Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Set

WOMEN IN THE UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST MOVEMENT

380 l PROTESTANTISM—DENOMINATIONAL TRADITIONS reach of the United Church of Christ in many parts of the world. Staff resources for women are now located in two places in the national UCC offices: In Local Church Ministries, Deborah Bailey serves as Minister for Women’s Concerns within the Worship and Education Ministry Team. Common Lot continues to be published from her office. And in Justice and Witness Ministries, Lois Powell serves as Minister and Team leader for the Human Rights, Justice for Women and Transformation Ministry Team. The two women work closely with each other to educate and nurture women and to challenge and inspire women to Christian witness in church and society. Support for clergywomen flows through the Parish Life and Leadership Ministry Team within Local Church Ministries. Under the new constitution concerns for women’s issues and advocacy for women arise in various national offices. National staff not only work to build partnerships among covenanted ministries within the national setting of the United Church of Christ, but they also develop collaborative action plans with women in conferences , in associations, and in local congregations. Finally they stretch their commitments beyond denominational boundaries to advocate around issues important to women with dozens of ecumenical organizations and agencies. Women in the United Church of Christ are diverse, drawing upon a rich theological, cultural, and ethnic history. Historically women have been, and remain, focused on God’s mission in the world. Laywomen and clergywomen have found, and continue to find, many ways to carry out that mission in the contemporary world. SOURCES: Common Lot is the newsletter established in the early 1980s for UCC women. Archive issues are available at the national UCC Office for Women’s Concerns (in the Worship and Education Team of the Local Church Ministries). Recent issues are available online at http://www.ucc.org/women/ commonlot.htm. A useful source is Louis H. Gunnemann, The Shaping of the United Church of Christ: An Essay in the History of American Christianity (1977, 1999). Short Course on the History of the United Church of Christ, previously published as a small paperback, is now available online at http:// www.ucc.org/aboutus/shortcourse/index.html. Also see Barbara Brown Zikmund, ed., Hidden Histories in the United Church of Christ, 2 vols. (1984, 1987). Therein see chapters on deaconesses, the Chicago Training School, Woman’s Boards of Missions, American Missionary Association work, German Congregationalists, Hungarians, Armenians, Japanese, and Chinese. Finally, see Barbara Brown Zikmund, ser. ed., The Living Theological Heritage of the United Church of Christ, 7 vols. (1995–2003). WOMEN IN THE UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST MOVEMENT Cynthia Grant Tucker A FULL-THROATED PRESENCE wherever their worship community’s witness is heard, Unitarian Universalist (UU) women enjoy a status implicit in vows made well over 200 years ago when their “liberal religion” was seeded in North America. Achieving a voice and respect, however, did not come easily in a denomination convened by men accustomed to being the framers and centers of serious discourse. No matter how earnest the founding fathers’ conviction that all people had equal worth and the right to express themselves freely, they were blinded by the prevailing myths of male privilege and failed to see that these principles applied to their mothers, wives, and daughters, as well as themselves. To empower the muted, tremulous voices and prod the liberal religious body to live up to all that its name implied, it took the reformist agitation late in the twentieth century . Some observers, citing the vestiges of the male aristocracy even now, and wary of history’s way of repeating itself, suspect that the parity Unitarian Universalist women have won will be hard to maintain. Yet even the skeptics agree that the realignments since 1970 have brought remarkable changes, with women entering the new millennium with a statistical edge as local lay leaders, seminarians, ordained clergy, and elected trustees representing the roughly 224,000 members the denomination counted in 2002. Nor can anyone who is familiar with North America’s social history diminish the transforming role UU women have played in the larger community by interpreting their religious beliefs more generously than their movement’s founders and giving them broad and practical application. Shaping Theology in the Pews Despite the retention of Christianity’s patriarchal structure, women had good enough reason for having higher expectations when liberal religion’s progenitors, the Universalists and Unitarians, cast off the narrow and joyless teachings of Calvin—and Luther in...