Conveners: Neil MacLean, Colin Bossen, (with support on the East Coast from Meg Muckenhaupt,)
Guest Bard: Utah Phillips
Documentation: Rev. Sirpa Nelson
Youth Advisor: Alex Darr

Purposes of the gathering: to introduce interested UU Youth and Young Adults to three radical thesis that may help us engage with the great justice movements of our era. Participants will be encouraged to identify a research topic and report back to the seminar during future meetings. Practical research, such as leadership in relevant justice movements, will be encouraged. The overall goal of this endeavor is to support UU Youth and Young Adults to take prophetic leadership in justice movements.

Definitions:
Seminar: "A course of study by a group of advanced students doing original research under a professor"
Thesis: "A proposition that a person advances and offers to maintain by argument"

We will examine each of our three theses in three contexts: philosophical historical, "modern" manifestations, and applications to contemporary justice struggles.

The thesis are: Love Does Not Punish, One Heart One Vote, We thrive on the Margins of Empire.

Each day will include ritual, songs and community sharing. The UU Fellowship of the Mountains will host us. UU of the Mountains, Pat Paddick has offered to host our eating. We may collaborate with Jeremy of the Fellowship to present the Sunday Service on Jan. 21st.

Schedule: Thursday, gather at 6:00 for dinner, travel to Nevada City, CA, welcome and rest at the Fellowship
Friday: Love Does not Punish, Morning ritual, morning presentation and discussion: Philosophical and historic context, Afternoon: Modern and contemporary struggle
Saturday: One Heart One Vote, Morning Ritual, Morning presentation and discussion of philosophical and historic context, Afternoon: Modern and contemporary struggle
Sunday: Worship with the Fellowship, afternoon presentation and discussion of philosophical context, evening worship/sharing.
Monday: committing to research, and to lead, closing ritual.

Framework for our discussions

Friday: Love Does Not Punish:

Philosophical and Historic context:
For many centuries our UU forbearers were known as Pelagians, after an eighth century Celtic Christian. Pelagius' views are often summarized: We receive an original blessing from the Creator. It follows that we learn from our experience of life, and that love and encouragement are the principles which should guide our fellowship and culture.: By contrast, the dominant view in European history has been that human beings inherit not a blessing but the curse of original sin. It follows that whatever goodness we show to one another results from punishing our natural inclinations, denying our experience, and fetishizing the afterlife.

The collapse of the Holy Roman Empire brought religiously inspired genocide to most of Europe. Our ancestors were often caught in these wars of extermination. The Anabaptists, Morovians, Socinians, and Pelagians all experienced brief periods of liberation and prolonged periods of subjugation. Perhaps our main antagonist in Europe was John Calvin, who personally executed Unitarian Michael Servetas. Calvin posted his core document, his six thesis, as a direct response to a liberal religious statement called at the Council of Dordt in the Netherlands, 1617. UUs and Calvinists have been at odds ever since. Another core and equally problematic tenet of Calvinism is the notion that some people are chosen by God, while others are condemned.

Modern US Context:
Conflicts over basic UU principles have arisen frequently since the first Europeans arrived in North America. Universalists played an important role in the Constitutional Convention and in several mass religious movements in the 18th and 19th Century. In the early republic, Universalists were not granted voting rights. The dominant ethic held that only the fear of punishment would guarantee moral thinking.
The Mass. Bay Colony was explicitly a Calvinist religious association. By 1817, the Unitarians consolidated Harvard Divinity School and with it, many churches in the North East. Debates about public education, health care and all public institutions are, at their core, debates about whether everyone is valuable, or whether only the "elect" deserve access and care.
Calvinism in a variety of forms, has continued to sway opinion and policy in the US. The restriction of voting rights, slavery, social-Darwinism, and many other popular sentiments gain grounding in Calvinist moralism.

Contemporary Context:
During the last twenty years, neo-Calvinist philosophy has again come to dominate US society. One result is that two million people reside in our prisons. Unfortunately, the movement against imprisonment proceeds without understanding the religious roots of Calvinist imprisonment theology. That movement is led by Marxists, who overlook these religious, Calvinist teachings. We may be able to offer this movement insight into these religious roots. And we may be able to gain a greater understanding of the historic conflict between our path and Calvinism in the process. We may even rediscover a power that previously defeated Calvinism in this country. The power of plane talk about God's love.

The apex of political and spiritual oppression is the state's use of murder to silence opposition leaders. A few of us have already began research in defense of Mumia Abu Jamal in the historic context of Rev. Clarence Skinner's defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, and Henry Thoreau's "Plea for John Brown". Each of these cases are world events, with world wide defense committees, and ramifications for world-wide political movements. Mumia is the focus of a growing movement that deserves the spiritual ground of our support.

2. One Heart, One Vote:

Philosophical and Historic Context:
The human voice and spirit display unmatched, and unfulfilled creative power. Our capacity for mutual aid, compassion and honor unfold through democratic polity joined with community fellowship. Together, these converge at the core of our spiritual life.

The European history of democratic organizations moves from church, to corporation, to nation. The struggles over how to distribute power within these forms, and the emergence of new forms to check or promote the old, provide our context for the history of political revolution and spiritual development.

Modern Context:
During the Revolutionary era, Universalists argued that human citizens had the authority to constitute and govern corporations. Universalist affirmations about human capacity derive from our heart. Weak defenders of these revolutionary affirmations too often subvert the message by substituting the human intellect instead of the heart as the basis for democracy.

When our movement birthed the Humanist Manifesto in 1934, it was the first time in 1700 years that a European or Euro-American religious movement freed itself from God the Father. Within four years, the US Government began attacking Unitarian Humanist leaders. By the 1950s, the ministers and our churches were threatened into signing loyalty oaths. The Humanist Manifesto's vision of democracy called for equal redistribution of wealth. How else could we take equal responsibility for one another? How else could we manifest god in our human activity? The government-led attack on our faith deformed our movement, froze our critique of unequal property distribution, and fostered banal liberalism that some take as the hallmark of our faith.

Contemporary context:
The democratic spirit directly confronted corporate globalization last year. The anti-democratic world treaties, written in secret, at the behest of corporate planners, in order to benefit monopoly and multinational corporate interests, promised to end the era of nation-states and the limited democracy they have afforded some of their citizens. The new era of "Neo-Liberalism" promised to foreclose any possibility of world government, or national sovereignty. The international response broke all the dysfunctional molds that had encased the left for thirty years. The pro-democracy movement against corporate tyranny is growing and changing fast. Can we help contribute to understanding the human capacities that deserve to govern? Can we focus on these capacities and help ground the anti-corporate globalization movement in ethical, constitutional, and spiritual depths?

3. We Thrive at the Margins of Empire:

Philosophic and Broad Historic context:
UUs and especially UU prophets have survived on the margins of the empire. Contact with Celts, Moors, Taoists, Iroquois, and others who walk between worlds have provided UU prophets with insights, community, and validation for the heretical truths at the core of our spiritual commitment. We will work to honor these counter-hegemonic sources. And we will strive to lift up the cross cultural sensitivities which carry hope for humanity.

Modern context:
During the modern era, collusion between Soviet Communism and US Corporatism flattened human cultural differences. Together, these societies fostered production based concepts of human capacity: worker, consumer, manager, owner. So much of humanity was lost, reduced to sociological rubble. Our own humanist movement, partially in self-defense against a punishing government, promoted this "flat earth" concept of humanity. Within this framework, the voices of the ancestors were reduced to echoes and drowned by the roar of jet engines. We need to recover our ancestors. We need to drink from the fountains of their experience. Perhaps our task is to remake humanism with a three dimensional earth in mind? Can we share rather than purchase life?

Contemporary Contexts of struggle:
Recovering cultural memories of genocide expands our ability to think about cultural differences. What are the current experiences of native people, of the U'wa in Columbia, the Mayans of Mexico and Guatemala, the Burbers, the Timorese, and others on the edge of empire? How do we recall the era of our own indigenous culture's colonization? How do our experiences differ from one another? Can we appreciate what has happened and continues to happen to us? How is Unitarian Universalism a strategy for supporting the indigenous in all of us? How is it a plan to undo the colonizers?

In 1894 Unitarians and Universalists promoted the Parliament of World Religions. The best of that idea has blossomed in the Zapatista's Intergalactic Encuentros. What were those meetings? What effect have they had on the world movement for indigenous rights? When will the disappeared be the subject of world attention? What light can we shine on this struggle?

Young Adult Prophets Time line:
1998 Concentric: beginning conversations
1999 Circle worships, discussion, research, presentation at PCD UUYAN's Conference, presentation at OPUS
1999 Fall: application for Young Adult Prophets Grant from the UU Funding Panel for UUism
2000 Spring: Project announcement and vision article in "Ferment"
2000 Summer: Endorsement from C*UUYAN, theme presentations at SWUUSI for Youth, PCD UUYAN Steering Committee endorsement, presentation at PCD Youth Conference, full track presentation at OPUS
2000 Fall: begin email list, web page, active phone organizing
Proposed Time line:
2001 Winter: Young Adult Prophet Founding Seminar, ratify mission statement, develop thesis, began thesis research
2001 Spring: Apply for increased funding from UU Panel for UUism.
2001 Summer: presentation at General Assembly, OPUS, report to ConCentric, (SWUUSI?) other?
2001 Engagement with justice movements: Mumia, globalization, Zapatistas, other?
2002: Winter: Seminar with reports on research, sermons, and justice leadership activities