Unitarian Universalist Faith Primer for Lay Leaders
Purpose of religion: to shape society’s values
The Unitarian legacy: God is one. Faith evolves through reason and ongoing revelation.
The Universalist legacy: God is love. Salvation by love is pre-existing, automatic and universal to
all of creation. We are agents of this love.
Purpose of UU: to expand the UU legacy and shape society into Beloved Community according to
religious liberal values.
What Unitarian Universalists believe:
1. The centrality of covenant as our way to…
2. Freely discern how best to love this world and…
3. Associate with other congregations and communities…
4. Ever conscious of the gifts and challenges of our cultural roots…
5. As we shape the world into Beloved Community according to religious liberal values.
Why “covenant” is central to Unitarian Universalism:
1. It names and operationalizes our values.
2. It engages individual belief systems and unites them in a shared purpose.
3. It binds us to the power of our history and to the potential of future UUs.
4. It is our nexus of accountability–either we make promises and keep them or we don’t and
this is what will decide if creation and we can be saved.
5. Making and keeping covenant is how we love.
The critical freedom of our Faith communities:
What makes us “free” faith communities isn’t that we all get to believe what we want. It’s that
each congregation is free to choose how to manifest love within its walls and how to advocate for
love outside its walls. This choice, made freely, and activated by covenant, is the deep theological
center of our faith communities. If a congregation is not actively engaged in discerning and
choosing how it will love the world, it is squandering this freedom. Every UU congregational
mission statement should be an answer to the question: “For the next 3-5 years how will we make
love more real in the world?”
Why “association” is fundamental to Unitarian Universalism:
1. Association is our covenant writ large - covenant gone viral. Our participation in the UUA is
the first big collective test of our capacity to make and keep promises beyond the confines
of our own congregation.
2. It places our community trust in mutually formed covenants that bind us to other
communities rather than in the power of a central authority.
3. Models how religious liberal values shape and support loving and just relationships
between diverse communities.
4. It is a major method of practicing inclusion–not by bringing “them” into our community but
by being mutual partners with others.
Revised 2014-09-08
Doug Zelinski, Clara Barton and Massachusetts Bay Districts of the UUA, dzelinski@uua.org
Why our cultural roots matter:
Beloved Community is not culture bound though its expressions can be. Most Unitarian
Universalist roots are embedded in a particular race and class. UUs are beginning to discern the
gifts grown from all our roots and worthy of nurturing. At the same time UUs are exploring how
Euro-American centrism can hinder being a full participant and partner in creating Beloved
Community and how to grow beyond that centrism.
Liberal Religious Values–The Five Smooth Stones of Religious Liberalism (adapted):
1. Revelation is not sealed. We are each expected to reflect on and humbly share the larger
truths that emerge from our own lived experiences.
2. Meaning is best made in a free and inclusive community. The purpose of existence and the
role of humankind in creation are best discerned by freely gathered people in open
communities unfettered by oppressions and orthodoxies.
3. Justice and Love are our moral obligations. Love and the justice that flows from love are
the priority values of UU and call us all to be prophets of the Beloved Community.
4. Good must be made real by our action. Love and justice increase through action. Worries,
plans, and debates are useful only to the degree that they result in action.
5. There is always reason for hope. We have neither the omniscience nor prescience to
declare anything in life as hopeless. Grace, in many human and extra-human forms,
happens and we actively make room for it to do so.
Adams' “unabridged” five smooth stones are explained in the essay "Guiding Principles for a
Free Faith" in On Being Human Religiously: Selected Essays in Religion and Society, Max
Stackhouse, ed. Beacon Press, 1976, pp. 12—20. While this book is out of print, some
congregations may own it and there are also copies available from the Internet.
Liberal religion has participated in this legacy of love:
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End slavery
Women’s vote
Humane treatment of the mentally ill
Humane treatment of war wounded
Animal rights
Depression-era social safety net
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Civil rights
Anti-war movement
Environmental protection
GLBT rights
Immigration rights
Responding to Fundamentalism
Summary of UU Fundamentals:
1. Freedom is the congregation choosing how to love the world (mission) and advance
Beloved Community.
2. Religious liberal values are defined and advocated.
3. Our Euro-American roots are acknowledged, their gifts valued and shortcomings
challenged.
4. Covenant is central; beliefs inform but do not dominate the covenant.
5. Association moves covenant into community.
6. God is one. Faith evolves through reason and ongoing revelation (Unitarianism).
7. God is Love. We are agents of a love universal to all of creation (Universalism).
Revised 2014-09-08
Doug Zelinski, Clara Barton and Massachusetts Bay Districts of the UUA, dzelinski@uua.org