Religion – Page 2 – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Elizabeth Tarbox biographical information

Recently, I used something written by Rev. Elizabeth Tarbox as a reading in a Sunday service. I realized I knew next to nothing about her, so I decided to look up her obituary in the Unitarian, Universalist, and UU Yearbooks (now digitized and online). She died in October, 1999, which means her obituary would be in the following year’s Yearbook — except that was the one year when the UUA decided not to publish minister’s obituaries in the Yearbook. I found no other obituary or life summary for her online.

With a little bit of research, I was able to generate the timeline below — which tells me most of what I want to know:

5 March 1944, born Elizabeth Irene Peck to William and Irene Hard Peck in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom (birth record)
1963, married Charles E. Tarbox (1938-2016) in St. Albans; she and Charles later had a child (marriage record; Charles Tarbox obituary in Boston Globe)
1968, she and Charles immigrated to the United States; applied for Social Security card (Social Security records; Charles Tarbox obituary in Boston Globe)
1986, B.A. in philosophy, Bridgewater State College (Bridgewater State yearbook for 1986)
c. 1980s, congregant at First Parish Duxbury, Mass. (mentioned in FP Duxbury newsletter)
c. 1986, began studying at Harvard Divinity School
c. 1988-90, served as student minister, First Parish Norwell, Mass. (mentioned on FP Norwell Facebook page)
1990, graduated Harvard Divinity School (UUA Yearbooks)
1990, ordained (UUA Yearbooks)
1990, settled at First UU Society of Middleboro, Mass. (UUA Yearbooks)
1993, publication of Life Tides: Meditations
1997, settled at First Parish in Cohasset, Mass. (UUA Yearbooks)
1997, publication of Evening Tide: Meditations
1999, resigned from First Parish in Cohasset due to ill health (First Parish Cohasset records)
31 Oct. 1999, died in Duxbury (Duxbury Annual Report; Social Security records)

I’m mostly satisfied with this timeline, though I wouldn’t mind finding answers to a couple of questions. First: When did she become a Unitarian? — it’s even possible she was raised Unitarian, as there was a small Unitarian fellowship in St. Albans in the 1950s, according to Alan R. Ruston, Unitarianism in Hertfordshire (Watford, Hertfordshire, U.K., 1979), p. 26. Second: What was she doing between marriage in 1963 and starting college in the 1980s — which includes a subsidiary question: Why did she come to the United States?

Another MFC notice

A couple of weeks ago, I got one of those emails from the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association. The key paragraph read as follows: “The Ministerial Fellowship Committee voted at its December 2025 meeting to remove the Rev. Benjamin Meyers from fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association for violating the terms of ministerial probation, as related to acts of plagiarism.” When I was in the Bay Area, Ben served at the Berkeley Fellowship and the congregation in San Mateo.

This raises a question for me:

Does using generative AI to write a sermon count as plagiarism?

Technically, it’s not plagiarism. At the same time, it’s not your own work. It’s an interesting ethical question.

In-person event!

If you live south of Boston, I want to invite you to a workshop I’ll be giving on Sat., Jan. 31:

Woody Plants in Winter: An Intro to iNaturalist

Saturday, Jan. 31, 10-12 noon. Led by Dan Harper, sponsored by the Cohasset Conservation Trust.

Come explore the winter woods using iNaturalist, a nonprofit online platform that helps you learn about nature while connecting you with other nature lovers. We’ll start indoors with an introduction to iNaturalist. Then we’ll head outdoors, to identify trees and shrubs in Great Brewster Woods and Dean’s Meadow, a 25-acre tract of woodland next to Cohasset Common.

10 a.m., Introduction to iNaturalist, Carriage House Nursery School, 23 N. Main St. Cohasset. Learn the power of the iNaturalist platform, which offers computer vision identification suggestions that are checked by human experts who volunteer their time. If possible, install the iNaturalist app on your smartphone in advance.

11 a.m., Woody Plants in Winter, start at Carriage House Nursery School, 23 N. Main St. Cohasset. After an introduction to identifying woody plants in winter, we’ll go out and find some plants to identify. We’ll use the classic field guide Woody Plants in Winter by Earl L. Core and Nelle P. Ammons, as well as other field guides. If you have a 10x hand lens, or a macro lens for your phone, please bring it along.

All ages are welcome, but persons under age 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Please note that iNaturalist users under the age of 12 must obtain parental permission to use the platform here.

Weather cancellation: Major winter storm cancels. Otherwise, dress for the weather. If it’s super cold or wet, we’ll spend minimal time outdoors, and bring samples indoors to identify in comfort.

As a professional educator for 25 years, Dan Harper developed curriculum for a weekly ecojustice class (gr. 6-8), a week-long ecology day camp (gr. 2-8), and week-long half-day workshops for children and adults. He currently is co-director of Ecojustice Camp South Shore.

The Cohasset Conservation Trust is a volunteer, non-profit organization whose mission is the protection of areas of ecological importance, such as marshes, woodlands, and seashores; the promotion of public interest in conservation and smart development; and the preservation of properties of unique historic interest or unusual beauty.

2025: liberal and progressive religion in review

A/ The decline of organized religion has halted (for now)

In 2025, the big news in progressive religion was that religion is not quite as dead as the social scientists want us to believe. A Pew Research Center study released in December was titled “Religion holds steady in America.” At the same time, the study also found that “people in every birth cohort — from the youngest to the oldest — have grown less religious as they have aged.”

However, as usual, religiosity is measured with phenomena that are very much Christian-centric. One of the metrics that Pew looks at is how “prayerful” people are. By that metric, I’m completely non-religious, since I don’t pray. Another metric used by Pew is whether people “identify with a religion.” That means that Pew is measuring religiosity as a function of affiliating with an organized religious group. But we already know that the twenty-first century is a time when people are disaffiliating from all organizations. I would also say that lots of people I know are religious/spiritual without belonging to an organized religious group — I think of the people I know who do yoga or qi-gong, or who create their own spiritual rituals for groups of friends, or who consult Tarot cards, etc.

You also have to consider how organized religion gets defined. If you’re a practitioner of Orisa devotion (such as Santeria) and regularly visit a botanica, you’re not going to be counted as participating in organized religion. If you’re a yoga teacher, spending many hours leading classes and attending ongoing training, you’re not going to be counted as participating in organized religion. The unacknowledged influence of Protestant Christianity on American social scientists is still there. The more something looks like a Protestant Christian church, the more likely it is to be defined as a religion. The more something looks like Protestant Christian spiritual practice (e.g., prayer, regular attendance at religious services, belief in God, etc.), the more likely it is to be defined as a religious practice.

B/ Protest politics remains important for White Christian and post-Christian religious progressives

In a year-end article on Religion News Service, veteran religion reporters Jack Jenkins and Bob Smietana wrote about the Americas religious figures whom they expect to be most news-worthy in 2026. They chose a mix of religious conservatives, moderates, and liberals/progressives — and a range of races, ethnicities, and religious affiliations. The only person they chose who is best known for protest politics is Rev. David Black, a progressive White minister in a majority-White denomination, Presbyterian Church (USA).

Contrast that with the person Jenkins and Smietana picked to represent Black Protestantism, Rev. Frederick D. Hayes, who is running for Congress in his Dallas congressional district. Instead of protest politics, Hayes is using his religious platform to try to add another progressive voice in Congress.

Or consider Brad Lander, a Jew who is running for Congress in New York City. Lander offers a nuanced, liberal Zionist take on Israel — he calls himself a “steadfast supporter of Israel,” while also calling the Israeli campaign in Gaza a “genocide.” But instead of setting up a protest like a tent city, Lander hopes to take his nuanced view of Israel to Congress.

Or contrast that with Mehdi Hasan, a Muslim journalist whose show was canceled by MSNBC. Hasan went out and founded his own media outlet using Substack, and now has 50,00 paid subscribers (and 450,000 total subscribers). Instead of protest politics, Hasan is contributing directly to public discourse.

Speaking personally, most of the Unitarian Universalists I know (i.e., people who are mostly White, mostly progressive, mostly post-Christian) seem to place highest value on protest politics. If you want to get maximum kudos in Unitarian Universalist circles, tell people that you’re going to go to a protest rally. But if you say that you’re running for the local school board, or helping to run the local food pantry, or doing progressive journalism, it doesn’t seem to impress other religious progressives as an expression of your progressive religious values.

White religious progressives seem to place the most value on protest, and on what they call “resistance.” I just wish they placed more value on constructive ways to change the world.

C/ What religious progressives don’t seem to pay much attention to

The religious progressives I know don’t seem to pay much attention to several trends that I would have thought interesting to all religious progressives.

Preston Bradley online

I’ve been trying to find out something about Preston Bradley. He was the minister of People’s Church in Chicago from 1912 to 1976. At its peak, People’s Church reportedly drew 4,000 people each Sunday, presumably over the morning and evening services, probably the largest Unitarian church of all time. Beyond that, Bradley’s radio broadcasts reportedly reached five million people. These figures may be exaggerated — Bradley has been accused of inflating the size of his congregation and the number of his radio listeners — but he certainly reached a great many people, most people than just about any other Unitarian minister; his closest competitors are Theodore Parker and Norbert and Maja Capek.

But there’s not much about him online. This post collects some of the information that I’ve been able to dig up. Feel free to link to more material in the comments.

In 1929, the Universalists took notice of Bradley in an article in The Universalist Leader (vol. 32 no. 47):

“One of the most interesting preachers now in the Unitarian Church is the Rev. Preston Bradley of the People’s Church, or Uptown Temple, in Chicago. It is safe to say that for the first time a considerable number of his ministerial colleagues have become acquainted with him. Dr. Bradley began his ministry as a Presbyterian, but soon found his views expanding and gradually he outgrew the creed of his church. In due time he separated from his denomination and with his congregation carries on an independent movement. Feeling the need of fellowship and the advantages of union with some denominational body, they affiliated with the Unitarians seven years ago. One of the best and biggest sessions of the conference was held in his church. The Uptown Temple is a fine new building, in proportions and arrangements not very different from the well known Tremont Temple in Boston, but much more artistic. It seats about thirty-six hundred people and it is filled every Sunday morning.”

When the People’s Church voted to affiliate with the Unitarians, there was an article in the American Unitarian Association’s Christian Register (7 February 1924) — notice that a different attendance figure is reported here:

“Dr. Preston Bradley is minister of the People’s Church in Chicago, Ill. This church was founded by its present minister twelve years ago, and is now one of the most largely attended liberal churches in the world. Its Sunday morning attendance is upward of two thousand. Services are conducted in the Pantheon Theatre on Sheridan Road north of Wilson Avenue. The church voted recently to affiliate with the Western Unitarian Conference, the American Unitarian Association, and the National Federation of Religious Liberals.”

This excerpt from “Another View of Preston Bradley,” by Judy Thornber, gives a sense of the impression Bradley made as a preacher:

“As a true admirer who heard Preston Bradley on the radio and in person at his church, I saw no sign of megachurch techniques. Bradley did not ‘orate.’ He spoke in a personal, conversational way, revealing his own feelings and thoughts and his high aspirations for what people could do. He acknowledged that times were difficult and many people had enormous problems. It was, after all, the Depression. He did his best to provide hope to his following, without mention of God or Jesus, and to engage in citywide social action with various civic organizations. This man was not an Elmer Gantry type egoist. He was passionate about empathy and support for those with troubles, but not in a ‘theatrical’ way. His true genius was that he simply talked directly to his congregation, both on the radio and in the church, as if they were intelligent people who wanted to lead good lives. He tried to encourage them and keep their hope alive.

Thornberg goes on to offer some excellent advice that probably still holds true for today’s Unitarian Universalists ministers:

“Since few of today’s UU ministers can grow membership the way Bradley did, we should seriously study his sermons to understand why they spoke so clearly to people and were so well received by the public. When Bradley spoke, you felt he was speaking to you one on one. He shared himself. He did not pretend to have all the answers. He did preach that hope could be nurtured by persevering and by focusing on leading a good life according to our own best lights.”

With that brief introduction to Bradley’s life and work, here are some of the online resources I’ve found.

Preston Bradley online

N.B.: You must look at the comments for Lisa DeG’s extensive list of links to Bradley material.

About Bradley

1. Time magazine article on his 25th anniversary, 26 April 26 1937.

“The [25th anniversary] jubilee was that of the world’s largest Unitarian church (2,500 members), founded with 67 members in 1912 by a rotund, swarthy little man who today is Chicago’s most popular Protestant pastor.”

2. “Another view of Preston Bradley,” Judy Thornber, 14 July 2015.

Personal memories of Bradley; see excerpt above.

3. Patrick Murfin’s brief biography of Bradley

This is the only biography of Bradley that I’ve been able to find online. That the “Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography” does not have a biography for Bradley may seem like a curious omission, given that Bradley was one of only a handful of Unitarian or Universalist ministers of a 20th C. mega-church (a mega-church is defined as a church with a Sunday attendance of over 2,000; remember, that’s attendance, not membership). Beyond that, because of his radio broadcasts Bradley was arguably one of the most widely-known Unitarian ministers of the mid-twentieth century. Furthermore, Bradley actively promoted social justice, which seemingly would pique the interest of today’s Unitarian Universalist scholars. However, Bradley holds little interest for today’s UU scholars, and that may be for a number of reasons: Bradley trained for ministry at Moody Bible Institute rather than at an elite theological school; Midwestern and Chicago Unitarianism is generally undervalued by UU scholars; and Bradley remained a Christian Unitarian long after that became unpopular. Perhaps his worst sin, though, was that he was a wildly popular preacher, and we UUs seem to be uncomfortable with the fact that our religion actually holds attraction for the common person.

Bradley’s written work

1. A copy of The Liberalist, a publication of People’s Church that mostly featured Bradley’s writing; from May, 1960.

2. “Mystery of Life” in The Unitarian Christian, periodical dated Dec., 1950.

3. Along the Way: An Autobiography, 1962. Hosted at the Internet Archive; if you have an account with the Internet Archive, you are able to “borrow” this book and read it for free online.

Audio of his radio sermons

1. The Harvard Square Library website has audio for six of his sermons (oddly enough, linked to from a webpage describing how Bradley inspired the soap opera “The Guiding Light”)

The sermons are:
“An Inspirational Message in Troubled Times” (25 January 1943)
“What is Christianity” (18 January 1959)
“Thanksgiving Sermon” (November, 1960)
“The Religious Atheist” (12 April 1964)
“Meeting Criticism” (24 October 1965
“The Pastor in the Blizzard” (N.D.)

2. Illinois Digital Archive has audio for one of his sermons

The sermon is:
“Education Decisions” (10 March 1939)

Noted with comment

The San Francisco Standard recently published an article by Zara Stone titled “How Gifted Is Your 3-year-old? IQ tests for preschoolers become the norm in Silicon Valley: Psychologists have seen a surge in Bay Area parents seeking a leg-up for admissions to elite schools.” Now remember — it’s elite preschools for which they’re seeking a leg up. That’s 3 years olds.

The long title of the article pretty much tells the whole sick story, but some of the quotes are revealing. The author interviews Tsunami Turner, who works as an educational psychologist at a company in San Jose that provides “child-centered therapy” as well as IQ testing services:

“‘Some parents come in with an IQ number in mind. They are really wanting to have their child hit a specific number,’ she said. Their kids are often very accomplished, taking dace, soccer, art, and music — and know they ‘have to get a certain number.’ They show up ‘highly anxious,’ she said. If scores come in lower than expected, Turner gets pushback and requests for retests.

“‘There’s a lot of societal pressure. The family is incredibly busy and wants their kid in a school that challenges their intellect and supports their development,’ she said. It can spiral quickly. ‘The goal is that a child will get into a good primary school, and that will lead them to getting into a good college, which will lead them to getting a good job and doing really well in the world.'”

In my 13 years working as a minister of religious education in Silicon Valley, I saw some of this — not so much among the families in the UU congregation there, because if you’re trying to fast-track your kids in this way, you don’t waste time on things like moral and spiritual education — but I did see it happening. It really is true, some well-to-do Silicon Valley parents start trying to build their child’s resume starting when the child is 2 years old. I feel this phenomenon is bad for children, and tends to result in accomplished but stunted and less-than-fully-human adults.

Guru Nanak at Mecca

Sikhs are strongly monotheistic. The first words in the Guru Granth Sahib, their collection of holy writings, say “Ek Onkar,” or “God is one.” Furthermore, God is transcendent and has not been incarnated in some physical form. Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, wrote a statement of belief that can be translated as follows (reference: Pluralism Project):

There is one God whose name is True. God is the Creator. God is without fear. God is without enmity. God is of eternal form. God is unborn, uncreated, beyond incarnation. God is self-existent and self-sufficient. God is attained by the grace of the Enlightener.

Thus within the Sikh worldview, it would be wrong to say that there is more than one deity. The Sikh religion does recognize a series of ten holy persons, the gurus, of whom Guru Nanak was the first. These human beings are not considered deities by Sikhs — even though from the perspective of other worldviews they may seem to take on some of the qualities of lesser deities — but rather they may thought of as humans who had a special connection to God and who are tehrefore worthy of veneration.

Guru Nanak lived in the Punjab region of South Asia, a place where Hindus and Muslims both claimed their religion was true. Guru Nanak said that God transcends such divisions, and famously proclaimed that there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.

The story is told that Guru Nanak once visited Mecca, the most holy city for Muslims. Sayad Muhammad Latif, in a history of the Punjab, tells what happened there:

“He (Guru Nanak) travelled over the whole of India, visited Persia, Kabul and other parts of Asia, and it is said even Mecca. A story is related by both Hindus and Muhamadans [sic] in connection with Nanak’s visit to Mecca. It is said that while at Mecca, Nanak was found sleeping with his feet to the Kaba, before which the Muhamadans prostrate themselves when performing their devotions. The Kazi Rukan-ud-din, who observed this angrily remarked: ‘Infidel, how dare you dishonour God’s house by turning your feet towards it.’ ‘Turn them if you can,’ replied Nanak, ‘in a direction where the house of God is not.'” (quoted in Kazhan Singh, History and Philosophy of the Sikh Religion: Part I: History, Lahore: Newal Kishore Press, 1914, p. 99)

This story gives a sense of the Sikh conception of God — transcendent, omnipresent.

A lovely painting on paper from West Bengal, painted in the mid-eighteenth century and currently in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, depicts Guru Nanak sleeping with his feet towards the Kaba:

Watercolor p;ainting of two men lying on the ground, with another man looking at them. — Labeled in the museum as follows: “Guru Nanak and his disciple encounter a Muslim cleric at Mecca, from a manuscript of the Janam Sakhi (Life Stories)” / Approx. 1755-1770 / India; probably Murshidabad, West Bengal state / Opaque watercolors on paper / Gift of the Kapany Collection, 1998.58.23. [N.B.: While there are many photos of this painting online, I took this photo myself on Sept. 18, 2015, and digitally edited it in 2025; photo copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper.]

In another version of the story, a Muslim cleric kicks Guru Nanak for sleeping with his feet pointed towards the Kaba, then grabs hold of the guru’s legs and tries to turn his feet away, but “lo and behold the miracle the whole of Mecca seemed to be turning.” (Vaaran: Bhai Gurdas, Pauri 32, At Mecca)

1700 years of Nicene Creed

According to tradition, the Nicene Creed turns 1,700 years old tomorrow.

I was born into a Unitarian family, and as old-school New England Unitarians, we didn’t think much about the Nicene Creed. I mean that literally, and not in a snide sense: obviously the Nicene Creed was never recited in our Unitarian church, but beyond that no one even talked about it; it just wasn’t something we ever thought about.

If we ever thought of the Nicene Creed, we thought about it in negative terms, much the same way Professor Francis Christie of Meadville Theological School wrote about it in 1910:

“The symbol of Nicaea inaugurated a mania for fixed and irreformable definitions, a consequent scholasticism, a cessation of thought, a weakening of the moral force of the church, a period of superstitious ritualism.” (Francis A. Christie, “The Significance of the Nicene Creed,” The American Journal of Theology, vol. 14 no. 2, April, 1910, p. 271.)

Today, I’d be less doctrinaire about the Nicene Creed. Even though the Nicene Creed’s trinitarian theology has never made much sense to me personally, I have friends for whom it remains a profoundly moving statement of theology (including some good Universalist friends). Part of being staunchly non-creedal is remaining open to the possibility of truth in creeds you don’t feel much emotional sympathy with. Yet Transcendentalist that I am, I continue to feel that Thoreau got it right when he wrote:

“…in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.…”

To use Theodore Parker’s terms, when it comes to religiou, there is that which is transient, and that which is permanent. Using these terms, Thoreau is talking about that which is permanent: “no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.” A creed, on the other hand, is a fallible human invention, and while it is useful for a time, it is nonetheless transient. The Nicene Creed has been useful to many Christians for 1,700 years, which is a very long time indeed; but it only points toward the divine, it is not itself divine. — At least, so sayeth my Unitarian forebears, with whom I entirely agree.

With those caveats, happy birthday to the Nicene Creed.

A Wikipedia Unitarian

While researching the old Unitarian Church of Palo Alto (1905-1934), I came across someone who is famous enough to be featured on Wikipedia. He’s an entomologist, so he’s not famous famous. He’s not even that famous as scientists go. Still, he’s on Wikipedia so I think it’s worth drawing the attention of today’s Unitarian Universalists to him.

John Merton Aldrich

A renowned entomologist, he was born January 28, 1866, in Rochester, Minnesota. In 1870, he was living with his parents L. O. and Mary, and his older brother and younger sister, in Quincy, Olmsted County; his father was a farmer. In 1880, he was still in Quincy with his family, which now included another younger sister and a servant.

In 1881, John’s family moved to a farm in South Dakota. He attended the new South Dakota Agricultural College in Brookings, S.D., graduating in 1888 after just three years of study. It was in his last year of college that he first took a course in entomology.

Following his graduation, he taught school for a term, then went to study at the University of Minnesota. Although there was then no formal course in entomology at the university, John was able to study with Otto Lugger. Station Entomologist at St. Anthony’s Park. Then in the autumn of 1889, John went to Michigan State University to study entomology. It was there he first turned his attention to Diptera; as he later recalled, his professor advised him “to select a single order as a specialty, and to proceed at once to get together a library and collection; he also suggested the Diptera as a large order in which there were but two workers…at the time in the country.” John began his lifelong study of Diptera in the spring of 1890; this was also the start of his massive collection of Diptera which eventually included some 45,000 specimens.

In November of 1890, John traveled east, both to meet other entomologists and to find work. After failing to obtain a job at Harvard, he traveled to Washington, D.C., and worked for several weeks at the Smithsonian Museum on the insect collections there. However, lack of money forced John to return home, and he spent the winter of 1890-91 working on classifying his growing Diptera collection. He moved to Brookings, and worked worked at the South Dakota Experimental Station, making his first major collecting trip that summer. He received his master’s degree from South Dakota State College in 1891, and had an assistantship the following year. Due to faculty infighting, John lost his assistantship, and he went to to the University of Kansas in 1892; he received a second master’s degree there in 1893.

The University of Idaho was founded in 1893, and John was hired to found the department of zoology. He moved to Moscow, Idaho, to work at the university. There he began working on his catalogue of North American Diptera.

Before leaving South Dakota, he married Ellen J. “Nellie” Roe (b. 1870) of Brookings, S.D., in 1893. Ellen had received her B.S. degree from South Dakota Agricultural College in 1889; she and John had first met while they were both students. At the time of their marriage, Nellie was the assistant principal of the Brookings High School. John and Nellie settled in Moscow, Idaho, where they had a child, Spencer, who died the day he was born, May 17, 1895. Nellie died two years later, on December 3, 1897. To cope with his sorrow after these two deaths, John lost himself in his research. He completed his monumental A Catalogue of North American Diptera (or Two-winged Flies) (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Inst., 1905) on January 1, 1904.

Transparency check

I feel like such a grouch. I keep writing blog posts about ways the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) could be more transparent in the ways it handles clergy misconduct. But I’m not one of those people who post criticism of the UUA but who aren’t looking for actual improvement, they just want to badmouth the UUA. My purpose is different. I actually like the UUA. But like all human institutions, the UUA could be better, and I’d like to contribute in some small way to making it better. Since I have no skills for committee work or denominational governance, what I do is write about possibilities for improving the UUA.

So I’m really not a grouch. I hope.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about ways the UUA could be more transparent in its handling of clergy misconduct. And I’d like to point out three other religious groups who inspire me with their attempts to be more transparent.

First, I’d like to point out the website of the Episcopal Church here in the U.S. Take a look at the screenshot below that shows the front page of their website:

It’s a little hard to see in my screen grab, but in the upper right hand corner there’s a prominent button that reads “Report Misconduct.” If you click on that button, you are taken to another webpage with detailed and (to my mind) confusing instructions about how to report misconduct by clergy. Indeed, there has been criticism from within the Episcopal Church about how their actual processes are not especially transparent.

But forget about their problems with their internal processes for a moment. I applaud their decision to post a prominent link on the very front page of their website that takes you right to instructions on how to initiate a complaint about clergy misconduct. Contrast that with the UUA website, which has no such prominent link. I find it very difficult to locate any information on the UUA website about how to initiate a complaint regarding clergy misconduct.

One final point — given all the publicity around clergy sexual misconduct in the past twenty years, it seems to me to be a smart marketing move by the Episcopal Church to have that prominent link on their front page. It says to people who are looking for a religious home — “We’re serious about stopping clergy misconduct.” It signals that they might be a safer religious home than, say, Unitarian Universalism.

Second, I’d like to point out this webpage from the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization for Conservative Jews in the U.S. The webpage is titled “Rabbis Expelled or Suspended from the Rabbinical Assembly for Ethical Violations”:

On this page, freely visible to anyone visiting their website, the Rabbinical assembly lists the names of seven rabbis who were expelled from the Rabbinical Assembly since 2004. This is exactly what should happen — if a clergy is expelled from a denomination of association of congregations, then the denomination-level website should make their names freely accessible in the interests of transparency.

The UUA tried doing this for a while, beginning in 2021. Then, a couple of years ago, that list was hidden from public view. You can still see a webpage titled “UUA Credentialed Religious Professionals Resigned or Removed from Status Due to Misconduct” on the UUA website — but when you get to that page, you are instructed: “To access the list of ministers removed from fellowship by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, Ministers who resigned fellowship pending misconduct reviews, and religious educators whose credential was terminated by the Religious Education Credentialing Committee, you must log in or register.” You can just about read these instructions on the screen grab below:

I can understand why this page has been restricted —I imagine that in an era of increasing violence, the UUA has the admirable goal of keeping names and personal information hidden. But there are several names that do not need to be hidden, such as ministers who have been convicted of sex offenses, so that their misconduct is a matter of public record. Examples include David Kohlmeier, Ron Robinson, and Mack Mitchell. In addition, this webpage should clearly state why access to the list is restricted — I’ve imagined a charitable reason why the UUA has hidden this page, but someone else could imagine the UUA has hidden the list for nefarious reasons.

Third, the Presbyterian Church USA actually has a phone hotline that you can use to report abuse, as shown on this screen grab:

Admittedly, there are all kinds of potential problems with this helpline. Most obviously, who is the “trained professional” who answers the helpline? If it’s a denominational staffer, someone paid by the denomination, I’m going to be skeptical of their ability to remain neutral; I’d hope the “trained professional” is actually employed by their insurance carrier (which seems to be implied here), because an insurance carrier is somewhat more likely to take misconduct allegations seriously. Also, I could wish that the helpline would offer both voice calls and texting (I hate talking on the phone, but I love texting). And finally, I would like to see a guarantee of confidentiality — please tell me that if I call, and I feel uncomfortable with the “trained professional,” that you’re not going to track me down through my phone number.

Nevertheless, this makes it really easy to report misconduct, and I applaud this attempt at making the reporting process as transparent as possible. (I also applaud the fact that the “trained professional” can also provide information about abuse prevention resources — great idea.)

How might this apply to the UUA? Here are three practical suggestions — and the first two are actually very easy to implement.

First, the UUA should have a prominent link on the landing page of their website that with one click provides specific, actionable instructions on how to report misconduct.

Second, at least a partial list of ministers removed from fellowship should be publicly accessible on the UUA website without requiring registration — and there should be a clear explanation of why seeing the full list requires registration.

Third, ideally the UUA would provide an easily accessible service for reporting misconduct. And ideally, this service will be provided by an independent contractor, not by a denominational employee.