Geri Kennedy sent us a box of Rosemary Matson's W&R materials! One item that caught my eye right away was this booklet describing recommended ways to implement the 1977 Women and Religion Resolution. Toward the end of the document, we've added Rosemary's notes on who's who on the cover, and links to the recommended books.

What's in *your* basement? Any old W&R materials gathering dust? Let us know, info@uuwr.org

pdf UU WR Resolution booklet 1979(1.71 MB)

2017 marks the 40th Anniversary of the passage of the Women and Religion Resolution that resulted in the creation of a Continental UUWR committee, W&R committees in 19 Districts, and much more. Liz Fisher has compiled an extensive history of the Resolution in a slideshow!

You can view it as a slideshow with narration, (it may take some time load - 65MB file) or download the PDF version:

pdf 40th Anniversary of UU Women and Religion Resolution(9.44 MB)

A Sunday sermon script compiled in 2002 by Geri Kennedy, Sarah Skovlund and Rosemary Matson of PCD UUW&R tells the story of the UU W&R Resolution.

pdf 25 Years of Transforming the Ministry (pdf)(2.27 MB)

In 1977 the UUA General Assembly unanimously passed the Women & Religion Resolution, calling all individual UUs and UU organizations to examine and put aside sexist assumptions, attitudes, and language and to explore and eliminate religious roots of sexism in myths, traditions and beliefs.

For two decades the UUA Women and Religion Committee led in transforming Unitarian Universalism toward greater inclusiveness and gender equality. At the same time Women & Religion groups formed, particularly at the district level, and began holding significant programs and retreats. These gatherings continue to nurture and support UU women today.

In 1996 the UUA Board declared the work of the resolution finished and thus "sunsetted" the Women and Religion Committee. District groups, however, continued to meet, and there was much conversation across the continent about what to do next. In 2002, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Women and Religion Resolution, UU Women & Religion officially became an independent affiliate organization of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Several years later, the UUA disaffiliated almost all of the independent affiliate organizations. A description of the UUA's process in video form is no longer available. UUW&R continues the work of establishing gender equality in our religious movement and the world. The religious roots of sexism continue to pervade the secular world and reinforce sexism and patriarchy throughout the world today. Clearly, we still have work to do.

These YouTube videos were produced by Pacific Central District UUW&R in March of 2012.

W&R Roots and Branches Part 1 - Introduction

W&R Roots and Branches Part 2 - Rosemary

The FOURTH WISE MAN

A Quest for Reasonable Certainties

by Howard Matson, 1907-1993

PDF version: pdf The Fourth Wise Man(1.18 MB)

Matson feels that each of us is confronted with the same problem. We want to press on to new adventure, but at the same time we need to hold on to familiar landmarks. “Those who never listen for the sound of a distant flute and never risks searching out the strange new music is as good as dead. The capacity to dream, to dare, and even to make mistakes and repent, is of the stuff and yeast of life.” Aware of this searching restlessness, pervading all, Matson uses both science and art to propose dependable answers.

There is the certainty of beauty. “It is the most personal and elusive of values and at the same time the most universal and widespread. Beauty is a goddess who stretches out her arms for the world to see.” And there is freedom. “Life is so varied and complex, so multiple and yet so unified, so bewilderingly and delightfully filled with many nations and peoples, races and cultures, ideas and systems of thought that the one over arching manifold that can pull all these things together is freedom.” There is the certainty that is humanity’s intelligence. “This ability to suspend ideas in the air and walk around and look at them from many angles is the key to scientific method.”

Matson feels that since we live in a changing world, we need a new kind of human being, unfettered by our old prejudices. “When a code fails to serve humanity, we need to change it. Let us know the moral person when we see them. We are not ones to beat our breast with the constant burden of sin. This would be neurotic.... If we define religion as a quest for certainty, we should be as concrete and exact as life itself....When a religion or a nation feels chosen to impose its will upon others, humans are divided into the haves and the have-nots....Organized religion is on trial before the bar of humanity.” But Matson feels hopeful. “Perhaps at this very moment of humanity’s hard winter, a faint trembling can be heard. Perhaps a quickening is in the air as though some stirring were seeking to break through our rigid ways of living.”

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