Michigan's Governor Snyder signed a new set of discrimination laws yesterday.  "Senate Substitute for House Bill No. 4188" states:

"Private child placing agencies, including faith-based child placing agencies, have the right to free exercise of religion under both the state and federal constitutions.  Under well-settled principles of constitutional law, this right includes the freedom to abstain from conduct that conflicts with an agency's sincerely held religious beliefs."

Both faith-based and non-faith-based agencies receive government money.  Given the separation of church and state, it should be the case that agencies receiving federal or state money are not allowed to religiously discriminate in who they serve.  However, this separation has been eroded over the years in a multitude of ways, from President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision. 

Even so, this is a new level of affront to freedom of religion.  Hobby Lobby isn't receiving government money to do its work.  It's a for-profit organization.  Adoption is a different sort of business.  Half of adoption agencies are faith-based in Michigan -- Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and the evangelical Bethany Christian Services. How much money are they receiving from the state?  Michigan Radio reports that it is "up to $10 thousand dollars a child." 

This is most notably an attack on same-sex couples.  The Catholics and Methodists both do not recognize same-sex marriage, and the president of Bethany Christian Services, William Blacquiere, has said, "At Bethany, we would never deny a family for their secular status, or single-parent, or anything of that nature. However, if the family would be in conflict with our religious beliefs, we would assist them to go to another agency."

Actually right now judges are stopped from granting two-parent same-sex adoptions already.  Same-sex parents who adopt usually end up with only one of them as the adoptive parent.  This is what started the court case that led to Michigan's challenge to the same-sex marriage ban.  And with a Supreme Court decision potentially changing the marriage equation, this might change, but right now this is the case.  So the religious right is getting ducks in a row to make sure that if you can get married in Michigan you can still be banned from adopting, denied housing, barred from public accommodations, and fired from your job the day after your wedding.  Seriously.  I do not exaggerate.  This is currently the case that all these forms of discrimination are legal, but our legislators are writing laws that ensure that they're not just legal by the default of having no legal protections from discrimination, but explicitly and purposefully legal.

However, it is not just same-sex couples who might be denied adoption.  So who else might conflict with the religious beliefs of these Christian organizations?

• Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and any people of non-Christian faiths
• Atheists, agnostics, and the unchurched
• Single parents and unwed couples

It wasn't that long ago that people had religious objections to interracial marriage and interracial adoption.  Even that most abhorrent form of discrimination could be seen as legal with this new legislation. Our legislature has been hard at work lately making sure that their rights to discriminate are protected at every turn.  What they're worried about, it seems, is their freedom to hate, and what the corporations want. 

What's missing in all of this, of course, is what's best for the children. 

The UUA President, the Rev. Peter Morales published a working paper titled "Congregations and Beyond" last week.  It's available in its entirety here.  In it he says, "I am realizing in a profound way that congregations cannot be the only way we
 connect with people." and "We have long defined ourselves as an association of congregations. We need to think
 of ourselves as a religious movement." 

The Rev. Morales says, "
Congregations as local parishes arose in a different era. They arose in a time of limited
 mobility and communication. Most members lived within a couple of miles of their
 church."  This is something that I've been thinking about recently, as well.  The time that the church is where you go to in order to hear the latest ideas or even the latest gossip is a time that's behind us.  The church is no longer the central, or even a central, hub for how people get and exchange information and ideas.  There are still things that churches do better than other institutions, but those things are fewer and far between.  We're no longer the best source of therapy--the psychological profession, as it emerged, has taken over that role.  We're no longer where you might hear the best, most engaging lectures--you tube gives you access to the best in the world, and it's a rare church with a minister of that level of academic excellence.  We're no longer the place where you hear first what is going on in your community -- our newspapers and even our friendships are available 24/7 on the computer.  We are, still, the best form for worship, I think, although much of that is available in electronic form, as well, except for the communal aspect.  We do retain the role of being one primary way that brings together groups of people for personal connection -- the social role of face-to-face regular gathering is filled less and less by other groups in this society, while we're still going strong.  But the point is, congregations are less needed in many people's minds, and, accordingly, we're not growing.

The two-part strategy the Rev. Morales outlines is:

1. Congregations remain the base

   
2. Focus energy on creating a movement beyond the congregation

Honestly, it looks pretty much like a one-part strategy to me, as part 1 is basically just reassuring us that this congregational thing that we're already doing will still be important.  So what does part 2 entail?  Looks like his answer is social media, re-engaging the identity organizations formerly known as "affiliates," small groups of other undefined sorts, and social action. 

It is, well, vague.  And not clear exactly what it would entail that's not being done currently. 

But the question that he points to, well, that's intriguing.  Morales points out the there are, as we've known, bunches of people who identify as UU and who don't attend UU churches.  And there are bunches of people who were raised UU who don't attend UU churches.  Some of them are fairly well connected to UUism in other ways -- he points to the fact that a significant number of people who attend SUUSI don't attend any UU congregation.

I'm sure any parish minister can name dozens of potential, former, or raised-UUs in that minister's geographic area who are not church members.  And, like Morales who says we need "A great deal more research about those who identify as UUs but are not members of
 a congregation," most of us don't know why these UU-types are not UU-affiliated in our towns. 

But what I think is new about "Congregations and Beyond" is that Peter Morales is not suggesting we find out why they're not in churches, but, rather, find out what they are interested in doing that would connect them to our movement in other ways.  Some people will never be church-goers, he's saying, but that doesn't mean that they can't be part of the UU religious movement.

It's a radical concept and one we ministers often argue against, saying such things as, "You aren't a Unitarian Universalist if you're not a church member, because the Unitarian Universalist Association is an association of congregations."

But I also know that there were a few years for me -- four of them, to be exact, the college years -- where I was not in a congregation but very much considered my religion to be Unitarian Universalism.  I didn't attend church in my college town, which didn't have a vital campus ministry in those years, and I would occasionally attend when I was home from school, but not often, because my church didn't have any specific get-together for those of us home on holidays or summers from college, and so I wandered off from us as an association of congregations, but not from my UU identity. 

I have trouble envisioning the way we strengthen these sorts of connections and grow this "movement" Morales speaks of, but I hope we'll keep talking about these ideas and exploring the potential.