Facing a New Age
Though it takes a special kind of courage and concern to depart from the accepted ways of orthodoxy, our growth has been encouraging. Congregations are now found in over 1,000 communities in every state in the USA and every province of Canada. In addition, UU fellowships meet in at least 15 other countries around the world. In North America, the extension programs of the Department of Congregational, District and Extension Services have been at the heart of congregational growth and revitalization, including the formation of new congregations.
For the geographically isolated, there is the Church of the Larger Fellowship with an office, minister, and religious educator in Boston. CLF's mission is to provide a ministry to isolated religious liberals and to offer a spiritual home within the Unitarian Universalist movement. Its membership extends through more than sixty countries, a fellowship kept in touch by mail, e-mail, phone, fax, and CLF's monthly newsletter, Quest.
Unitarian Universalists have been notably unenthusiastic about proselytizing, but a new zeal for "telling our story" blossoms among us. Radio and television, and increasingly the internet, are used to present a liberal point of view on religion and public issues.
Any form of pressure to join a church is repugnant to us, but response to our informational efforts indicates that there are hundreds of thousands of potential Unitarian Universalists who are not in our congregations because they do not yet know that such a religious community exists.
Our new members repeatedly tell us of their regret at having gone so many years without discovering us. "We simply did not know that such a religion existed, and no one bothered to tell us," they say. We now sense our obligation to share more widely a knowledge of our history, our aims, our principles, and the basis of our spiritual life. More than ever before, the time is ripe for bringing together all who desire to advance the cause of freedom and human community through liberal religion.
Exciting new ideas, the experimental spirit, and wise planning and action have combined in recent years to give the profound traditions fresh relevance to the religious needs of our time.
John Buehrens, president of the UUA, recently wrote in the World, "[Our] significance comes from a vision implicit in our history and present practice. A vision of what Diana Eck calls 'engaged pluralism,' not mere tolerance or relativism. It's people of diverse background, ethnicity, belief, and spiritual practice deepening one another's lives through efforts at mutual understanding and service to the common good."
