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Notes from GA 2003
By Rev. Russ Savage:
I've been to about a dozen General Assemblies, and this was definitely the biggest ever. Held in Boston, it was a short trip for many Unitarian Universalists, so they crowded in as expected. During the opening celebration on Thursday evening at the Hynes Convention Center, Donald and Alex Whisenhunt carried the FUSS banner - recently made for us by Peg Foley. Toward the end of the evening, the secretary announced preliminary registration figures of more than 7,100 delegates from over 800 congregations. Later on, someone recalled a "May Meeting" of the American Unitarian Association in the late 1950s (before merger with the Universalists) at which all the delegates had attended a reception in a room on the second floor of UUA headquarters at 25 Beacon Street.
This time it took a convention center to hold them all, and even that wasn't big enough for the Sunday morning Service of the Living Tradition. It was held across town at the Fleet Center. UUA president Bill Sinkford reported later in the day at a plenary session that they had counted 8,634 people at the service, and the collection - which goes to support ministerial students and retired ministers in need -topped $171,000.
The delegates adopted a Statement of Conscience on Economic Globalization, the topic selected for congregational study at GA two years ago. After hearing speeches in support of seven different Study/Action Issues, they voted to select Criminal Justice and Prison Reform. Advance study materials were available by the next day. UU congregations will be urged to study and discuss this topic over the coming two years, working to develop a Statement of Conscience that will be voted on at the 2005 General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas.
I attended a number of interesting and useful workshops at the GA and the Ministers' Days which preceded it. In a Q&A session with the ministers, president Bill Sinkford said the UUA is embarking on three themes for emphasis in its public witness. The three themes are family matters, including issues of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender persons, freedom to marry, and issues about children; the role of religion in society, including the separation of church and state and matters such as the controversy of the Pledge of Allegiance; and racial justice, including racial identity issues and our need to confess that some of our racial justice programs have not worked.
At the Ware Lecture on Sunday evening, NAACP chairman Julian Bond delivered a stirring message. Harking back to his early days of lunch-counter sit-ins in the 1960s, he recounted progress in civil rights but noted the need for more work. His closing words were something like this: "When I went to work, there were five active workers for every retiree. They had names like William, Henry, John, Edward, and George. I am going to retire soon, and some of you are, too. When we retire there will be three active workers for every retiree. They will have names like Jose and Maria and Tirgut. If we know what is good for us, we had better see to it that Jose and Maria and Tirgut get a good education!"
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