top of page
Search

General (Assembly) Reflections, Rev. Josh Pawelek, July 20, 2025

ree

It’s been over a month since more than 3,000 Unitarian Universalists from nearly 600 congregations, 48 states and a number of countries gathered in Baltimore (and online) for the 63rd Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) General Assembly (GA). It’s become my July custom to share my GA experience with you. It felt extremely important to do this in 2023 and 2024 because the UUA was debating significant changes to Article 2 of its bylaws, specifically replacing the seven UU principles with six UU values; and replacing the six sources of our living tradition with a more general statement entitled “Inspirations.” It was a contentious and difficult, multi-year debate. Though the vote at the 2024 General Assembly solidified this change, I remind us our congregation will use both the principles and the values moving forward. Our Policy Board has convened a Task Force to propose best practices for how to do this. We’ll be hearing more from them in the fall.

            Interestingly, though speakers and visual displays referenced the new values frequently, there were also regular references to the principles. When one prominent guest speaker quoted the first principle, “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” there was raucous applause. I am not sure what to do with this, other than to simply note that the principles still seem deeply embedded in the spiritual life and culture of GA. I’m sure this is even more true in local congregations. I imagine it will take time for the new values to become similarly embedded in the spiritual life and culture of our congregations.

            This easy mixing of principles and values speaks to my main observation of this year’s GA: no significant controversy. In fact, there was significant unity. We were united in our common concerns, anxieties and fears about the country’s authoritarian drift in general, and the Trump administration’s authoritarian policies and tactics specifically. Many of our Los Angeles area UU kin shared accounts of the impact of the White House sending federal troops to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in their city. And on the opening day of GA, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in US v. Skrmetti, upholding a lower court's ruling that a Tennessee law banning gender affirming care for minors does not violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution's 14th amendment. Though anticipated, this was a major and painful setback to transgender people and all those who love and support transgender people. The pain, the anger, the disenchantment with Los Angelas and Skrmetti in particular were palpable in Baltimore. It fed our sense of unity. It also continually gave rise to a unified sense of hope, commitment and a resolve to fight for a more fair, welcoming, inclusive, loving, and just United States.

            If you were a GA newbie, you might feel like you’d gone back in time a few years. This is because masks were required. You may remember that the Biden administration terminated the national Covid 19 Emergency Declaration in 2023. In response to various public health trends following that decision, the 2024 GA passed a resolution entitled "Centering Love Amidst the Ongoing Covid 19 Pandemic." 1] This resolution invites us to do work we haven’t fully done as a congregation: communally examine our experience of the pandemic, what we learned about welcoming and taking care of our most vulnerable members and friends, and how we can continue those practices now and in the future. It urges UU congregations to foster a mask-affirming culture. It says “our … proclamations of love and justice call us to confront the ongoing disregard for those most vulnerable in our world and meet it with liberating counter-cultural norms in our communities.” The GA culture is a mask-affirming culture.

            GA is also a music-affirming culture. The music is always phenomenal. Those of you who were able to watch the GA Sunday morning service got a taste of it. I heard six or seven songs during the week that I want to explore with our Music Director, Mary Bopp, and hopefully teach them to you in the coming months. But that’s just the tip of the musical iceberg. There’s big music news: The UUA is publishing a new hymnal called Sing Out Love.[2] Sign of the technological times: Sing Out Love is an online, digital hymnal. Congregations purchase subscriptions which permit them to download sheet music, print it, share it on the screen, broadcast it, record it, and archive the recordings. It will include a significant number of the hymns from our current hymnals as well as lots of new music. Because it is online, new music can continually be added. For a congregation our size, the subscription costs $360/year.

            I am so excited for new music! Singing the Living Tradition—the grey hymnal—was published last century. It’s 35 years old. Singing the Journey—the teal book supplement to Singing the Living Tradition—just celebrated its 20th birthday. Though we love some of these hymns and will continue singing them, we’ve been repeating them for decades. That’s not how art and creativity work. Just like we have new visual art on our walls every season (thank you Carolyn Emerson), we should be singing new songs every year. Music is a central feature of our worship life, a boon to our collective spiritual experience. While we absolutely should continue singing our beloved favorites, we also need new and uniquely Unitarian Universalist music that responds to the current moment. I hope and trust that’s what we’ll get from Sing Out Love.

            Another aspect of GA I have come to love over the years is the wide diversity of worship services. I love to hear colleagues preach, to witness how they craft liturgies, how they incorporate story, video, sacred dance, and music, and how they collaborate. I attended a Juneteenth service led by the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee, FL. I attended an earth-based service led by the Covenant of UU Pagans at which an apparently unplanned spiral dance took place with over 500 people. The U/U Global Network led worship with participants from India, Hungary, England and Canada. (By the way, anytime anyone from Canada introduced themselves as Canadian, the standing ovation was immediate and sustained. Lots of sympathy for Canadians.)

            One could spend all their GA time in workshops, worship, lectures, the exhibition hall (so massive I can never visit every booth) or exploring the host city. But there is also the actual business of the GA delegates. I want to tell you briefly about three Actions of Immediate Witness and one Congregational Study Action Issue the delegates passed with strong majorities. Actions of Immediate Witness (AIWs) are responses to significant developments in the world that necessitate immediate engagement among UU member congregations and groups.[3] These statements do not direct the UUA to take specific actions. Rather, they express the conscience of the GA delegates and give guidance to congregations for pursuing engagement. The three AIWs are not surprising. They mirror concerns, anxieties, fears and hopes we typically express here.

            First, “We Declare and Affirm: Immigrants [Are People Who] Have Inherent Worth and Inalienable Rights.”[4] This statement grounds our support for immigrants in our affirmation of the “the sacredness of every human being and our shared humanity across lines of culture, experience, and theology.” Further, “Our UU values affirm that justice demands fairness and equal protection [for] all. Due process – a cornerstone of democracy – guarantees that no one is deprived of life, liberty, or property without a fair hearing. When immigrants are denied these rights, we are called to respond with moral clarity and courageous action.” The statement then describes the current crisis facing immigrant communities in the United States. And it outlines a set of actions UU individuals and congregations can take, including education, advocacy, public witness, fundraising and partnering with immigrant rights groups.

            Second, “Defending LGBTIQ Freedom Amid Funding Cris[e]s: A Call for Global Solidarity.”[5] This AIW refers to the UU principles for its theological grounding. “Our Unitarian Universalist principles affirm the dignity of every person, justice and compassion in human relations, and the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” It adds: “Our UU faith calls us to recognize that all bodies are sacred, and that each person is endowed with the divine gifts of agency, conscience, and self-determination, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.” It describes the global crisis in funding for LGBTIQ people and communities, spurred not only by US cuts to both USAID and domestic programs, but also cuts by other nations, corporations and private donors amounting to more than $100 million worldwide this year. It names countries like Uganda, Myanmar, Malawi, Ukraine, and the United States where cuts have already caused severe harm. It outlines opportunities individuals and congregations can take in terms of learning, advocacy, organizing and public witness.

            Third, “Faithful Defiance of Authoritarianism: Reaffirming Our Covenants for Democracy and Freedom.” There are multiple grounding sources for this statement, but I love that it begins with a reference to the “the flaming chalice, the living symbol of contemporary Unitarian Universalism, [which] recalls the compassion and strength needed to aid Jewish refugees on the eve of World War II, and has come to represent helpfulness, sacrifice, and enduring faith in action.”[6] Inspired by this history, the statement calls upon the UUA, member congregations, clergy and laypeople … to “cast off the cloak of isolation and transcend our differences—both within and beyond ourselves—to defend the guarantees of just law, constitutional integrity, equal justice, meaningful separation of powers, due process, and the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly.” It urges us to “work actively with leaders of other faith traditions to develop common strategies, events, actions, and messaging to bring a strong multi-faith presence that promotes our common values, counters the autocratic actions and messages of elected leaders, helps build a powerful pro-democracy movement, and guides us to a common dream where all can thrive.”

            Finally, the delegates adopted a Congregational Study Action Issue (CSAI) entitled “Abolition, Transformation, and Faith Formation."[7] CSAIs are different from AIWs in that, when adopted, they inaugurate three years of congregational study before the GA passes further resolutions or calls for any actions. This statement defines abolition as “a holistic approach to systemic social change that includes, but is not limited to: the abolition of slavery; replacing systems and cultures of violence, coercion and control with transformative justice and relational practices; and dismantling the prison-industrial complex as we now know it. It requires the transformation of our society and the replacement of our current public theologies of retributive justice and violence.” It lists a series of questions for congregational study and reflection, followed by a list of possible congregational or regional actions to help further explore the topic.

Imara Jones
Imara Jones

            I would be remiss if I did not mention Imara Jones’ Ware Lecture.[8] The Ware Lecture is a longstanding GA tradition dating back to 1922. Past lecturers include Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman, Mary Oliver, Stacey Abrams, Kurt Vonnegut, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Krista Tippet, and Maria Hinajosa. Imara Jones is the creator of TransLash[9] Media, a cross-platform journalism, personal storytelling and narrative project, which produces content to shift the current culture of hostility towards transgender people in the US. She spoke about the reality that across the planet, and certainly in the United States, transgender people are inevitably among the first targets of authoritarian and fascist regimes. She said (and I am paraphrasing) “if you can’t understand the attacks on transgender people and communities across the country as the vanguard of fascism, I don’t know what to tell you.” She spoke at length about the Heritage Foundation and its decade-long effort to build right-wing political power using misinformation about transgender people as a wedge to shape public opinion. She said if you find yourself talking with anyone on any side of the political spectrum about bathrooms, athletes, grooming, pronouns – any of the hot button issues related to trans people – know that these are not the conversations transgender people want you to have. These are the conversations the Heritage Foundation wants you to have. Please do not take the bait.

At some point we’ll host a screening of Ms. Jones’ lecture here. It was a highlight for me, one of those moments at GA when our common concern, anxiety and fear transformed into a common hope, commitment and resolve.

These are my GA reflections.

Amen and blessed be.


[1] The Action of Immediate Witness regarding Covid Care is at: https://www.uua.org/action/statements/centering-love-amidst-ongoing-impact-covid-19. I also recommend reading (or re-reading) the text to the 2024 General Assembly business resolution, “Embracing Transgender, Nonbinary, Intersex and Gender Diverse People is a Fundamental Expression of UU Religious Values” at:

[3] Learn more about AIWs here: https://www.uua.org/action/process/aiw.

[8] Learn about Imara Jones and the Ware Lecture at https://www.uua.org/ga/program/highlights/ware-lecture.

Comments

Commenting on this post isn't available anymore. Contact the site owner for more info.
bottom of page