polity. We would all agree that congregational polity locates the freedom to determine who can join and how squarely within each congregation. [Religare Latin for “to bind”i Relegere, Greek for “to heed” Rak, Teutonic for “to have a care for”]. Which is why congregations who fail to contribute generously to our UUA are out covenant. Peter S. Raible of Seattle’s University Unitarian Church created a collection of materials relating to Unitarian and Universalist polity. Tessa Strickland, Kate DePalma, David Dean. It was a declaration of covenant. Hanson went on to serve a celebrated ministry in subsequent churches and, in 1992, was awarded the Angus Maclean Award for outstanding contributions to religious education by the UUA. There is no road map for the future they are creating. Congregational what?, I asked. There is no higher authority that dictates policy to the congregation. All rights reserved.See also Provocative Propositions on Polity: a self-study course on congregational polity based on this report. The covenants are revisited and reinterpreted, and every time new folks become covenant partners the entire community re-commits to their collective purpose and practices. We will also cover a deeper understanding of being a committed member of our congregations and the wider UUA. How does someone become a UU minister? It is, in the words of UU scholar Conrad Wright, “part of the consensus that holds the denomination together.”xviii. For our Puritan ancestors, though, the motivation for governing individual behavior wasn’t just copacetic community life but deep awareness that people who practice loving each other are best able to love God. © Copyright 1996-2021 Unitarian Universalist Association.All Rights Reserved. There are those who say that identity—especially identity that is mediated by institutions—will cease to matter in the coming age. This structure of self-government is called congregational polity. Unitarian congregations elected their own leaders, determined their own membership (which was often how a congregation could be known as Unitarian), selected their own clergy, and paid their own way. Defining oneself by one’s institutional or personal identities—now that may be dying among some of our younger generation, especially the ones who can afford to untether themselves from their communities of origin. The Theological Grants Panel of the Unitarian Universalist Association, chaired by the Reverend Lee Barker and staffed by the Reverend Ellen Brandenburg, provided the finances which allowed the work to go forward and be published. To understand what polity is we have to understand what values it manifests. That preaches, doesn’t it? But this freedom can be exercised in ways that emphasize either independence or interdependence. Policy Governance and Unitarian Universalist Congregational Polity Eric Kaminetzky April 2006 “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone. There are few things more damaging to our congregations than a systemic belief that individual voices rather than collective purpose belong at the center of congregational life. So while the Wikipedia definition might describe a little piece of congregational polity, it misses the larger story. The Congregational tradition was brought to America in the 1620s and 1630s by the Puritans—a Calvinistic group within the Church of England that desired to purify it of any remaining teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. They promise to look out for their neighbors’ welfare, and consult with them when they ask for help. Across the country, bells will toll as we remember all those who lost their lives to COVID-19. Students will discover the mechanics of governance by observing Unitarian Universalist polity in action. “Congregational polity is the form of church government in which each congregation is an autonomous, self-governing, covenanted body. Topic. It must be activated intentionally for the full power of liberal religion—and congregational polity—to be revealed. In Wikipedia, congregational polity is defined as a collection of “self-governed voluntary institutions”, which I suppose is at least vaguely accurate, but then the article calls this form of polity “a type of religious anarchism.” You gotta love Wikipedia. But they absolutely rely on Facebook to nurture and energize the connections that make them who they are. Our polity helps us tell our story and transmit our tradition. This is not covenanting. It was in Puritan New England where congregational polity reached its developmental zenith, and the strengths and weaknesses it revealed in that initial phase continue today. Celebrates the big ideas and everyday moments that all children share... We all honor the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Compassion, the Spirit of Justice, the Spirit of Love, Unitarian Universalist Association How can your small congregation keep your programs nimble and effective? We value interconnection but are cautious about asking much of each other. Our covenant makes demands, and. Our polity will be revivified when we actually help our people enter and re-enter into covenant with each other and with the larger community of congregations. But we are nonetheless called to engage in religious community. Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA We join the country in lighting a flame at this National Moment of Unity and Remembrance. Meanwhile, other congregations and communities use covenant as a way to express their deepest aspirations and values. Unlike many mainstream Protestant churches, we have no denominational hierarchy of authority. The authors of our congregational way were extremely specific about the web of connection they wanted to weave. People of faith who long for a transformed world are called to claim their Spiritual Leadership. This is called the offering. Joining and covenanting are different in the way a wedding is different from a marriage. Contemporary edition of the 1648 Cambridge Platform, the historic document that articulated the foundational principle of congregational polity. Polity Among the Unitarians and Universalists In the early 1990s, the Rev. That said, scholars are quick to warn us that this notion is quite different from democracy by any modern definition. Unitarian Universalists, our cousins the United Church of Christ, and several other smaller denominations are congregational in our polity, which means that congregations are both independent and connected to one another through covenant. In a religious association organized according to congregational polity, each local congregation has the sole authority to govern itself. Successful missional churches make some fundamental assumptions about how they operate. But the longing for connection, even those connections transmitted via institutions—that will never pass away. In most of our congregations, joining the community happens when people “sign the book”—an individual act of an individual person in a single moment in time. UUA, 1997. Unitarian Universalist communities connected in covenant via our associational polity can be just like that—providing the architecture for networked connection no matter how individual people define themselves. Covenant is not coercive, which is why the tendency to assign duplicitous motives to the pull toward interconnection in our system is blasphemous. The covenant calls both the individual and the larger community to specific purpose, with specific practices, and the covenant is regularly renewed and reinterpreted. This is why the prevalence of often-vituperative claims impugning the motives of our UUA is so ironic. In the early 1990s, the Rev. UU social justice priorities, global religious traditions, and congregational administration. Board Agendas and Minutes – Past Church Years; Opportunities to Serve at UUCWC for 2021-2022; Leadership Resources; Committees / Ministries; Documents; Service Awards; Forms & Information; Connection . Although a person’s sense of connection may well continue to deepen once they sign the book, the act of explicit commitment is over the moment their pen leaves the page. Puritans had tried for decades to reform the Church of England. Without some kind of vital, clear center around which we convene ourselves, we will not hold. This is because congregational polity means that we make our own decisions about local structure, leadership, ministry and bylaws rather than accept a structure handed to us. It is flat-out ahistorical, not to mention wrong. Polity is one of those hard-core geeky religious words we think we should know the definition of but most of us only carry around an echo of meaning, a reaction, or some vague historical association. UU social justice priorities, global religious traditions, and congregational administration. Traditions believing that scripture is the infallible, literal word of God will by necessity have strict rules about who can be admitted to fellowship, and will concentrate power and authority in the hands of people who adhere to and correctly interpret that Word. There are all sorts of religious practices that can be done alone, but religion by definition takes place at the intersection of self, community, and the Sacred. Equating congregational polity with autonomy undermines our interconnectedness, erodes our covenant, and endangers our communities. The Cambridge Platform itself is full of stipulations governing individual behavior. By We will also cover a deeper understanding of being a committed member of our congregations and the wider UUA. The answers to these questions cannot be told. Participation in our congregations and communities is “voluntary” in the sense that it is not strictly required by external authority. (617) 742-2100 | [email protected]. Leaders in emergent Unitarian Universalist beyond-congregation ministries are lowering the walls of existing churches and exploring new ways of bringing Unitarian Universalist ministry to our communities. So, in some ways, is our faith. We have managed to stay connected as communities of faith through radical changes to our collective beliefs. Dominant religious culture in the West tends to be more hierarchical, more authority-driven, more top-down that Unitarian Universalism is. Congregational Polity Like all Unitarian Universalist congregations, UUMAN governs itself through “congregational polity”. This, my friends, is a community that understands congregational polity, where independence and covenant alchemize into precious religious life. So I want to talk about congregational polity as expressed in and among our congregations as being variously located along a continuum with independence on one end and interdependence on the other. A summary of current UU conversations; a quick refresher on the basics of congregational polity, where covenant is the central organizing principle; and a history of … It connects us to our ancestors and gives us practiced means to stay connected to one another even as those connections take new form. This is, in the words of the great Conrad Wright, a significantly different thing.ii Let me repeat that. Anyone who has ever tried to live in religious community knows how important it is to have clear expectations about how we will try to be with one another. Where is this congregation? ... Institutionally we have congregational polity; we make our own decisions. The individual church claims that minister but the larger movement does not. Unitarian Universalists use Congregational Polity, which empowers congregations to be entirely independent. And yet these leaders are deeply concerned with how to stay in relationship with other Unitarian Universalist communities of faith. In the “congregational way”, autonomy and interconnection cohabitate comfortably. Communities is “ voluntary ” in the world.xiii repudiate our polity the consensus that holds denomination. Must revitalize that which compels us would be hard-pressed to construct a relevant. 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