General Assembly Report
Nearly 3900 UUs from all fifty U.S. states gathered in Minneapolis last week for the annual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. Our Studio City congegation had one of the largest representations we’ve ever had. Besides Blanche Wentworth and I, we sent five teens from our senior high youth group (Luna Allen-Bakerian, Kazia Mermel, Gabe Garza, Ariana Harbottle, and Evan Kendra) and four young adults Emily Carroll, Erica Steakley, John Waters, and Olivia Dudek). Emily and I were there a day early for our respective professional meetings with DRE and ministerial colleagues.
Our General Assemblies have the dual purposes of conducting the formal democratic business of the UUA and of offering programs of worship, lectures, celebration, and workshops for exploring, extending, and expressing our commitment to the common values, organizational challenges, and growing understanding of our Unitarian Universalist movement. With more than 200 program presentations over five days, many of them scheduled in groups of 20 at the same time, and nearly 90 display booths in the Exhibit Hall to draw one’s attention, GA registrants have many choices to make.
At the formal plenary sessions, delegates debated and voted on a variety of UUA bylaws changes, “business” resolutions, and position statements of matters of social justice and public policy. Some of these are worth singling out for mention.
This year’s most significant bylaws amendment changed the tenure of UUA president and moderator from double four-year terms to a single six-year term and establishes a more formal process for nominating candidates for those offices. Business resolutions are those that require the UUA to undertake specific actions.
The most controversial such issue this year was the question of whether to go ahead with long-scheduled plans to hold our 2012 GA in Phoenix or to boycott Arizona because of its recent illegal immigrant law and move GA 2012 to some other state at a cost of more than $600,000 in forfeited hotel contracts. What promised in advance to be a highly divisive debate was softened (but not eliminated) by a compromise proposal to go to Phoenix in 2012 but with a novel format for GA that minmizes “business as usual” and aims for a “Justice Assembly” that will be activist in working and witnessing for humane immigration policy and progressive human rights in general.
Finally, delegates adopted a Statement of Conscience on “Creating Peace” that has been five years in the making and chose the issue of immigration policy for four years of congregational study aimed at producing a new Statement of Conscience on that topic in 2014. If you’re interested in any of these actions, you can find more information at the UUA’s online GA coverage webpage: http://uua.org/events/generalassembly/2010/index.shtml
Amid all of this formal business, I and all our teen and young adult registrants participated in a march and rally in support of marriage equality centered around the familiar theme of “Standing on the Side of Love.”
Additionally, I had the opportunity for good conversations with former church folk, Rod and Marie Nordberg, who are now active in Minneapolis’s First Universalist Church, and the Rev. Sue Spencer, who just finished a two-year interim ministry in Danbury, Connecticut, and is headed this fall for another interim assignment in Columbia, Missouri.
It was such a delight for me to be joined by ten others from our Studio City church, the largest turnout from our congregation in many years. Later on in this newsletter, you’ll find some reports and reflections from many of them on what it was like to be in attendance at their first UUA General Assembly.
If you are prompted by these reflections to think about representing our church and experiencing the stimulus of GA participation in some future year, here is information about forthcoming General Assemblies:
- 2011 June 22-26 Charlotte, North Carolina
- 2012 June 20-24 Phoenix, Arizona
- 2013 June 19-23 Louisville, Kentucky
- 2014 June 25-29 Providence, Rhode Island
I encourage you to think about this possibility and to talk with me, and especially with any of our teens or young adults, about the GA experience and how you might make it a part of your UU practice. It’s one of the most significant ways of deepening and broadening your own feeling of the meaning and the pulse of our liberal religious tradition and movement.