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General Assembly 2015
General Assembly (GA) is the annual meeting of our Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). Attendees worship, witness, learn, connect, and make policy for the Association through democratic process. The theme for GA 2015 in Portland, OR (June 24-28) was “Building a New Way.” Selected highlights are below or see all the video, scripts and workshop materials at UUA GA Virtual 2015.
UU World also provided timely reports and articles with their GA coverage.
Opening Celebration & General Session I
An in-gathering hymn sing, followed by the opening session, banner parade, and worship. As we gathered together, we grounded and deepened in the gift of one another’s presence. We explored beauty, brokenness, forgiveness, and building anew through poetry, music, dance, and story.
Watch the video of the Opening Celebration.
Public Witness
UUA President Rev. Peter Morales says in his introduction: “Bearing witness means listening to and sitting with injustice, with another person’s struggle. It means opening our hearts and connecting on a soul-deep level, knowing that we are all interconnected. Today we are invited to listen to what Councilmember Julius and Elder James offer, and to bear witness to those truths. We will then engage in a collective ritual of honoring our Earth, connecting with our moral charge as people of faith and conscience, and making a spiritual commitment to new action.”
Watch the video on Public Witness.
Social Justice Statements: Statement of Conscience
As Unitarian Universalists, we embrace the reproductive justice framework, which espouses the human right to have children, not to have children, to parent the children one has in healthy environments and to safeguard bodily autonomy and to express one’s sexuality freely.
Read the 2015 Statement of Conscience on Reproductive Justice.
Social Justice Statements: 2015 Actions of Immediate Witness
The General Assembly passed an Action of Immediate Witness to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Adopted AIWs are intended to be used to advocate in your congregations and districts. While Actions of Immediate Witness carry the authority only of the General Assembly at which they are adopted, AIWs reflect considerable thought, collaboration, and commitment. Implementation of our adopted statements is everyone’s responsibility. Read the three revised AIWs:
Speaking Justice
How might we bring our own justice commitments into deeper conversation with our spiritual lives, and learn to speak our convictions in the language of our faith?
Watch the video Talk the Walk: Speaking Justice in the Language of Our Faith.
Ware Lecture by Dr. Cornel West
2015 Ware Lecturer Dr. Cornel West called for integrity, honesty, decency, and virtue above all else. “There are four questions every generation has to wrestle with,” said West, channeling twentieth-century intellectual W.E.B. DuBois. “How shall integrity face oppression? . . . What does honesty do in the face of deception? . . . What does decency do in the face of insult? . . . How does virtue meet brute force?”
Watch the video of the Cornel West Lecture.
Ware Lecture by Dr. Cornel West
2015 Ware Lecturer Dr. Cornel West called for integrity, honesty, decency, and virtue above all else. “There are four questions every generation has to wrestle with,” said West, channeling twentieth-century intellectual W.E.B. DuBois. “How shall integrity face oppression? . . . What does honesty do in the face of deception? . . . What does decency do in the face of insult? . . . How does virtue meet brute force?”
Watch the video of the Cornel West Lecture.
Closing Celebration: On Our Way!
This joyful worship sent us home from General Assembly (GA) with our toes tapping and our hearts glad! The Rev. Cecilia Kingman and Steven Ballesteros inspired and encouraged us, and music from the General Assembly Choir and Band bless us as we take GA home.
Watch the video of the Closing Celebration.
SPECIAL: Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution,1966
Read the full text of the 1966 Ware Lecture delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly held in Hollywood, Florida on May 18, 1966.
See also: Recommended Reading
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