Defying Stereotypes about Unitarian Universalists

I spent Saturday with Unitarian Universalists from around New England, at the fall regional conference.

The morning program was led by Gini Courter, the Unitarian Universalist Association moderator. Although the UUA describes the moderator’s primary responsibility as “presiding at General Assemblies and at meetings of the Board of Trustees,” Courter also speaks at regional conferences. She’s a lively speaker with a great sense of humor. And she doesn’t waste time getting to the important questions about Unitarian Universalism in her presentations.

She co-lead a morning program with Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs, and it was a mix of lecture and small group break-out discussions.

One of the topics we discussed in small groups were our experiences of the holy. A popular stereotype about Unitarian Universalists is that we get uncomfortable when we have to talk about the spiritual or the transcendent.

This simply has not been my experience. I’ve been surprised by how ready UU’s are to talk about spiritual issues. At a conference last year, I had a discussion with a break-out group about if and how each of us prayed. Folks in my group shared very openly, and with a genuine desire to understand one another’s experiences.

At the conference on Saturday, we were asked to break into small groups and each share a story about a time we had experienced the holy. In my group, people shared stories about experiencing the holy in a variety of places. To me, this epitomized one of the best things about Unitarian Universalists — we are open to one another’s experiences of the sacred, even if those experiences take different shapes.

Later in the morning, we broke into the same small groups again and brainstormed a list of what we consider to be Unitarian Universalist “values.” This too addressed a particular stereotype; because Unitarian Universalism is non-creedal and Unitarian Universalists also follow other religious traditions, it is often assumed that we don’t have any unifying values (other than social justice).

Each group was then asked to write their list of UU values on sticky notes and put them on the door of the conference room. I later browsed the notes, expecting to see a diverse collection of words (there I go, buying into the stereotype that UU’s are so different from one another!). Instead, many of the same words were written over and over again in different handwriting, emphasizing the following Unitarian Universalist values:

Love

Justice

Community

Service

Openness, Inclusivity and Acceptance

Kindness and Compassion

It was really heartening to see the door covered in post-it notes proclaiming these values as our own. These values can serve as the “glue” for welcoming, healing and prophetic communities.

I would also like to see commitment to spiritual exploration and practice added to the list. The list above describes an amazing way of being together. But I also hunger for Unitarian Universalists to proclaim more loudly that kindness, compassion, love, openness and service are spiritual values–that in the context of our communities, these values can lead us into an experience of the sacred.