Welcoming Congregation

The UU Fellowship of Madison County has officially been recognized as
a Welcoming Congregation! Our Welcoming Congregation focuses on fostering acceptance, inclusion, understanding and equity for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender (g/l/b/t) persons of all colors, both within the UUA and in society at large. The Principles of the UUA clearly affirm, promote, and welcome people from all cultures, religious backgrounds, and lifestyles in their own personal pursuit of religious truth. However, the g/l/b/t community is still widely misunderstood and oppressed by society. Through congregational education, examination of congregational life, and community outreach, we hope to become a more welcoming congregation to the g/l/b/t community. The rainbow chalice is being used on our programs, name tags, and pamphlets as an invitation to the g/l/b/t community to join us in creating a world community of peace, liberty, and justice for all.

We are all religious, spiritual creatures,driven to find a pattern of meaning in our lives. If you have trouble finding meaning in creeds and commandments of traditional religion, a Unitarian Universalist congregation may be the place for you. Here, your own life experience counts fully as much as that of any ancient people. Here, the cumulative experience of the people called bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender is a sacred story that informs our spirituality.

Here, intuition and our inner creative capacities count; not just tradition, church hierarchy, and bible. Here, reason and the findings of science count. And here, prophetic voices, voices of wisdom and vision, from whatever source, count. Bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people belong here. Our religious movement belongs to a larger future, not to a constricting past. It doesn’t belong to the outworn pronouncements of the bishops or the evangelists of the new right. Our movement has to do with the qualitative evolution of human consciousness.

See also:  http://uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/welcomingcongregation/index.shtml