A Blue Dog with a Blue Nose

OK, I am able to comprehend that Kent Conrad, the only Unitarian Universalist serving in the US Senate, differs from me on the question of the public option in the health care reform debate.  It is not a matter of faith, after all.

But why on earth does a Unitarian Universalist vote $50 million for abstinence-only sexuality education programs in an amendment proposed by Orrin Hatch (R-Mormon)?  This really creeps me out.  I thought that it was a matter of faith to us that we told our kids the truth and gave them real information.

UUMA Politics -- 1000+ members & 3 hour annual business meeting

The UUMA is an organization of over 1000 people, with an volunteer board.  The organization meets for business once in a year in a business meeting that lasts a couple of hours in a hotel ballroom.  The members of the organization pay it fitful attention for 362 days a year.

The Exec is going to make proposals for how to go forward on a range of issues. They are going to publish them, and few people are going to read them.  But organizational democracy depends on people reading them and preparing their response.

The Exec this year did so for a dues increase and hiring an Executive Director.

When the organization gets to the business meeting, the proposals are pretty well set; there will be no opportunity for extended discussion and devising new proposals on the fly.  Really, there are only two alternatives available if you don't like the proposal presented by the Exec.  (1) Urge a "No" vote -- and have your arguments ready (2) Be ready with some amendments or substitutes that you try to pass.  Those could include delaying implementation, restricting implementation, and calling for further clarification on certain parts until more study has been done.

If you just think that the proposal is half-baked, and needs more consideration, voting "no" sends it back for more work.

Preparing a strategy for influencing the decision of a 1000 member organization operating in a 2-3 hour business meeting is not "bringing boxing gloves"; it is appropriate self-differentiation and self-assertion.

The Exec's proposal for a dues increase and an Executive Director passed.  Some people registered their disagreement but did not have strategy and tactics ready to be effective in the situation of decision-making process of the organization.  (It seemed to me that those opposed had the tactics appropriate to a small group decision making process -- they announced that they had concerns about the proposal and were opposed to it and they assumed that the process would be extended long enough for the whole group to explore their concerns and devise a compromise.)  Predictably, they lost, for which they blame the UUMA Exec for a bad process.

Since then, the Exec has hired an ED.  There are questions about the process of that choice, but was it contrary to the instructions given by the organization through the proposal that passed?  I don't know; that's a good question.  Someone could look into that.  But the next point of decision will be the next business meeting.   Members of the organization can give further instruction to the Exec on how to move from an Acting ED to a permanent ED at the next business meeting, if they come prepared to do so.  In the meantime, figuring out how to tell whether the ED is doing a good job or not is much more important. 

The UUMA is going to grow into a larger and larger organization.  It will have subgroups with different interests, and maybe even competing interests and concerns.  Counting on an Exec is move us along by somehow reconciling and balancing all these interests and concerns through their goodwill and pastoral skills is childish and dependent.  

And after having our congregants project that kind of parental authority onto us all year ("please take care of me, I am not happy with the way the church is going and feel sad and lonely.") it is perhaps tempting to do the same to the UUMA Exec.  

But democracy in an organization requires work and preparation, not only from the leadership but from the rank and file.

End of Life Issues

End of Life issues have become politically hot again. Last time, it was Terri Schiavo's sad case. This time it is Section 1322 of one of the Health Care Reform bills that permits doctors to bill Medicare once every five years for a consultation with a patient on end of life issues, including living wills, durable powers of attorney, dnr orders etc. Much of this discussion is outright lies and opportunism, willfully leaping from that relatively prosaic issue to the issues of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

But there is a religious dimension to these discussions. Some Pentecostalists believe that to discuss end of life issues at all is to deny the power of God to work a miracle and heal even the most mortally ill person. And, according to their faith, God does not arbitrarily heal some and allow most to die, but is guided by the purity of the faith of those praying for the miracle. To entertain the slightest doubt that God can and will save your loved one from death demonstrates the lack of faith that condemns your loved one to death. For the believer who prays by the bed of a loved one approaching death, you still can hope for a full complete and miraculous recovery IF you are successful in pushing out of your mind any thought that death is inevitable, or is a welcome relief to suffering, or even the working of God's will.

Within such a faith construct, to have a matter-of-fact discussion of end of life issues is to renounce a vital element of one's faith.

I was confronted with faith while working as a hospital chaplain in Dallas, Texas, among both African American and Anglo Protestants. Less so among Roman Catholics.

What struck me though was how things changed once the patient died. "Thy will be done." As much as believers fervently prayed for a miracle before death, they accepted that God had not chosen to save their loved one at the moment of death. "Thy Will Be Done." "God wanted her more than we did." etc.

Such a faith stance is not held by every Pentecostalist, of course. Who knows how many? But I think enough do that any discussion of end of life issues will always strike a nerve, and generate a reaction, which can be picked up on by opportunistic organizers.

People are entitled to their religious views; they just cannot expect that the state will institutionalize their views.

Going Away

I am heading out of country for a couple of weeks. I will not be accepting comments on this blog starting tonight until I come back. I may post a little, but probably not, and certainly not about UUA politics.

Factions Create Democracy

I have called for the creation of continuing groups of UU's to recruit candidates for District offices and Board Trustees: factions. I think that they are what we need to increase democracy in the UUA. I think that they are a better way than focusing our democratic energy into highly symbolic campaigns for the UUA President and Spokesmodel.

Factions create policy alternatives, through a process of competition with others and criticism of existing decisions. Policy alternatives create choices and choices create interest.

Factions orient voters to the overall situation. What I hear is that most UU's think that there are really just two factions: the insiders and the outsiders, and you can't tell one from the other. Actually, I would suspect that there are several groupings of people who have different priorities for the UUA. It would help everyone participate if we were to know who saw each other as allies, and rivals. Most of us use party affiliation as a tool for figuring who's who and what's what in politics. Once you get beyond a small town in which everyone knows each other, people need to know the teams before they can connect to the politics of a community.

Factions create independent non-official voices. Right now, almost all of the media content about Unitarian Universalism comes from official sources. People like blogs because they are independent voices from observers' points of view. But blogs are individual and personal and are not instruments for getting enough power to make something happen. If there is anyone out there who thinks that I make sense, what are you going to do to make what we agree on happen? Nominate me for UUA office? Not a good idea.

Many people are repelled by the state of party politics in the USA, and would wonder why we would want that in the UUA. I have not a shred of fear that UU's would rapidly form themselves into two factions that engage in that level of conflict. My guess is that for every person that aligned with a faction, there would as many that aligned with none and as many who joined them all. Remember we are the religious home of people who seriously describe

themselves as Humanist-Christian-Pagans, Rational Mystics, Christian Atheists and Eco-Feminist Buddhist Jews. Over identification with a group is not our problem. Factions would operate less like gangs, and more like think-tanks.

I think a good model is the religiously identified UU groups. They represent points of view, create material, enrich our theological discussions and make it possible to have panel presentations. They have not gone to war with each other.

Factions break down the insider-outsider dichotomy. I don't think that there is an inner club that is motivated by their particular self-interest. (There was one at one time, when Unitarianism was a Boston Yankee institution, but those days are gone.) There are, of course, insiders, in that there is a group of people who are experienced and knowledgeable about the institutions at the core of UUism. And there are outsiders, people who have not been interested in the past and are just getting involved. And yes, race and class and ethnicity work to keep people who want to be insiders (and some who have been around long enough to be insiders) on the outside, which we work on. But a faction, united around a common goal, is an alliance between some insiders and some outsiders.

My argument for a Single Candidate Search Process

The proposal now floating around for reforming the UUA Presidential election process is for a Presidential Search Committee to put forward, after deliberation, at least two candidates for the UUA Presidency. Then the campaign begins.

I argue for a single candidate, chosen by the Search committee.

Why is one better than two?

1. The problem in the process is that campaign -- time and expense. Having two official nominees does not solve that problem. That problem will be solved to some extent by online and electronic communication.

2. The necessities of the campaign itself limits who can run. Prospects must be in a place in their career that they can devote that amount of time and energy. Others have identified who is in that pool: ministers in multi-staff churches, national staff, the retired and the independently wealthy. A more subtle inhibitor is also at work: the risk. A candidate in a multi-staff church, the national staff person essentially risks their present position for the Presidency. You can't always go back to your old job if you lose.

3. Two candidate races create and exaggerate polarities. Growth vs. Depth, for example. As if, those two are somehow in contradiction to each other. It's unfortunate when two self-selected candidates and their supporters draw these kind of contrasts, but a Presidential Search Committee who has to choose two candidates will be consciously shaping these contradictions, giving them life. I am troubled by this. I don't want the Presidential Search Committee to decide what the most important unresolved issues are; I would rather they choose the best person, on balance, for the job.

Gini Courter on the Election Process

On Election-L email list, there has been a discussion about the present method of electing the President and other officers of the UUA. Gini Courter weighed in with this statement, that I am reproducing here.

Friends -

A number of people who've posted recently assert that the current method of selecting the UUA President or Moderator "isn't broken" so it doesn't need to be fixed. The list of people who know that the current process IS broken includes Bill Sinkford, Peter Morales, and Laurel Hallman. I agree with them, and with the two candidates for Moderator in 2001 who were also critical of the current process. As far as I know, no one who has run opposed for President or Moderator in the past thirty years thinks the current nomination-campaign-election process is just, equitable, or compassionate, or that it truly reflects our values. (Perhaps some candidate fully affirmed the current process, but if so, they weren't vocal about it during the campaign.)

The people who have run for President and Moderator think we should be willing to consider the possibility that our election process is too long, too grueling, too costly, and/or too disconnected from congregational life and leadership. We should consider whether the barriers to candidacy might be inappropriately high, or in some cases, just inappropriate. We should discuss whether a more transparent nomination process would be more inclusive and more in keeping with our values than our current highly opaque nomination methods.

We might even wonder why we require candidates for President and Moderator to raise tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to campaign to serve our Association. I don't know this year's finances, but in 2001, both Moderator candidates and one of the two Presidential candidates ended their campaigns with outstanding debts that they had to cover personally.

At the April Board meeting, your UUA Trustees made a commitment to Bill, Peter, and Laurel that they would bring a set of amendments to the election process to GA in 2010. The draft amendments offered by the Board describe one possibility; the amendments were published in this year's GA agenda so that congregations could begin discussing them now and provide feedback for a final version that needs to be ready by mid-January 2010. The trustees would love to hear our congregations' best thinking on this. I know some trustees are on this list, but you can also contact them directly. You'll find your trustees' email addresses on this page: http://www.uua.org/aboutus/governance/boardtrustees/19052.shtml

Can't have it both ways.

On the one hand, it is widely agreed that the Unitarian Universalist Association has not, in its 40 years of existence, lived up to the potential of liberal religion in this country. We believe that there are at least a million people out there whose religious views are in sympathy with ours, but as a collective body, we cannot manage to put a welcoming, inspiring, inviting, culturally appropriate center of liberal religion into their path. We are an underperforming organization.

On the other hand, efforts to actually change one or more feature of the organization runs into a solid wall of "if it's not broke, don't fix it!". Our governance is fine the way it is. (But our inability to perform well stems from our governance !) The main definitional statement of who we are is fine the way it is (it has not communicated effectively for sustained growth for 15 years now !).

This dichotomy (we are great; everything we do is the very best that we can do vs. we are small, failing, repelling people as fast as we are attracting them, demographically isolated.) is a sign of defensiveness and anxiety.

We need to change what we are doing if we want a different result. And we need a different result because we are not fulfilling what we know that we are capable of. And that means being open to different ideas about how to do things. Really, suggesting a different way of electing our President on a blog is not quite taking an axe to the foundations of our faith.

More Democracy

To increase participation in elections, and help clarify the choices before the electorate, the UUA Board ought to recognize groups whose purpose is to recruit and support candidates for District offices and boards, and for the Board of Trustees.

People who wish to influence the UUA as a whole should have the opportunity to organize themselves, promote their views, and become part of the official leadership of the Association. Yes, we need factions and parties.

Another Process for the President

Let's elect the next President the same way that we call ministers in our congregations.

1. Elect a Search Committee that is broadly representative of all of Unitarian Universalism.

2. Give them lots of time to work, and consult with people in all areas of the UUA.

3. Let them interview prospective Presidents, looking for the one that seems to match what most people seem to want in the next leader.

4. Let them make a recommendation.

5. Let the people affirm their recommendation through a supermajority.

The result of that type of process in our congregations is that we usually end up with a leader who enjoys broad support in the congregation. The process of ministerial transition increases the unity and sense of common purpose in the congregation, rather than dividing it.

Our present election process exaggerates our differences. Whoever wins starts out with a sizable minority of UU's regretting the way it turned out, and skeptical of the new President's efforts.

If you imagined a congregation choosing their next minister the way that the UUA chooses its next President, most congregations would splinter.

We do need a way for people who are frustrated with our present course to be able to act through the democratic process to change it. For example, a person who thinks that we should do less social action, but more evangelism, should have a way to change the priorities of the denomination. They should be able to run candidates who have those priorities and make a case to other voters.

I think that should be what happens when we elect our Board Trustees. Those elections should be the place where individuals and groups put forward candidates that promise to the move the UUA in one direction or another. Those elections are closer to home and offer more chances for lots of participation. They should be more political and competitive, and as a result more interesting.

Under policy governance, the Board is where the vision and the direction of the organization is set. The Board should be where specific and competing points of views are reconciled through decision and compromise. The President becomes less of visionary, and more of a person who can spark the staff and volunteers to fulfill our common goals.

Frank talk 3

KJR in the comments offers this analysis of power in the UUAoC:

I think the President and staff set UUA priorities --- with the main limitation being finding donors willing to fund the priorities.

The obvious question that comes to mind is "where does that leave the Board?" And the second question that comes up is "What about congregations?"

And the third question: "When you say congregations, are you talking about the ministers of congregations, or the laity?"

All these questions circle around the most important misalignment in the way that things work. On the one hand are the ministers of the larger congregations, who one could say are the most successful UU religious leaders among us. On a day-by-day basis, they lead the institutions in which a large proportion of UU's experience UUism and they are successfully meeting people's religious needs. The affairs of the association, however, are a part-time concern of these leaders. And frequently, to the laity in the larger churches, the association and the district are not as interesting or involving as the local parish.

On the other hand is the staff. UUA affairs are their daily work, and they are in regular contact with many lay people and ministers across the country, the UUA activists who attend district conferences and GA, and serve on various task forces and committees of the Association. They are viewed as the leaders of the UUA. Their career path does not necessarily lead them through larger congregations.

I think that there is a consensus that the staff needs more direction. Someone else needs to set the priorities and direction. Morales believes that the solution is for the President to be a better manager and administrator. I am not sure of what happened, but this seems to be what he took away from his experience on the national staff.

Hallman and Courter both believed that the problem was not management but governance and the solution was to strengthen the Board of Trustees in relationship to the President. Courter's emphasizes the Board as serving the congregations. Hallman based her campaign among the ministers of the larger congregations. But both saw developing a countervailing center of authority in the Association to the President and Staff.

In my never humble opinion, I agree that the Board represents the best vehicle to bring the concerns of the congregation into a position of power in the Association. But neither the election process of the President, nor the election process of the Board seem to work to represent genuine congregational (and ministerial) concerns very well.

I have two questions now.

1. What are the best practices of denominational affairs committees, especially in larger churches? How do we overcome the tendency of larger church congregation to be uninterested in UUA affairs?

2. What are the relationships between UUA Trustees from the Districts and the District UUMA chapter? Does it matter if the Trustee is a minister?