UUA President's Report
The Rev. William G. Sinkford
General Assembly – Fort Worth , TX
June 25, 2005
The UUA elections this year are not complete, but if I get one vote, it looks like you'll have to put up with me for another four years. Do I have one vote in the house? More than a few of you have asked me about the state of my spirit as I approach a second term. "How are you holding up?" My energy and my commitment have never been greater. We have so much to do together. And it continues to be a privilege to serve as your President.
It seems incredible that it has been four years since I was elected UUA President in Cleveland. Time has flown by. How to measure it?
Well, I've visited with almost 200 congregations, attended dozens of district and cluster gatherings, spent 72 days in Washington , DC, visited our Holdeen India partners and the Unitarians of the Khasi Hills and Transylvania, represented our faith in Budapest, Prague, in Amman, Jordan, Japan and in Vatican City. I've come to know our major donors across the country and spoken out for peace and justice in community after community. I've been in every district, most several times, and 47 of the 50 United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. Well, truth be told, the Hawaii trip was not such hard duty.
The way I figure it, when I finish the next four years I'll be able to use my frequent flyer miles to travel...non-stop...for life.
But the reality is that we have accomplished a great deal in these four years. I promised, when I was elected, that my first priority would be to raise the visibility and voice of Unitarian Universalism, to make us a respected voice for liberal religious values. From the day of my election, Unitarian Universalism has in fact become more visible and more respected.
The first Black President of a predominantly white denomination was "news". A curiosity perhaps, but also a sign of hope in a nation still struggling to know the truth of our racism and find a path to reconciliation that might point toward the Beloved Community.
September 11th called on us all to live our principles by reaching out to the Muslim, Sikh and Arab communities in this nation. For myself, I found that a significant part of my ministry would be pastoral, offering support to clergy and laity alike as we lived our way into the post-911 world.
Even our internal conversations became news when I called for a language of reverence, here in Fort Worth in 2002.
It was the run-up to the Iraq invasion and occupation which cemented many of our inter-faith relationships. We were central participants in the Win Without War coalition and raised questions, which are still all too relevant, about the reasons for our invasion, about the resistance of our nation to participate as a member of the international community, and about the absence of an exit strategy for our troops. Although this is complex, I, personally, have come to believe that it is time for our nation to announce a withdrawal timetable for this occupation. The best way to support our troops is to bring them home.
We've witnessed for women's rights at the 2004 March for Women's Lives.
In preparation for last fall's national election, Unitarian Universalists registered more than 55,000 new voters, most from traditionally marginalized groups, with never a question asked about party affiliation. And the Faithful Democracy interfaith coalition which we helped to lead, registered hundreds of thousands more. We'll be working just as hard to insure the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, again in a broad interfaith coalition.
I managed to get arrested...only once...protesting the genocide in the Sudan.
And, throughout these four years, I have been able to be a Black voice which spoke out of liberal religious values. That voice has won me some honors, (visual) and engaged me in some controversy. Here is a short clip of my conversation with the head of Boston 's Black Ministerial Alliance on the PBS show Basic Black. (Video clip from Boston PBS affiliate's program "Basic Black" is shown.)
One of the core values for which we stand is the separation of Church and State. This has shaped our democracy. We Unitarian Universalists stand for a strong church and a strong state, but as our Catholic sisters and brothers tell their young people, there should be room for the Holy Spirit to move between them.
By far, the greatest impact of our voice to date has been on the issue of Marriage Equality. Last month we celebrated the anniversary of Marriage Equality in Massachusetts . Take a look at this. (Video clip from New England Cable News coverage of May 17 equal marriage anniversary is shown.) While the rest of the traditionally liberal religious world has been paralyzed by internal disputes, we have been able to speak with a clear and religiously grounded voice.
From Chicago to China, from Boston to Borneo Unitarian Universalism became known as a religion that stands on the side of love.
But my greatest satisfaction is that all of this publicity rapidly came to be...not about me. Our ministers have been in the press in unprecedented numbers. Our congregations are becoming the "go to" liberal religious voices in community after community.
Our visibility and voice is at an all time high. We are becoming a respected voice for liberal religious values in this nation.
In four years, we have done so much.
We've recognized the importance of religious education in our congregations and begun to support that ministry in new ways...a new credentialing system and, for the first time, a settlement system for religious educators. And perhaps most important, the initiation of a new life span curriculum project which will shape our understanding of ourselves as religious people for the next generation.
The successful completion of the largest capital campaign in our history, signaling the beginning of a shift from scarcity to abundance in our religious lives.
The beginning of recognition of the importance of the musicians and administrators.
Beacon Press in solid financial condition, with improved marketing creativity and financial controls. Though the publishing industry will continue to be volatile, Beacon shines out as a publishing house of values in an industry dominated by, and sadly corrupted by, concentration of control in the hands of a few corporations.
Rapid expansion of our campus and young adult ministry.
And we are learning so much about how to be an Association of congregations. More congregations are working together, no longer isolated and alone. Even the venerable institution of General Assembly is changing, with a focus on congregational life and an intentional effort to get congregational presidents to be present.
We've accomplished so much, matured so much, become even more effective in just four years.
There is a group of people whom I'd like to take a moment to recognize. Although I get much of the credit, and occasionally take the heat, for the work of the Association, it is the dedicated and hard working staff of the Association that really deserves the credit. Many of them live and work in Boston, but today almost 40% of them have their offices in other parts of the country. These folks have been creative in these tough economic times, improving support for the health and vitality of our congregations despite limited resources. It is one of the great pleasures of my ministry to work together with them. Would the members of the UUA staff please stand and receive the thanks of this General Assembly?
I'd like to give special thanks to one staff member, our Executive Vice-President. It is Kay Montgomery 's competent, often brilliant, supervision of the staff that makes my ministry as President possible. Kay, you have an uncanny ability to know when to involve me and such a deft hand at herding the very talented cats that make up our staff. Without your skill, we would not have navigated some of the troubled waters over which we've sailed in the last four years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please, give it up for Kay Montgomery .
Of course, in my life, these past four years have not been all about work. In Cleveland, four years ago, I was in the early stages of a new personal relationship. Many of you have had the opportunity to meet this extraordinary woman. She's traveled with me often (Maria comes to the podium). In this year of celebrating anniversaries, there is one more to add to the list. On April 23, in the Chapel at 25 Beacon St., Maria and I were married. Let me introduce you to my partner of four years and now my wife, Maria Sinkford. Maria Sinkford...I like that name.
Do you know the story of the traveling evangelist who needed to send a letter back to headquarters? Could it have been 25 Beacon St.? He stopped a boy on the street and asked him where the post office was. After the boy told him, he said: "You should come and hear me preach tonight. I'll tell you how to get to heaven." The boy thought for a moment and then said: "I don't think I'll be there. You don't even know how to get to the post office."
I love so many of the songs in the new hymnbook.
(Bill sings: "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?")
We know where we're coming from in these last four years. But where are we going? And will we know how to get there?
To chart where we are going, in the May/June issue of WORLD magazine, I asked Unitarian Universalists to tell me what they, what you believed should be our priorities as a faith community for the next four years. Several hundred people responded. Your answers were so rich and so helpful.
I want to hear from more of you. I'd like to invite every person here to go either to the Stewardship and Development booth in the display hall, or the cyber café and fill out, on line, a short questionnaire about our priorities. Or do it from your own computer at http://www.uua.org/futurevision/survey . It takes no more than 10 minutes. I completed it in about 5.
The results of this survey will shape the work of the staff and, I believe, the entire national leadership for the next four years. It will also shape the next UUA capital campaign.
We need the information from the survey, but some things are already clear to me.
We need to find ways to more effectively support the health and vitality of our congregations.
Let me give you just one example. Our current youth ministry, YRUU, does many things well, especially leadership training. But that impacts only the relatively few youth who get involved at the district and continental level. For a variety of reasons far too many of our congregations have avoided YRUU events.
And because so much of the work of the UUA's Youth Office has been organized around support for the YRUU structure, the result is that far too many of our congregations feel that their youth ministry is unsupported or under-supported by the Association.
In recognition of this reality, the UUA Board of Trustees asked Megan Dowdell, youth trustee on the UUA Board and me to convene a process to re-imagine our ministry to and with youth.
We now have that process in place. It will take two years. We want to begin by involving as many of our congregations as possible in this conversation. And so I have a request for you. This fall, when you receive an on-line survey about your congregation's ministry to and with youth...fill it out. And when you get the invitation to hold a congregational conversation about youth ministry...say yes. It will take a day of your time and it can help shape new understandings and perhaps new structures that will support more of our youth and more of our congregational youth programs.
I hope I can count on your support.
No issue continues to trouble the soul of America, both in our communities and in our congregations, more than the issue of race. Only last week, SCOTUS ruled that the state of Texas has continued, illegally, to exclude African American jurors from death penalty cases, despite the fact that more than half the inmates on death row are persons of color.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Selma march. 1965 was a time when Unitarian Universalism found its voice and stood with Martin Luther King in the fight for simple justice. At 25 Beacon St. we've erected a monument to the three martyrs of those days, including two Unitarian Universalists. We are proud of our witness in those days.
But it is still the case that the most frequently asked question I receive as I travel the country is how we can become more racially and culturally diverse. My response, always, is that the objective of finding a few more dark faces to make our white members feel better about themselves is not spiritually grounded. Nor will it be successful. Racial and cultural diversity will, I pray, come to Unitarian Universalism. But it will come as we become known as a faith community that strives to live our open hearted theology, and a faith community that is willing to be an ally in the struggle for justice. The color line, although it is far more complex than any of us knew in the 1960's is still a stain on the soul of this nation.
Skinner House Books, our in-house publisher of Unitarian Universalist materials, is at work on a book called "The Journey from Calgary ." It was at the Calgary General Assembly, in 1992, that this faith committed itself to becoming an anti-racist, multi-cultural community. The story of Journey from Calgary is filled with confident strides forward, including deep buy-in to this work on the part of our national leadership and our youth and young adult communities. It is also filled with stumbles, as we failed to embed these commitments in the vast majority of our congregations.
And the reality is that we should have come further, be further along the path toward wholeness.
This year we are introducing new resources to help with this work. The JUUST Change consultants will be working with some of our congregations to pilot a new approach. That approach will avoid guilt, it will build on the good work our congregations have already done on other oppressions and will help congregations find their next steps on the path.
Next year, a new Multi-Cultural Welcoming Congregation program will be available, modeled in many ways on the successful Welcoming Congregation program on BGLT issues which more than 450 of our congregations have now completed.
As is the case with youth ministry, our work here centers on support of the health and vitality of our congregations and their ministry.
Next fall, Charlie Clements of the UUSC  and I will lead a delegation to Africa. There are many objectives for the trip, but central for me will be learning more about the Truth and Reconciliation process which was created in South Africa and now are being used in other parts of that continent. Surely, if those societies, which long suffered virulent forms of racism and colonial exploitation...surely if those societies can find a path to reconciliation...surely, surely we in this nation can find a way to acknowledge the truth of our history and move toward health and healing.
We need to open the doors of Unitarian Universalism to those persons who yearn for a liberal religious home. The most important lesson we've learned from all of our experiments to stimulate the growth of this faith is that when we are willing to offer ourselves, individuals and families come to stand with us. But as the ministry of our congregations becomes more visible and effective, the real test will be how well we welcome the seekers that enter our sanctuaries. We know that most of our congregations receive more visitors in any given year than they have members. And most of these visitors have checked us out on the web. They know what we stand for and they don't come expecting Bible study...although I wish that more of our congregations offered a liberal religious education about the Bible.
It is not enough that our congregations are friendly, within the communities of folks who have already found our liberal way in religion. We're already friends with each other. But we need to find in our hearts that place which calls us to welcome and embrace the stranger. In our theology, each stranger is another opportunity to meet the divine, to see the face of God. We talk about radical hospitality. I'd be very willing to settle for "reasonable" hospitality, grounded in our theology.
And, finally, we need to become not only a respected voice but an effective voice for liberal religious values. Our witness for Marriage Equality showed us what we can do when we have grounding in both our theology and congregational practice, and when we are willing to commit our resources of energy and, yes, of money. Is Marriage Equality a unique justice issue for us? I say no. Unitarian Universalism is not a one issue faith.
In the face of the well organized and well funded dominance of the fundamentalist religious right in the public square, I believe that we are called to offer a liberal religious alternative. I am not willing, nor should you be, to cede the moral high ground to religious fundamentalists, of any faith tradition, who preach that there is only one way to be religious, only one scripture worthy of being followed, only one way to be a family, only one way to lead a good life.
There must be a liberal religious alternative. And, my friends, we're it.
When I spoke at the Riverside Church this May, on the anniversary of Dr. King's prophetic speech condemning the Viet Nam war, I tried to find a voice for our values that could be heard by all people of good will. (Video clip from worship service at Riverside Church is shown).
No one here would disagree that Unitarian Universalism has been a leader in comprehensive sexuality education. The "About Your Sexuality" program led the way in the 1970's. Now Our Whole Lives is used almost universally in our congregations. But have we been effective advocates in the wider world?
Could we not imagine a way to share our experience, to advocate for reality-based sexuality education to prevent a rigid "abstinence only" approach from being imposed on all of our children. I'm here to tell you that "just say no" didn't work all that well in the Garden of Eden and there is a growing body of evidence that shows that it is doing real harm to real lives, both in this country and especially in Africa. Is there not a crying need for a liberal religious voice that values real lived experience, and provides young people with the information and the skills to lead joyous, loving, responsible and safe lives? I say yes! As Patrick O'Neil said last night, if we don't use our pulpits for this, what are our pulpits for?
No faith community has advocated more faithfully in support of a woman's right to chose. We continue to defend the ramparts as Roe v. Wade comes increasingly under attack. But could we find a different starting point for the conversation. Might we not begin by saying what is true...that no woman, no family, wants an abortion. Might we not focus our witness and our work on reducing the number of abortions that are necessary? And might that approach make our message more available and persuasive to the many Americans in the movable middle? If we don't use our pulpits for this, what are our pulpits for?
We will be joined tomorrow by George Lakoff, the guru of liberal re-framing. I hope that he will help us find ways to express our values so that our voice is even more effective. We need a great deal of help with that.
But the fundamental question is not how to "spin" our point of view. These issues are fundamental. They are theological.
The theology of the fundamentalist right is based on fear and the belief that rules can save us. It is a theology of false certainty that builds walls around the Holy designed to keep people out. It is a theology of divisiveness that separates the saved from the damned. The practice of this theology can lead even to hatred.
Liberal religion offers a theology of love. Liberal theology opens the door to the Holy and celebrates the rich diversity of faith journeys. Our faith takes seriously the Gospel question, "Who is my neighbor" and strives constantly to expand who we mean when we answer that question. Our theology gives us not "dominion" over the earth, but makes us stewards of the gift of creation.
And our theology is not satisfied with a simple personal piety, but calls us to create the Beloved Community among us.
Where are we going? What are we called to do?
The word religion, at its root, means to reconcile. To bind together that which has been sundered . In that word there is hope for us all.
Let us reject and resist theologies of fear, theologies of divisiveness, theologies that lead to hatred.
As liberal religious people, let us offer our wounded world the hope of reconciliation. Let us be a religious people who stand on the side of love.
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