Resources for Widening Our Circle

The UU Institute has a course called Knotty Conversations for Dismantling White Supremacy. It’s $30 person, self guided, and there’s no advantage to signing up as a group, but it would be good to have a group of people to process with during the recommended meetings. There are 7 modules and they recommend 7 monthly meetings. You are provided with all the resources for prep and the session plans. Email wideningthecircle@usguu.org for support in forming a group.

We invite you to read the 2023-24 Annual Report and spend a little time getting acquainted with all the branches of the USG family and the varied interests in which USG members engage.

Linked HERE is the list of Widening the Circle recommendations. 

We encourage reading (or re-reading) the avatars’ stories from the Widening the Circle report. These are composite accounts of experiences which people with identities not well-represented in UU congregations have had. 

We recommend the Microsoft Diversity, Equity and Inclusion sessions on Bias and Allyship.

Read or listen to this sermon, Welcoming as a Spiritual Practice, by Alex Kapitan, who was a facilitator of the TransInclusion workshop USG offered last year. And please also watch the October 22, 2923 Sunday service with Rev. Kev’s sermon about his family’s journey supporting his trans daughter Eliza (if you don’t want to watch the whole service, watch from 15:15 to 27:30.) And if you didn’t hear one or both of CB Beal’s two sermons, email WideningTheCircle@usguu.org for links. 

Widening the Circle at USG

At USG, the Widening the Circle (WtC) work began in February 2020 with a group of USG members and staff, some but not all, in leadership positions who considered each of the report’s recommendations, and compiled a list of GOALS AND ACTIONS FOR USG (a different format from above.) The objective is to be a truly open and inclusive community, in which members of all racial, ethnic, LGBTQIA, economic, ability and other identities are actively recruited, welcomed and connected.

The Widening the Circle Report was created by a Commission on Institutional Change that the UUA Board charged in 2017 with supporting long-term cultural and institutional change that redeems the anti-oppressive and multi-cultural promise and ideals of Unitarian Universalism and is accountable to the richness of our diverse heritage. The report was presented at GA in 2019.

At USG, our work was also rooted in the proposed 8^th Principle, adopted by USG in May 2019: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse, multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.“

As we moved to the implementation phase in the fall of 2022, we began meeting with USG groups as well as holding Q&A sessions with the congregation as a whole.

Additional information is included in Widening the Circle’s 2023 Annual Report and on the WtC Process page. To learn more or get involved, please contact us at  WideningtheCircle@usguu.org