The process by which the Association undertook this redefinition reveals almost as much about us as the product which resulted. The original impetus for change came from a caucus on Women and Religion. Members of the caucus had noticed that the statement of principles and purposes adopted in 1961 at the time of the merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America, was sexist and exclusive in its language. The group urged the General Assembly to adopt new wording. The Assembly, sensitive to the issues raised, instructed the Board of Trustees to develop a process which would allow the broadest possible participation in reformulating the principles which unite us.

As a result, conferences were held in various places across the continent, numerous constituent groups were solicited for opinions, materials were sent to the congregations for study and feed-back, hearings were held at General Assemblies, the results were collected and new proposals sent to the congregations and finally, in 1984 the General Assembly, meeting in Columbus, Ohio, was presented with a document which had broad support. That document committed the Association to promote "the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large; and the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all."

After so much discussion and debate, and refining and reformulating, it seemed likely the statement of purposes and principles would be adopted overwhelmingly and without change. However, when the item came to the floor of the General Assembly, someone rose to make a last minute amendment to the proposal. He urged that in addition to all the values we had affirmed we add a seventh item affirming and promoting "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." The assembly, with no debate voted unanimously to add that seventh principle to the statement of governing values for the Unitarian Universalist Association.

It is interesting to note, in retrospect, that of all of the seven principles which we have affirmed as central to our religious community, the one which is best known is not one of the six crafted with such great care after months of discussion and deliberation all across the continent. Rather, it is the seventh principle, offered at the penultimate moment, and accepted without debate or dissension by a delegate body noted for its penchant to debate every comma, and to challenge every semi-colon. Indeed, this affirmation of respect for the interdependent web of all existence bids fair to become our defining statement as the twentieth century draws to a close.

It may be that the seventh principle was adopted with a single voice because it was recognized immediately to be right and appropriate to the times in which we find ourselves. It may be that it was adopted without controversy because it seemed harmless--rather like supporting motherhood and apple pie. (After all, who can object to affirming respect for the interdependent web of existence?) Or perhaps the assembly was simply weary of meeting and wanted to move on to the rest of the agenda. I do not know what was in the mind of the person who proposed the seventh principle, nor do I know what was in the minds of the delegates who embraced it, but I do know that as the years have passed, the sweeping reach of that affirmation has become more and more clear to those of us who have thought about its implications.

As I have suggested in another context:

Hidden in this apparently uncomplicated, uncontroversial statement is a radical theological position. The seventh principle calls us to reverence before the world, not some future world, but this miraculous world of our everyday experience. It challenges us to understand the world as reflexive and relational rather than hierarchical. It bespeaks a world in which neither god nor humanity is at the center; in which the center is the void, the ever fecund matrix out of which being emerges. It bespeaks a world in which, because all things impinge on all other things, everything matters. It challenges us to accept personal responsibility for the whole and for all parts of the whole, since in an interactive network, every decision, every relationship has significance for every other decision and every other relationship. It calls us to trust the process, the creative evolving, renewing, redeeming process which brings us into being, which sustains us in being, and which transforms our being. It offers a vision of a world in which the holy, the sacred is incarnated in every moment, in every aspect of being, a world in which God is always fully present and in which God is always fully at risk.

From "The Heart of a Faith for the Twenty-First Century" in UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM SELECTED ESSAYS, 1994, UUMA, p. 37.

The seventh principle runs counter to a whole host of assumptions which have dominated western thought for the past two-thousand years: that God, the sacred, the holy is responsible for the world but is not to be identified with it and is not tied to its fate; that human beings, while in some sense responsible for the earth, are of a different order of creation, above, apart from, and distanced from the world of nature, indeed only a little lower than the angels; that the world of matter is less to be cherished than the world of mind or spirit that, indeed, mind and matter can be separated; that the individual can be separated from the abiding processes that brought it into being and the vast patterns of which it is a reflection.

The seventh principle insists that the sacred cannot be experienced apart from the concrete, physical world in which we live and move and have our being. The seventh principle suggests that the worth and dignity of the individual cannot exist separate from the context in which the individual is rooted and out of which the specific emerges. The seventh principle suggests that what is sacred is the whole process by which being emerges from the void, and that all of existence is part of that sacred process. Therefore, any violence we inflict on others, and on the earth leaves scar-tissue in the human soul. The seventh principle denies all dualism and insists that finally all things are one thing, and everything is sacred or nothing is sacred, that self-respect is but a reflection of respect for others and for the larger implicate order of existence.

In short, the seventh principle is an invitation to develop a religious understanding rooted in this world which is our home, an invitation to evolve a morality founded upon a conviction that all things are one thing; a reminder that all things are sacred, that we must deal gently with each other and the world; and a affirmation that our emergence, our existence and our destiny are part of a larger pattern which embraces all of existence.

For a decade, now, we have been learning the implications of the affirmation we made when we embraced a concern for the interdependent web as central to our religious vision. Like all great principles, this one is deceptively simple, and profoundly challenging. It is not difficult to live with a sense of respect for the web of existence, when we focus our attention on that which enlists our sympathy or our empathy. We are affronted when baby seals with their large, almost human eyes are slaughtered; we are deeply concerned when large-brained, playful dolphins are destroyed in tuna nets. There is an affinity between us and them, and we are moved by their plight.

We are concerned to affirm the centrality of the interdependent web when our interests are threatened--when vast tracts of rain-forest fall before the chain saws, when we learn that there is not a single ocean fishery on the planet which is not under great stress as a result of over-fishing by fleets of trawlers using ecologically unsound methods. We are touched deeply by the prospect that innocence may suffer, that species which offer us no threat may face extinction because of our greed or our thoughtlessness--the spotted owl, the tortoise, the snail darter, the condor, the bald eagle--and we mount campaigns to save them from oblivion, sensing that their fate may well presage our own. In these instances it is relatively easy to embrace the ethics, the morality, the religious vision offered by the call to reverence before the interdependent web of all existence.

But, though that ethic and that religious vision may be complicated when translated into public policy, it is simple compared to the paradoxical challenges presented by that part of the web which is not harmless to us; for, we seldom choose to reflect on the fact that there are spiders in the interdependent web of all existence. The moral challenge was highlighted this past summer when articles appeared in the paper concerning a debate over what to do with the last remaining samples of small-pox virus. Some people argued that even frozen and encased in a vault and surrounded by the most sophisticated security precautions, the very existence of this virulent scourge represented an unacceptable level of risk and therefore, it should be destroyed, lest it escape and wreck havoc on the human community once again. Others argued that dangerous as the smallpox virus undoubtedly is, there may be secrets hidden deep in its very structure, things we need to know for our own future well-being, and therefore the risk of destroying critical information outweighs the risks of keeping the virus alive for a few more years. After all, extinction is forever. (Reading this debate, I was struck by how much it echoes the debate over the death-penalty.)

The seventh principle would suggest a harder moral challenge. It would suggest that all parts of the interdependent web are deserving respect, including that which preys upon us, that the smallpox virus, or the AIDS virus, or cockroach or the deer-tick have a moral claim on us, that they, two are expressions of the sacred pattern out of which all emerges. Their value is inherent in their own being, and is not dependent upon how we perceive them. The sanctity of all living things is but part of our recognition that the world in which we find ourselves, at all levels, from microcosm to macrocosm, from microbe to mammal is sacred in and of itself and not because of the value we attach to it. In an interdependent system all things are of value or nothing is of value.

How do you live with that kind of principle? Does it suggest that we have no right to keep our homes free of pests, to keep our bodies free of dangerous microbes, to defend ourselves against that which preys upon us? I guess not even I am that radical. I believe that in an interdependent web, the larger whole depends upon the ability of each part to flourish and develop. In order for that to happen, we must be able to defend ourselves and protect ourselves. What we are not permitted to do is to adopt methods and mechanisms of defense which rend the very fabric of existence.

On the one hand, we must not be so avid for life that we refuse to accept our own mortality. All of us will die; all of us must die; for, the well-being of the whole depends not only upon our living but also upon our dying. A good death is as much to be desired as a good life and our efforts to lift ourselves out of the web of being by pretending that somehow death can be evaded has done much damage to the fabric of existence. To affirm the interdependent web is to affirm and accept that death is a part of life, and therefore, we will always be at risk, we will always be confronted with danger, we will always be threatened from one quarter or another. Security will never be more than momentary and approximate and total security will always be an illusion.

On the other hand, we are not required to assume a defenseless posture in the face of disease and suffering. What we are required to do is to avoid the temptation to wage wars of extinction against that which we see as threatening. We have every right--indeed, if we are to fulfill our function within the web of being, we have an obligation--to develop vaccines and serums which will protect us from the invisible agents which are our only natural predators. We have a right, indeed an obligation to develop strategies which help us live richer, fuller, healthier lives. But if we are to take seriously the moral implications of the fact that we exist within an interdependent web of relationships, we cannot look with equanimity upon any process which contemplates protecting the human community by eradicating everything which threatens us; for, all of life, human and non-human, beneficial and threatening participates in the sacred and is deserving of respect in its own right. Indeed the presence of threat has been one of the engines of change and evolution. We owe as much to that which threatens us as we owe to our own ingenuity for whatever progress the human community has experienced.

Had I been part of the process deciding the fate of the smallpox virus, I suppose would not have voted to destroy the last remaining representatives of this life form. I would have voted to take what steps we could to protect the human community short of seeking the extinction of this formidable adversary. I would have chosen to keep the web intact, choosing to believe that all life is sacred, and convinced that only with a reverent attitude toward that which is least like me and even hostile toward me am I able to live a moral life in a world which has decreed that from moment to moment my life depends upon the sacrifice of others, the incorporation of others into my own being.

Faith in the sanctity of life, respect for the interdependent web of all existence requires of me that I affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all existence, that I treat with respect that which is different and dangerous, that I live in gratitude for that which dies that I may live, that I accept my own death as part of the price I pay for having lived and as part of the process by which the sacred pattern is sustained, and above all, that I resist the temptation to engage in wars of extermination against any one or any thing, for ultimately, such efforts are suicidal.

"We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part," said the General Assembly, meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in 1984. What had started as a simple attempt to restate the principles of Unitarian Universalism in language which would not be sexist and exclusive evolved in a way no one anticipated. The result was a religious affirmation more radical than anyone at the time recognized, which added a new topic to the religious agenda of our time, and implied a broader moral and ethical imperative. What that affirmation implies we are only beginning to see and to understand.

At the very least, it calls for a new relation between human beings and the world in which they it are rooted; it calls for a new respect for all aspects of existence; it calls for a new willingness to be part of the process. It calls for a broader humility and a deeper gratitude for the reflexive, cooperative interdependent reality in which we are sustained. It calls for reverence before the simple and the complex, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the familiar and the strange, the supportive and the threatening. It calls for seeing the face of God in all things--the harp seal, the dolphin, the human babe, the deer tick, the cockroach, the smallpox virus and yes, even the aids virus. In everything the sacred is emerging and we are inextricably caught up in that emergent process.

That, my friends, is the gospel we are called to proclaim in this world, a gospel which is "rooted in a deep, reverent, mystical sense of being an integral part of a sacred and holy reality which is the interdependent web of being. We are called to define the religious and spiritual

dimensions of the ecological crisis confronting the world and to preach the gospel of a world in which each is a part of all, in which...every one [and every thing] is sacred, and every place is holy ground...