Opinion, by John Eichrodt, EUU member
This article is based on the presentation by John Eichrodt at the NAUA Summit Panel entitled Liberal Religious Faith, Unity and Diversity (October 4th, 2025).
Introduction
Main question under consideration: Can our UU faith be considered a worldwide faith? Is it a worldwide faith? Is it on the world map of major faiths that persons around the world can claim as their own? My answer is yes. In this short article, I will try to give the main reasons why I think it is, despite the wide diversity in our theologies around the world and in the many different ways we come together. I will try to do so first by sharing my personal experience in Europe, and then the major developments in Europe as well as around the world. This essentially spans a 50-year period from 1970 to 2020.
1. My personal experience in France from 1970 to 1982.
I met my wife in Togo while I was in the Peace Corps and decided to immigrate to France in 1969. This was a difficult decision involving culture, profession, and my faith. I was a Unitarian. When I began living in France and when someone would ask me what my religion was, I would naively say: ‘I am a Unitarian.’ I received blank stares, and of course the question: ‘’what is that?’’ I quickly found out that there were no French Unitarians in France.
Consequence:
I could not claim my faith in France; I could not affirm my spiritual identity. There is a sentiment of loss and emptiness when you realise that you don’t exist any longer in your faith; when it is not recognised. This is existentially almost unbearable. Before coming to France, I had known who I was in large part because of my Unitarian faith. I discovered how difficult it was to claim your faith, to be able to be yourself, when that faith is not recognised institutionally.
2. Establishing Unitarianism in France and in Europe. A Time of Optimism
This experience prepared me to participate in the development of our UU faith first in Europe and then around the world.
Connecting.
In 1980, I discovered the Church of the Larger Fellowship (the CLF) and joined. Thanks to the CLF, I could again connect with my faith identity even if it was still based in the US.
Europe.
In 1982, the Minister of the CLF, Dr. George Marshall , helped to organise the European Unitarian Universalist association (EÙU) by bringing UUs from around Europe together. In the association, there were many Americans but not only. I went regularly to EUU retreats with my wife and children. With other families and children at these retreats, my children were able to experience the reality of our Unitarian faith and to discover its basic principles. Decades later, I am convinced they know better who they are in part because of that experience in our European Unitarian community. It was real, legitimate, and character forming. They could develop their identity with considerable coherence, comfortably in tolerance and freedom. I believe that if there had been no EUU, my family would have evolved quite differently.
France.
In 1982, Dr. Marshall also helped me connect with the International Association of Religious Freedom, the IARF. I was therefore able to attend the IARF regional meeting, in Montpellier France that year. At that meeting. 12 of the participants including myself formed the Association Unitarienne Française (The French Unitarian Association). As a result, Unitarianism could exist in France.
But, we quickly ran into problems. One of our main difficulties was that we had no neutral model for what we were trying to do. Our faith was not clear. This resulted in the emergence of 3 factions that eventually fractured our initiative in the following years. The factions mutually excluded each other from the association. The three factions were the standard factions we often find in UU communities: Christian, Deist, and Humanist. This diversity was too much to handle for our inexperienced French unitarian community.
The World.
In 1990, the IARF held its conference in Hamburg. There, I met religious liberals from around the world. It was a heady experience since I realised that religious liberals had been coming together for more than a 100 years successfully.
At that conference, a major event occurred that would affect the future of Unitarian Universalism globally. During the conference, Unitarians from around the world gathered together in one room for a meeting to hear Rev David Usher plead for the creation of an International Unitarian Universalist Association. He believed the time was ripe. During his presentation, in that crowded room, we stood shoulder to shoulder feeling the electricity in the air. We were conscious of the importance of what was happening, of what we could set in motion. Our expectations were met. The meeting mandated David Usher to go ahead with the initiative, which he did successfully.
Five years later, in March 1995, in Essex Massachusetts, the Unitarians from around the world met and established the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists. They gave it a constitution, a budget, and a volunteer staff. The major challenge they had to meet was defining our world-wide UU Faith, agreeing on a definition that could give meaningful unity to the diverse UU communities around the world. After lengthy discussions, including one all night discussion, they did it. They unanimously adopted a common Universal Declaration of our U U faith. This was a declaration that brought unity out of our diversity. Our world-wide faith was born and became a living reality around the world.
Development of the ICUU
In the following 25 years, the ICUU met regularly, held seminars, reached out to UUs, and put our UU faith on the world map. I myself attended many of their meetings, where I always experienced the feeling of being Unitarian with the others no matter wherever they came from. There was an inherent common, spiritual energy present. We could each say ‘I am Unitarian’ or ‘Universalist’ and claim our Unitarian Universalist faith whether we were from France, England, Germany, Transylvania, the Khasi hills, the Philippines, the U.S. or from any other country around the world.
3. The Universal Declaration of our UU Faith.
The declaration has since been accepted by almost all UUs around the world. Many of the key phrases are profoundly significant, especially so since they bring alive what all UUs have in common, thus giving unity to our faith around the world.
The Universal Declaration is quoted from the Principles and Purposes of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, which is in the preamble of its constitution.*
The Universal Declaration reads:
‘’We, the member groups of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, affirming our belief in religious community based on:
- liberty of conscience and individual thought in matters of faith,
- the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
- justice and compassion in human relations,
- responsible stewardship in human relations,
- and our commitment to democratic principles,
declare our purposes to be:
- to serve the Infinite Spirit of Life and the human community by strengthening the worldwide Unitarian and Universalist faith,
- to affirm the variety and richness of our living traditions,
- to facilitate mutual support among member organizations,
- to promote our ideals and principles around the world,
- to provide models of liberal religious response to the human condition which upholds our common values.’’
*adopted March 1995. By the year 2020, it was agreed to by almost all UU communities in the world . The word ‘Universal’ instead of ‘International’ for the title of the Declaration is used in this article because the Declaration is intended for both persons and communities around the world.