UUA suspends funding for young adult network

C*UUYAN has cancelled annual conferences; UUA staff groups serving youth and young adults expected to merge.

Books that amplify our voices

This issue of 'UU World' highlights books worth sharing.

Liberal theology, vibrant but hidden

Unitarian Universalism was liberal theology's first home, but we have neglected it lately.

Independent magazines take a hit

New postal rules treat small periodicals unfairly.

Jesus for UU children

New book offers a Unitarian Universalist view.

Environment and diversity themes of General Assembly

Report on the Unitarian Universalist Association's 2007 annual meeting.

General Assembly asserts UU moral values

In Portland, UUA's annual meeting recalls Pentagon Papers, urges opposition to torture and Iraq war, affirms transgender people.

Daily updates from UUA General Assembly

Follow the UUA's annual meeting with uuworld.org's GA blog, June 20-24.

General Assembly 2007 preview

Congregational leaders and representatives of other UU organizations will gather in Portland, Oregon, for the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations June 20 through 24.

A mirror and a lens

My goal is to give you a magazine with a broad range of UU voices that truly conveys the dynamism of liberal religion today.

Sinkford outlines plan for more diverse ministry

Board of Trustees hears UUA president's proposal for new ministry opportunities for minorities, approves General Assembly review of UUA's Purposes.

Inheriting a bold magazine

Share your dreams for Unitarian Universalism and its magazine.

New survey of UU congregations shows growth potential

UUA survey conducted alongside Faith Communities Today study.

UUA General Assembly confronts global warming

Delegates also select 'peacemaking' as four-year congregational focus.

Daily reports from UUA General Assembly

Follow the UUA's annual meeting with uuworld.org's GA blog, June 21-25.

Harvard announces professorship in Unitarian Universalist studies

Ralph Waldo Emerson Professor will focus on liberal religious traditions.

Counterculture and liberal religion

How American culture transforms — and is sometimes transformed by — liberal religion.

Report examines racism, youth at 2005 General Assembly

Commission offers timeline and recommendations after tense interactions at UUA annual meeting in Fort Worth, Texas.

A surrogate mother, Kwanzaa in Maine, Christmas controversies, and more

Unitarian Universalists in the Media, December 12-19, 2005.

Boston honors Selma's civil rights activists

With flags flying at half-mast to honor the death of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, Unitarian Universalists joined several thousand Bostonians in a civil rights march on Sunday, October 30, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Fired up: General Assembly 2005

Sermons, music, and politics fired up the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists.

Ambitious first book at 21

Paul Kendrick, a twenty-one-year-old student at George Washington University, spent two years researching and writing Sarah's Long Walk, a new Beacon Press history of Boston's free black community, with his father, the Rev. Stephen Kendrick, minister of the First and Second Church in Boston.

Notable recordings

Brief reviews of Heinrich Christensen Plays the C.B. Fisk Organ, King’s Chapel, Boston and The Fire of Commitment: Music of Jason Shelton.

Talking about reverence

Whether Unitarian Universalists have responded to President William G. Sinkford's call for a renewed "language of reverence" with appreciation or anger, the subject has generated a rousing and enduring conversation. But until quite recently, a newcomer to the conversation might have felt unsure about the source of all the commotion; there was no single collection of primary documents under discussion. A Language of Reverence, a brief collection of key speeches, answers that need.

James Luther Adams's examined faith

Widely regarded as the most important Unitarian Universalist theologian of the twentieth century, James Luther Adams championed themes that have never been UU favorites, among them conversion and guilt, sacrifice and discipline, conflict and tragedy. Without them, Adams believed, liberal religion becomes complacent, accommodating cultural trends that distort truly liberal values when resistance is called for. He became the leading exponent of the liberal church as "the prophethood of all believers" — an institution whose people, rooted in the biblical and liberal traditions, learn to judge and correct their society.

Wielding our power

Recognizing our power and using it to promote our values in the world fulfills one of the Sources of our living tradition: It empowers us to “confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.”

General Assembly 2004

Several workshops and plenary speeches expanded on conversations begun at last year's Assembly about religious language. Last year, a delegate's request opened up forty-five minutes of plenary discussion in response to President Sinkford's call for a renewed “language of reverence” in the UUA. Some perceived his call as a reactionary move toward mainline or conservative Christianity, but others saw him urging religious liberals to acknowledge the spirituality that is already among us.

Kindergarten's radical advocate

The educator, publisher, and reformer Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) was inseparable from the circle of writers and reformers known as Transcendentalists in mid-nineteenth century Boston. Her lasting achievement, however, wasn't her advocacy of Transcendental philosophy or even her strong support for a broad range of social reforms. It was her introduction of kindergarten to the United States.

Singing the Seventh Principle

The Rev. Ralph Galen describes the songs in The Earth and Spirit Songbook as “the soundtrack to the peace and justice and environmental movement.” For many Unitarian Universalists, Jim Scott's collection of songs, chants, and choral arrangements may seem like the perfect soundtrack to their faith, too.

Gay rights timeline

Major social, political, and religious milestones on the road to equality.

Talking about the 'L'-word

Modern Unitarian Universalism was “born into a given historical constellation of ideas”—and as that constellation of ideas has been eclipsed in much of our public life, we have sometimes grown doctrinaire and defensive in our political thinking even as we proclaim the tolerance and diversity of our theology. Perhaps we would be served by thinking through the “specialized notions” of liberalism we take for granted. Perhaps it is time for us to ask each other: Which aspects of liberalism really do belong to Unitarian Universalism?

Science and its metaphors

Science — the work that scientists do — is revered, perhaps even idolized, in our religious movement, but as a religious movement we are not doing science ourselves. Yet for some Unitarian Universalists and for many self-described Humanists, science has become the touchstone for human values. We want our theology to be compatible with science, and some of us even treat science as our theology and ethics. Mary Midgley cautions us that the authority of science should not go unexamined; there is no divine right to the "intellectual imperialism" some science advocates promote.

Adin Ballou: Practical utopian

Adin Ballou (1803-1890) spent a lifetime trying to build a community modeled in every difficult particular on the Sermon on the Mount. He even succeeded for a while.

Humanists celebrate 70th anniversary with new manifesto

Sophia Lyon Fahs: Revolutionary educator

As a teacher, writer, editor, and advocate, Sophia Lyon Fahs helped to revolutionize American children's religious education and played a major role in what is often called the "Unitarian renaissance."

Religious dialogue in a divided world

The war with al Qaeda may not be a clash between Islam and the West. But 9/11 publicized another conflict quite clearly: There is a clash of theologies within Islam, and the stakes of that battle are high indeed.

Focus on history

Several new first-rate books about Unitarian and Universalist history challenge our assumptions and expand our appreciation for the spiritual and intellectual vitality of our tradition.

Delegates take a global view in Quebec

Unitarian Universalists converged on Québec City, the only walled city in North America and the capital of Canada's French-speaking province, for the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in June. It was an ideal place to deliberate the religious and ethical significance of economic globalization.

Gregor Samsa's second life

Insect Dreams revives the protagonist of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and sets him loose in the turbulent years leading to the first atomic explosion in 1945. The result is a fine comic novel shot through with ideas and shaped by a vigorous moral imagination.

Samuel Gilman, early champion of Southern Unitarianism

When Unitarian Universalists think of ideals like the separation of church and state or the interdependent web of all existence, we imagine principles that enhance the rights of all human beings. It can be something of a rude awakening to see these very principles used to defend slavery.

Beautiful words

We treat the letters of the alphabet as tools, and why wouldn't we? Used the right way, they get our point across. Some people see the alphabet as more than a toolbox, however. Calligraphers like Margaret Shepherd transform these everyday tools of communication into things of beauty.

Christianity's victims

An all-powerful father sends his son to die on a cross, in the process saving his other children from an awful fate he himself ordained. A new book by two path-breaking feminist theologians argues that something is horribly wrong with this version of the story.

Unitarian and Universalist roots of the American Red Cross

Henry Whitney Bellows, a Unitarian minister, helped found the U.S. Sanitary Commission in 1861. The Commission provided the basis for the American Red Cross, founded twenty years later by a Universalist, Clara Barton.

Delegates deliver a mandate

The UUA's 40th General Assembly resounded with calls for renewed public engagement and commitment to congregational and spiritual growth. The Rev. William G. Sinkford, elected president of the UUA by the largest margin in the association's history, left Cleveland with a mandate.

Selma '65: So nobly started

he Unitarian Universalist Association was not quite four years old when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sent an urgent telegram to its Boston headquarters on March 7, 1965, asking religious leaders and concerned citizens to join him in Selma, Alabama, where African Americans marching for their right to vote had been brutally attacked by lawmen.

Ezra Stiles Gannett: Conservative but visionary

One hundred seventy-five years ago, a young assistant minister stepped out from the shadow of the best-known champion of the new Unitarian movement in America and took charge of the first institution organized to promote the growth of Unitarianism on this continent.

A congressman's struggle for respect

At a peace rally in the early 1970s, Ronald Dellums drew a standing ovation when he said, "Many of my colleagues in the Congress are mediocre prima donnas who don't understand the level of human misery in this country or the world." But when another representative read those words back during debate in Congress, it was a "very painful lesson."