For reasons known only to God, there is extraordinarily little written about member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association that disaffiliate, disband, or merge with another congregation. This was once a regular feature of whatever the UU World was called in the late 80s. It strikes me as un-familylike and un-gemütlich as if your Grandma died and nobody recognized it.
Enough of the editorial: is the Coronado Unitarian Universalist Church dead or not? Its technically refined website — I was getting around to highlighting some of the better websites in the UUA — now identifies itself as “Friends of Coronado [California] Unitarian Universalists” and that “as of April 1, 2005, we are no longer holding worship services.” The latter being a condition of continued UUA membership, if not existence, as I read the bylaws. There’s a link to a page of pictures of the “former Board of Directors.”
A bit of sadness since there are little hints that this pluralistic church was nevertheless Christian-ier than many. And a bit of sadness when something — well — again, what did happen there?
If you know, please do comment.
Here’s a letter to the editor just this week from the pastor of a formerly Unitarian church in Hingham, Mass., (where there are two UUA-affiliated congregations), clarifying that his congregation has been denominationally unaffiliated “for more than 35 years.”
Interesting. Couldn’t find a website, but that’s not all that strange.
I think I’ll blog on those churches not in the UUA with a Universalist foundation.
Comment got too long-I’ll blog about it.
Anna