Gloria’s write-up was in Encanto Community Church’s monthly newsletter and is quite helpful!
Editor’s note:
All resolutions passed except for #8.
A new website housing each and every resolution passed by the United Church of Christ’s General Synod is now live. The site is uccresolutions.org. Although resolutions have previously been available in digital archives of General Synod minutes and indexes of them have been kept, the new site streamlines the collection to make all of them much easier to find. It also includes an updated search function, searchable by year or keyword. Learn more here.
Here’s the summary piece:
On Friday, June 30th through July 4th, the 34th General Synod of the United Church of Christ will meet in Indianapolis, IN. General Synod is the representative body of delegates that vote on pending resolutions which may or may not be accept by this body. The administrative work and resolutions of the United Church of Christ guide the ministries of the UCC for the forthcoming years. The conferences and local churches are not required to accept the resolutions in their ministries but are encouraged to study and decide what path each will take regarding their personal ministries.
General Synod this year will witness the closure of the Reverend Doctor John Dorhauer’s tenure as General Minister and President of the UCC. They will also vote on the Search Committee’s recommendation for the new General Minister and President. Their recommendation is the Reverend Doctor Karen George Thompson. “The committee was impressed by Rev. Dr. Thompson’s pastoral presence and theological depth; bold vision for a decolonized Christianity and the United Church of Christ as a home for people with multiple religious belonging; dedication to collaborative leadership and bridge-building; and skill as a manager and administrator. Rev. Dr. Thompson is Jamaican and immigrated to the United States as a teenager with her parents. Her identities as Jamaican, an immigrant, and part of the African diaspora are central to her sense of self and approach to ministry. (Official Recommendation of GMP Search Committee)”
I would like to inform you of the resolutions that will be brought before the delegates for voting:
Resolutions of Witness – Very short summaries
Committee 1: Denouncing the Dobbs Decision and Proclaiming Abortion as Healthcare
This resolution denounces the Dobbs decision, affirms abortion as healthcare, and calls upon the various settings of the United Church of Christ to nonviolently resist abortion bans, protect legal abortions where they exist, and accompany people seeking abortion care.
Committee 2: A Resolution Calling for a New Study by our Church on our Relationship with the Indian Boarding Schools and the Boarding Schools in Hawai’i
This resolution calls on the United Church of Christ to do a new study on the United Church of Christ’s relationship with Indian boarding schools and boarding schools in Hawai’i.
Committee 3: Closing the Digital Divide: Calling on the United Church of Christ to Seek Digital Justice and Inclusion
This resolution calls for: 1) identifying the digital divide–a failure of digital inclusion–as a justice issue; 2) adopting frameworks for ensuring digital justice in UCC programming; 3) advocating for digital communications systems that are accountable to users and workers, are owned by diverse peoples, offer the highest-quality services to all people at affordable prices, and respect and facilitate the autonomy, privacy, and humanity in all people; and 4) reaffirming and celebrating the UCC’s leadership in communications rights and equity and the work of United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry in improving digital equity and communications rights for all people.
Committee 4: A Resolution Urging Planning for and Implementing Electrification
This resolution calls on United Church of Christ congregations and individuals to actively plan for and promote electrifying space heating and cooling equipment, appliances, and machines when old ones fail or become outdated as one of the ways to protect God’s earth and its people from climate change emissions, and to become role models for just and equitable electrification for individual members and the broader community.
Committee 5: Faithful Advocacy for Intersectional and Transformational Healing in Harm Reduction
Harm Reduction finds its roots in the creativity and wisdom of people with lived and living experience of substance use. Harm reduction is understood as a set of practices for minimizing drug related harm, a person-centered philosophy for addressing substance use across the spectrum, as well as a movement for social justice which recognizes the multitude of social determinants that impact a person’s relationship with substance use and their vulnerability to drug related harm.
Committee 6: Affirming Guns to Gardens and Other Gun Violence Prevention Ministries
This resolution calls on the Thirty-Fourth General Synod of the United Church of Christ to support churches and all other settings of the United Church of Christ in engaging in meaningful action to address the scourge of gun violence in our country. Each church and setting is called to pursue a course of action that best fits their skills, capabilities, and understanding.
Committee 7: A Resolution to Urge All Responsible Entities to Join in Reparations to Fund Christian Hawaiian Language Education Programs to Undo a Century of Extinction. Americanization and Indoctrination Policies Extinguished the Original Christian Hawaiian Alphabet
This resolution calls on the United Church of Christ and its conferences to collaborate with the Federal government, local organizations and protestant entities to fund the Association of Hawaiian Evangelical Churches Christian Hawaiian language revitalization program (adult education, preschool programs).
Committee 8: Encouraging a Plant-based Life
Yet our faith begs us to live in harmony, in covenant with the earth and one another. This resolution asks the Church to take steps toward understanding, advocating, and in ways with-in its purview implementing, plant-based consumption.
Committee 9: Free from Plastic Pollution
It is time that United Church of Christ join environmental organizations, faith communities, and other concerned groups to take action to reduce the plastic pandemic that impacts and threatens life and God’s creation.
Committee 10: A Resolution Supporting Public School Educators, Academic Freedom, and Equity Efforts in Schools
This resolution is intended to voice support of public-school educators, academic freedom, and equity efforts in schools at a time when public education is threatened through attempts to control curriculum, ban books and media, and restrict strategies to ensure the advancement of equity. The intent of this resolution is to raise awareness and provide members of the United Church of Christ with information that can be used for the development of talking points about these issues.
Committee 11: A Resolution to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans
This Resolution calls on the Thirty-Fourth General Synod of the United Church of Christ to publicly proclaim its support of the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, or like-legislation that establishes a body to study and design Reparations proposals for African Americans.
Committee 12: A Resolution Condemning Prolonged Solitary Confinement as a Form of Torture
This resolution calls on the United Church of Christ to condemn prolonged solitary confinement as a form of torture. The resolution calls on the United Church of Christ to: 1) demand that governments globally end any use of prolonged solitary confinement in their prisons, jails, and detention centers, whether publicly run or contracted with private companies; and 2) raise our voices with human rights groups, survivors of the torture of prolonged isolation, and their loved ones, to replace the practice with humane, rehabilitative alternatives rooted in community and racial justice.
Committee 13: Actively Affirming the Human Dignity of Transgender and Nonbinary Persons
Transgender and non-binary people already are actively preaching, teaching, leading, pastoring, and offering their time, talent, treasure, and a variety of gifts for ministry and service in the United Church of Christ. The question is not if a person can be transgender, or non-binary, and Christian, but how might we as a Christian denomination advocate for and empower those whom God is already working through to enrich the whole life of the body of Christ.
Committee 14: A Resolution Calling on United Church of Christ Local Churches to Witness “A White Supremacy Free Zone” & Confronting White Supremacy
This resolution calls on local churches of the United Church of Christ of predominantly European descent and UCC local churches in general to declare themselves, their communities and settings as “A White Supremacy Free Zone,” and to publicly express that “We are confronting white supremacy” through declaration, intentional study and action. Calls upon local churches to use “Journey Towards Confronting White Supremacy and Creating a White Supremacy Free Zone Local Congregation: an Intentional Study and Action Guide to challenge Racism and White Supremacy” as a program for implementation.
Full Resolutions of the proposed Resolutions for Witness can be found at https://generalsynod.org/proposed-resolutions
Let all of us keep the delegates, UCC leadership in our prayers.
Blessings, Rev. Gloria