The Sources We Draw From

Many Unitarian Universalists have an appreciation for the principles that member congregations of the UUA have covenanted to in the Association's bylaws. Probably a significantly smaller portion know that our Seven Principles are located in the bylaws or know what comes next in the bylaws - the statement of the sources of our movement - or, more precisely, the sources of the values of our movement:

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
• Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

Modern humans seem to like the short form of everything, exploding with incomprehensible acronyms that limit access to an in-group. Similarly, we take the full negotiated wording of our covenanted principles, approved by vote and affirmed by ongoing membership in the association, and reduce it to a list of phrases. Ask someone who remembers what our seven principles are, and you are likely to get something like this:

• Inherent worth and dignity
• Compassion
• Acceptance of others
• Free and responsible search
• Right of conscience
• Peace
• Interdependent web

Or maybe you will get something like this:

• Inherent worth and dignity
• Justice
• Encouragement to spiritual growth
• Search for truth
• Democratic process
• World community
• Interdependent web

And maybe it's good that we can see the principles that our congregations covenant to affirm and promote from such divergent perspectives. We don't necessarily disagree with anyone else's summary. It is a matter of focus.

But what about the sources of our living tradition? or, more precisely, the sources we draw from. That is, this is not a statement of historical genealogy. It is not a tracing of genetic lineage, of DNA. Rather, these are the wellsprings from which we irrigate our vineyards, the cups from which we wet our parched mouths.

I have sometimes heard our sources summarized as a list of nouns, more or less like this:

• Self ( or Experience)
• Prophets (or Prophecy)
• World religions
• Judaism
• Christianity
• Humanism
• Paganism

If we summarize in this way have we said something different about who we are and who we aspire to be than if we list our sources according to the stated action value to be gleaned from each of the nouns? According to the values written into the statement of sources in the Association's bylaws, we intend and attempt to:

• Renew our spirits
• Confront evil with justice, compassion, love
• Live ethically
• Love our neighbors as ourselves
• Be guided by reason
• Avoid making idols of ways of thinking, being, and doing
• Celebrate life
• Live in harmony with nature

It is the rare person who is going to remember the text of our sources as stated in the bylaws. Certainly by culture and, I believe, also by nature as humans, we abbreviate. But every abbreviation originates in someone's choice. What do we choose? Do we choose to think of ourselves in terms of a genealogy of movements that birthed or nurtured our values? Do we list the "begats" of our spiritual heritage and set up little idols to each ancestor? Do we think of ourselves as some mixture of stated religions or as one, but with first cousins we love in the others? Or do we choose to make the genealogy into endnotes, focusing, instead, on the action plan unambiguously embodied in our official statement of sources?

To put it into the language of one struggle for the soul of Christianity: do we want a religion about Jesus or the religion of Jesus? That is, do we want to worship our ancestors or choose to take the best parts of their approaches as the basis for a coherent, values-laden action plan?

We irrigate the fields not by worshiping the water but by doing something with the water.