Chalicechick reminds us that, though the Principles & Purposes are not a creed, they are treated as one by most UUs.  If she’s right about that, those of us who teach new member classes are in the difficult position of needing to teach newcomers about a creed that’s not a creed.

How should we teach them?  Do we ignore them entirely, letting our silence pass comment on their importance?  Do we have students them read them out loud like a creed?  Do we lead them in a discussion of how the P&P sit with each of them individually?

What I do in our membership class—and this was passed down to me—is the “P&P Death Match of Death.” (The name, however, is mine.)  I have envelopes with cut up copies of the P&P inside.  I divide the class into teams and see who can put together the P&P first, without reference to a copy of the real thing.  When they think they’re done, I pass out wallet cards of the P&P for the teams to check themselves against.  The team that gets the most right first gets rainbow bookmarks of the P&P.  (I then lay a stack of the bookmarks on the table and announce in a stage whisper that the losing teams can take one too as long as they don’t let the winners know about it.)

The game itself—with its slice-and-dice treatment of the P&P—trivializes the principles, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.  The passing out of professionally printed wallet cards and bookmarks sends the opposite message—these are important enough that we have multiple formats for people to carry around with them.  It’s interesting to see what new principles the teams can come up with by mismatching the cut up phrases.  Sometimes they like their version of a principle more than the official version.  When it’s all said and done, I think they’ve learned enough about the P&P to be considered sufficiently educated new UUs.

An exercise I’d like to see with veteran UUs—and Chalicechick’s commenter PG reminds me of this from my days working with ethicists—is some sort of exercise that gets people to talk about contradictions and conflicts of interest between the different principles.  The assumption that they all completely harmonize lays part of the foundation for them to be treated as a creed.  Getting people to look at how the principles don’t always get along with each other would both get rid of some of the naiveté about the principles and go some way toward a greater appreciation of the depths contained in them.