UUSC President in Kenya

Thanks to Daniel Harper's blog, I've learnt that the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is blogging on its president's humanitarian visit to Kenya. One of the members of the UUSC-UUA delegation to the troubled African country is Rosemary McNatt, a minister in New York and also part of the teaching staff that the ICUU will send to Nairobi next month to help fledgling, emerging Unitarian congregations in Africa find their own liturgical and organizational strenghts to build stronger communities of faith.

This is one of the ways that different U+U organizations are increasingly working together internationally to bear witness of our liberal faith beyond the small borders of our churches and countries.

New Skypecast

This just received from the UUA International Office:

There will be a SkypeCast held on January 23, 2008, entitled “What’s Happening in the Alphabet Soup?”

The purpose of this SkypeCast is to help inform UU congregations about each of the UU organizations that lead our movement’s international engagement. Representatives of each organization are invited to share a 5-minute update during the SkypeCast that describes:

· The mission of their organization

· The current priorities of their organization

· Particular opportunities for congregational involvement that their organization offers

Following the reports there will be a “questions and answer” time with the listening audience.

The SkypeCast will take place from 8:00 - 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time.

To join the conversation, click this link prior to the start time:

For more information on how to join, please visit this page.

The Oberwesel photo!

For those of you who either were present at the ICUU biannual meeting in Oberwesel, Germany, last November, or who are curious about how good we all really look, you can find the ICUU group photo here. (Thanks to Matt Fick for his expertise and helpfulness.)

International U*U web resources

Although the website of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists intends to be the main site on the Web on international, multingual resources for the Unitarian and Universalist world, fortunately it is not the only one. Although, alas, there are not many. Here you will find a few more.

A good place for general information is the Wikipedia entry for the ICUU. It is up-to-date on membership information and it includes the declaration of Principles and Purposes and even a list of non-affiliated Unitarian churches worldwide.

Among denominational websites, the site of the Canadian Unitarian Council is an excellent place to find out information about international U*Uism. It is currently showing news on the election of the new President, the Canadian Rev. Brian Kiely, in its homepage, and there is an International page with many useful links to other English-language websites.

The geeky and dynamic Canadian leadership has created several new electronic resources: you may want to check the new ICUU Facebook community, and a mailing list devoted to ICUU news.

Although hard to find, there is also some international information in the UUA website. Rather than lose your nerves with the embedded Google search engine, you'd rather want to go directly to the International Office page. There you will find links to pages devoted to the Global Chalice Lighting series and to the ICUU RE curriculum, Garden of Unitarian-Universalism, a work-in-progress that aims at including and updating teaching materials on Unitarianism as it manifests around the world. There are also links to the international work of the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church council.

The revamped website of the British Unitarians also includes a section on Unitarians Worldwide, with links classified alphabetically.

Among non-English websites, the site of the French-speaking Assemblée Fraternelle des Chrétiens Unitariens (AFCU) is particularly noteworthy. Being the almost single-handed effort of a committed French Christian Unitarian leader, Jean-Claude Barbier, it includes a wealth of information and photos not only about international Unitarianism, but also European liberal Protestants and Catholics, religious debate, and news and anecdotes from around the world, and it is updated almost daily. It is complemented by another blog devoted to Unitarian history.

Finally, among other sites, let me mention the Transylvanian and Hungarian Unitarian pages (with many links but scarce updating), and, inmodestly, my own Spanish-speaking UU-Hispano website, which includes a news blog that now has a new editor, Mexican Unitarian leader Francisco Javier Lagunes.

Upcoming international SkypeCast on U*U theology

The UUA International Office has informed us about an upcoming SkypeCast on November 28, 2007, entitled "Continuing the Theological Dialogue". Time is 20:00 to 21:00 EST.

At General Assembly ‘07 a theological dialogue between a UU Minister and Scholar, Rev. Paul Rasor, and the Bishop of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church, Rev. Arpad Szabo, was held. It marked an important step forward for grounding our U/U international engagement theologically. This dialogue will be continued and broadened during this month’s SkypeCast.

Participants will include Rev. Derrick Parriat, Vice President of the Unitarian Union of North East India and Rev. Nihal Attanayake, Chairman of Faith and Action Department, UU Church of the Philippines

Presentations by Rev. Parriat and Rev. Attanayake will include responses to the following questions:

What is the basic theological “grounding” of your church group?

Are there emerging theological issues for your church group?

What does your church group believe U/Uism shares internationally?

Presentations will be followed by a Q&A with all SkypeCast participants.

Although the schedule time is inconvenient for Europeans, we hope that Asians and Americans will enjoy this conversation.

For more information about how to access a skypecast using Skype, please visit the Skype website.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog for my 2-year period as the new Secretary of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists! My intention is to provide information and some flavor of what's going on in the Unitarian and Universalist religion internationally.