The Sedona Unitarian Universalist Fellowship aspires to be a \u201dbeloved community\u201d — a term often used by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\u00a0 And they wish the same for our town, county, state, and nation.<\/p>\n
In a beloved community everyone is respected and cared for, absent of poverty, hunger, and hate. Of course, realizing this vision requires commitments from systems of law, education, health care, and governance. No one sector, much less one person or one congregation, can create it in isolation.<\/p>\n
But UUs have done their best over the years \u2014 beginning with the1648 Cambridge Platform signed by English settlers in Dedham, Massachusetts. It split Unitarians from the strict Church of England to allow each of their congregations to be self-governing and to fulfill, in their own ways, the spirit of mutual love.<\/p>\n
In the late 19th<\/sup> century, Universalism fully embraced the idea that the kingdom of Heaven is best reflected in our love and caring for one another.<\/p>\n Both Universalists and Unitarians, before they became unified, were involved in the Social Gospel movement, in which religion was practiced by serving those on the margins of society.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s UUs build community within congregations, while they work for the liberation of all people.\u00a0 For example, many UU ministers and lay people responded in March 1965 to Dr. King\u2019s call for people of faith to march for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, Two among them were murdered there by white supremacists: Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo.<\/p>\n That work continues, with UUs supporting human rights for all immigrants and refugees, reforms within the criminal justice system, and the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n In 1989, UUs voted to fully affirm, and to actively include in their congregations, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, and to advocate for marriage equality.\u00a0 In fact, the first legal same-gender wedding in the USA was performed at a UU chapel in 2004.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Sedona Unitarian Universalist Fellowship aspires to be a \u201dbeloved community\u201d — a term often used by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\u00a0 And they wish the same for our town, county, state, and nation. In a beloved community everyone is respected and cared for, absent of poverty, hunger, and hate. Of course, realizing this vision … Continue reading To Become a Beloved Community [#76]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7633"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8871,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7633\/revisions\/8871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}