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"May we not hope soon to
hear of the establishment of 'The Canadian Unitarian Association'"
As a recent sermon by Jeff Brown points out by lifting up this quotation
from 1828 and reinforcing with similar remarks made in 1912 and 1956 the
idea of an autonomous Canadian movement is not new. The question that I'm
asking is why at this moment in our history?
Prior to the establishment of the CUC there seems to have been no entity or
other locus around which a Unitarian or Universalist Canadian identity could
form. Congregations were members of both the AUA and the British &
Foreign Unitarian Association, but theone time they came together was at the
AUA Annual meeting in Boston.
When forty years ago the CUC came into existence, its office was a box and
telephone in Barbara Arnot's home. It took 22 years before the CUC hired its
first Executive Director. Last year the CUC hired Mary Bennett its third ED,
and it also began to develop its third long-range plan. Over time the CUC
began delivering more services - some, like chaplaincy, are uniquely
Canadian and others, like the HUUG project, are an adaptation of UUA
services to the Canadian context. It seems clear that the CUC has given
Canadian energies a focal point and this in turn has helped us to become
more self-aware.
The seemingly unending UUA/CUC negotiation process has also played a role.
For in repeatedly renegotiating the Accord that governs the relationship
between the two bodies Canadians had to self-differentiate Canadian needs
from US needs over and over again.
While that process in and of itself has led to more individuation, other
factors contributed as well:
1. There has been a steady growth in the number of Canadian and naturalized
ministers settled in Canada. And as ministers do we have given voice to the
experience of our congregations - people rooted in a different history
including significant ties to the English movement, climate, law, practice
of governance and culture than the US.
2. Phillip Hewett has begun the mining and telling of the Canadian story. As
Brian Kopke has said we need to do more, but Phillip's work has been a
significant step on the route to becoming self-aware.
3. Finally, as Jeff's sermon reminds us, in 1985 Mark DeWolfe began the
exploration of what a Canadian Contextual theology might look like for us.
One last contributing factor, as Wayne Arnason and others have pointed out,
is a change in UUA self-understanding that has taken place as a result of
the anti-racism and anti-oppression work the UUA staff and Board have
engaged in. The UUA negotiation team was not comfortable with what they saw
when they looked at the relationship that has existed between the UUA and
the CUC through eyes that have grown aware of their own power and privilege.
Not only did the ongoing relational challenges seem intractable, but the
power differential became untenable. The Negotiation Team was also
aware that the negotiations, that have gone on already for over three years,
would probably drag on still longer since a new UUA President, new Moderator
and a substantially different Board of Trustees will be installed at the end
of June.
Given all this you can see how, through this historical process, the CUC has
become increasingly self-aware and self-differentiated from the UUA. We have
arrived at the moment in our organizational development at which autonomy is
the next step. I can only imagine that it will give us a renewed sense of
purpose, and new clarity of vision. It will also release our creative
energy. It is time to get on with our lives as Canadian Unitarian
Universalists. Hind sight leads me to believe this was inevitable; only it
arrived faster than many of us expected. Leaving home at the age of fifty
would have been scary enough, but age forty!
In Faith,
Mark
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