ONA Vote in SW Conference UCC

by Rev. Olive Elaine Hinnant, MDiv, DMin

The Southwest Conference

Think wide open spaces.  Think flat-top mountains—mesas.  Think sunshine, dry air and rainbows.  Think of a landscape that was once the bottom of the ocean and is now a desert.  The views are far reaching.  The Southwest.  Change. Beauty. Erosion.  Spacious places, in my experience, are dwelling places for God.  For me, the theological concept of “salvation” can be described as spaciousness.  This same spaciousness entered the Southwest Conference, UCC (SWC) when it voted to become an Opening and Affirming Conference at its annual meeting in Scottsdale, AZ, on April 24, and April 25, 2009. 

The SWC includes 43 churches in an area covering El Paso, Texas, all of New Mexico and all of Arizona, all three areas bordering Mexico.  The first congregations now belonging to the United Church of Christ were created in 1880s with the newer churches being established in the 1980’s and 90’s.
The most recent church to be taken in covenant was Yuma UCC in 2008.  Current Churches in Formation include three Hispanic churches located in Sahuarita, AZ, Phoenix, AZ, and Juarez, Mexico.  The Conference is also working with a Marshallese congregation in Tucson, AZ.  

Bringing the Resolution

Almost half of the churches were already Open and Affirming (ONA) at the time of the vote, says Holly Herman, SWC staff member who explained the development of the ONA resolution to me,

The ONA Resolution plus the list of co-sponsors was given to the Board of Directors in March.  The Board added one phrase (taken from the friendly amendment), and endorsed it to be taken to the SWC Annual Meeting on April 24-25 in Scottsdale, AZ.  In addition, Conference minister John Dorhauer wrote of his endorsement as part of his column both “In the Loop” and in the UCC News.  The SWC offered workshops around the ONA Resolution in Phoenix in January, in Tucson in February, and in Albuquerque in March.  There will also be a workshop at Annual Meeting prior to the vote.

The body of the ONA Resolution is based upon Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he defines the Body of Christ: “in which there is no dissension, but where members may have the same care for one another, so that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it, and if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. (12:26-27). Thus the next portion reads:

Church in the Southwest

This conference and these 43 individual churches have had their share of pressing concerns over the last 129 years, such as: life on the border, survival of small churches in the desert, immigration and living in a tri-racial/tri-cultural land, thus it is a remarkable testimony of their faith in such a diverse land.  In addition, their survival as “progressive Christians” appealing to liberal, primarily white, educated folk can be challenging in a land long occupied by Native and Spanish peoples whose way of life was decimated by the “white man”.

Long before John Robinson, the pastor of the English separatists church in Leyden, Holland, declared to his congregation that was travelling to the “New World” in 1623,

There were communities of faith coexisting with the land and its Creator.  The Native American community does not have limitations upon people whose sexual expression is in the minority, nor upon what it means to be “male” or “female”.  Rather, in their culture, there is a place and a calling that welcomes the gifts of difference.  People of Spanish descent or as the locals say—Spaniards—came to this territory in 1600’s and founded missions, churches, both Protestant and Catholic, and schools, many that still exist today. 

While the Native Americans focus on tribal community, the Spaniards cherish family, a particular bond that thickens generation to generation.  Blood ties with family are closer than any policy or pronouncement by a higher authority, even the Church, with some exception.  In a New Mexico parish I served, the people in the congregation stood with its lesbian pastor over the denominational concerns for policy or biblical interpretation.  I had become family.  In family, blood ties and connections come first.

The Final Vote

Larry Hays, member of United Church Santa Fe in Santa Fe, who had assisted his congregation in becoming the first Open and Affirming Church in the SWC in 1994 witnessed God’s revelation of yet more light and truth in the vote on April 25.  He says, “It was an honor for me to represent my church for the ONA vote at the conference.  The leaders of the conference made a safe place for those who were opposed to the ONA as well as those who were for it to express their opinions and still be "welcomed at the table." The vote was 136 for and 11 against it, with a very healthy discussion on both sides.” 

On reflection of the annual conference Hays added, “It is always good for me to be in the midst of other UCC members and conference leaders.  It gives me a sense of being a part of wider group of fellow UCC members.

God’s light and truth have dawned upon this conference in 2009—the vote to become ONA aligns our conference more fully with the existing beauty and nature and peoples found through out the Southwest.  It is this interdependence between land and people that is so valued and continues to teach us our place in the greater scheme of life. 

This is truly a salvific moment as defined by theologian Paul Tillich wrote about the meaning of salvation.  Concerned with the rifts in church and society he had witnessed in Nazi Germany, in the 1930s and 40s, “Healing means reuniting that which is estranged, giving a center to what is split, overcoming the split between God and ourselves, ourselves and our world, as well as the splits within ourselves.”[i] 

[i] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 166.