Here’s an idea. UUs should start doing regular love feasts.

“Love feasts”—also called “agape feasts“—are a simple sharing of food and drink as a celebration of community.1 They are an ancient tradition from the Early Church that are sometimes connected to communion, sometimes not.

My own experience of love feasts comes from my college fraternity. I was a member of a houseless Christian service fraternity that celebrated monthly love feasts. They were well attended—and usually interrupted by side splitting laughter.

Here’s how they worked. It was a stripped down version. To celebrate we needed four things.

1. A room
2. A large loaf of bread
3. A cup of water
4. Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and goats2

We’d stand in a circle, and the president would read the passage from Matthew. The water and bread would make their way around the circle. Sometimes we’d each say a word or two about where we were in our lives; other times it would go around in silence.

The key thing was how we received the bread and the water. The person whose turn it was would hold the cup of water. Then the person who had just received would tear off a piece of bread, dip it in the water, and put in their brother’s mouth.

It was very important that it be a large loaf of bread because the pieces we would tear off were usually just a little too big to chew—but big enough to stuff in someone’s mouth.

Love feasts bound us together as a community. Click to continue reading “A ritual to widen, deepen UU identity: Love feasts”

1. Sorry to disappoint if you were expecting something saucier. [↩]
2. The bit about the goats often devolved into speculations about what went on in pledges’ dorm rooms. [↩]

I want to lay out the perspective on congregational membership that I’ve been using in my work as a membership director in a large UU congregation over the last year or so. Maybe this can add to the conversation about the meaning and scope of UU identity and the importance of initiation rituals in a congregational context.

All our prospective members are invited to take a half day workshop that gives them a chance to get to know some other new folks, learn about Unitarian Universalism, and understand the nuts and bolts of how the congregation works.1

As part of this workshop I explain what membership means. I present it as a public, symbolic, and financial commitment to UU values, the values of the congregation, and the individuals who are a part of the congregation. If they want to stand up for those values and do so with the people in our congregation who are also about that, then they should think about joining when the time is right. I present pledging as a monetary commitment to the congregation and its values with few details about the budget (though this often comes up as questions).2

Signing the membership book is a relativel unimportant part of the joining process compared to the main event, a ritual during worship. Click to continue reading “What congregational membership means”

1. I’d say at least 80% of our new members take this class. Most who don’t have been members of UU congregations previously. [↩]
2. 90% of our members pledge and most of the rest contribute financially in other ways. About two-thirds of the congregation are formal members who have signed the book. Of the financially contributing non-members–who we call “friends”—about half pledge. [↩]

Philocrites makes a great point. In the Christian tradition, a person’s identification as a Christian is traditionally marked by a baptism. It is a public and symbolic ritual celebrated with a gathered community.

Which is to say it is not a private or legal ritual, even when it is required for formal, legal membership in a congregation. Before it is anything else, it is and initiation ritual commanded by God.

Persons who are already baptized can then celebrate communion, a ritual hearkening back to Christ’s death. Among other things, it symbolizes continuing identification as a Christian.

And other religious traditions have their own rituals that hold similar symbolic importance.

As Philocrites points out, as a movement we have only the merest hint of a initiation ritual—signing the membership book.

To widen and deepen UU identity, we need both a movement-wide initiation ritual, rituals marking congregational membership, and rituals marking and deepening continuing identification with Unitarian Universalism.

Pretend there are no individual members of individual UU congregations. How would the movement go about being the movement?

First, I love that the discussion is still hot (as in cool, not as in angry). Please accept this post (and all others) in this spirit.

I want to say more when I have more time, but I want to make some clarifications about my last post.

1. In saying that the entire movement depends on what I called “congregational” UUs, I was making what I feel to be a factually true statement about the real situation on the ground. Philocrites does a nice job of laying out the legalities of why this is so.

2. My descriptions of other kinds of UUs—cultural, theoretical, conference, and connectional—was also meant to be descriptive, not proscriptive.

I’ll also add this:

3. I’m on the staff of a large congregation as its membership director. I was a member for six years before joining the staff.

4. I am passionate about my job because I believe in this movement and because I noticed (long before I joined staff) that the movement depended, in fact, on #1.

5. I ask our new members to understand their choice to join our congregation as a public and symbolic commitment to the movement, the mission of our congregation, and the individuals in this congregation.

More later. Chutney out.

Without members of actual congregations, Unitarian Universalism would die. Without members of national UU organizations (like C*UUYAN, to pick a timely example), Unitarian Universalism will be just fine, if somewhat more sedentary in lifestyle.

Let’s lay it all out on the table.1 The movement known as Unitarian Universalism is kept alive by actual people who are actual members of actual congregations. Other facets of the movement contribute to its vitality in their own ways, but their importance pales in comparison to actual members of actual congregations. Let’s call them “congregational Unitarian Universalists.”2

It’s time we start speaking of cultural UUs along the lines of what folks mean by cultural Jews. Example: Jon Stewart’s relationship to Judaism. These are the folks who identify as UU but who do not attend services. Example: graduates of child and youth RE who’ve never returned to congregational life.

Then there are “theoretical Unitarian Universalists.” They’re UUs in the same way I’m an anarchist—I like the idea of it but I have no intention of ever doing anything about it.

There are also “conference UUs.” Example: GA junkies. I’ve picked up a vibe, and I know I’m not the only one, that many conference UUs do not like congregations, or even despise them. Dues-paying members of congregations have every right to resent those conferencers’ hijacking the very movement that their day-to-day commitment to membership sustains.

Let’s throw in “connectional” UUs while we’re at it. These are the folks who are the ligaments and sinews that bind individual congregations to one another, and congregational UUs to others outside their particular congregations. Example: OWL trainers. If “conference UUs” has a sour flavor to it, then “connectional UUs” is more tasty.

All these types of UUs depend on one another, but they especially depend on congregational UUs. If connectional UUs are the ligaments, congregational UUs are the bones.3

Of course folks can be more than one kind of UU simultaneously. But the vast majority of congregational UUs have no connection to these extra-congregational UUs. So what? It’s a small loss compared to the loss extra-congregational UUs choose to experience when they don’t participate in congregational life. Yes, it’s a choice. And, yes, it’s a loss.

Congregations are not perfect, and neither are congregational UUs. But there is so much good that comes from congregational life, things that cannot be matched by camps and conferences and district meetings.

Spirituality outside chosen bonds of like-spirited human communities—outside things like congregations—eventually becomes vapid. The challenges of face-to-face spiritual community are eventually necessary for real live spiritual growth no matter our age or stage. If real live spiritual growth is going to happen anywhere in our movement, it’s got to happen in congregations first.

1. This post is my belated response to the great discussion Philocrites has started. I’ve linked to specific comments as much as possible. [↩]
2. I don’t mean this to have any connection to the “congregational” in “congregational polity.” [↩]
3. And I’ll bet most connectional UUs are also congregationals. [↩]