Unitarian Universalist Association
The Unitarian Universalist Association ( UUA , German: Unitarian Universalist Association ) is a liberal religious community in the United States , which was formed in 1961 from the merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America . The UUA is based on Beacon Street in Boston , Massachusetts . The UUA consists of 20 districts, 1,042 congregations and 157,920 members and 1,623 preachers. The current President of the UUA is Peter Morales.
The Unitarian Universalist Association is a member of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists .
history
The North American Unitarian Universalists emerged in 1961 from the merger of the North American Unitarians with the Universalists . Talks about a union between the two churches already existed at the end of the 19th century. The two churches were particularly close in their liberal positioning. Even if the North American Unitarian universalists no longer see themselves as explicitly Christian, both the North American Unitarians and the universalists were founded as genuinely Christian churches in the 19th century. Both churches emerged in the context of North American Protestantism. They were shaped by the idea of the Enlightenment as well as by influences from Pietism , Puritanism and the Anabaptist movement . The first universalist church in North America was organized in Gloucester , Massachusetts in 1779 . The first Unitarian congregation followed in 1786, when the majority of the previously Anglican congregation of the King's Chapel in Boston turned to Unitarianism, rejecting the idea of the Trinity . In 1802 the first Puritan congregation founded by the Pilgrim Fathers in America, the First Parish Church in Plymouth, also became Unitarian. In 1825 the American Unitarian Association was founded as the umbrella organization for North American Unitarians. In 1866, the Universalist General Convention was founded as the umbrella organization for North American universalists. The latter was renamed Universalist Church in America in 1942 .
Traditionally the Unitarians stand theologically for the rejection of the idea of a Trinity of God; they see God as one and not as three persons (hence unitas ≈ one God). Universalism stands for the general reconciliation (apocatastasis) and accordingly rejected ideas of an eternal damnation of man. Under the influence of transcendentalism , however, Unitarians and universalists gradually opened up to other religious views from the end of the 19th century, without, however, completely abandoning the Christian basis. The American Unitarian universalists can today be understood as syncretistic in this sense . The Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship (UUCF) was founded as early as 1945 to look after the Christians among the North American Unitarian universalists . The Universalist Buddhist Fellowship (UUBF) was founded at the beginning of the 1990s for the collection of Unitarian universalistic Buddhists . Both operate within the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). Outside of the UUA, communities such as the Christian Universalist Association (CUA), the Unitarian Christian Conference USA (UCC) and the Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA) have established themselves in recent years , which re-establish the Christian basis of universalism and unitarianism emphasize more. Until 2002, the Unitarian-Universalist churches in Canada were also looked after by the UUA; in the meantime this task has been taken over entirely by the Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC).
In the 1990s the UUA initiated a Welcoming Congregation Program (German Inviting Congregation Program ) to publicly express that homosexuals , bisexuals and transgender ( LGBT ) are also welcome in the UUA congregations.
Principles
The UUA has no binding and central statement of faith for its members. In this sense, its members are free to go their own spiritual and religious path. Nevertheless, the UUA under the name does Principles and Purposes (German principles and purposes given) a program reflect the key aspects of the Unitarian Universalist faith understanding and to explicitly address also members of non-Christian ideas. Central points are, for example, the innate dignity of the human being, standing up for peace, freedom and justice, mutual acceptance and support for spiritual growth as well as standing up for a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The rejection of the Trinity is no longer there.
President of the UUA
- Dana McLean Greeley 1961
- Robert West 1969
- Paul Carnes 1977
- Eugene Pickett 1979
- William Schulz 1985
- John Buehrens 1993
- William Sinkford 2001
- Peter Morales 2009
- Susan Frederick-Gray 2017
Web links
- Official site of the Unitarian Universalist Association
- Official site of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship
Individual evidence
- ↑ UUA: Statistics ( Memento of the original from June 3, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The Welcoming Congregation Program. Unitarian Universalist Association, accessed December 27, 2013 .
