So, from the official (I think it's official...) UU Peacemakers blog:
Congregations voted to place the Peacemaking Statement of Conscience on the agenda of General Assembly (GA) this summer. The participation rate was 74% (counting "yes," "no," and "abstain" votes), with 38% of congregations voting "yes" and 0.8% voting "no". The remaining congregations either voted "abstain" or did not vote.74% participated. That's spectacular. Since the old process had seen nothing better (as I recall) than 10% and the new one mandated a minimum of 25% as a sort of "quorum" to permit GA to consider it, I had thought it was setting us up for a lot of failure. I'll take my crow medium, with some BBQ sauce, please.
74% - 38% = 36% -- of whom 35.2% abstained?
What is that about?
It takes energy, effort, time, people... to respond. We've historically mustered a lot of ignorance and apathy over issues.... And now we're seeing active apathy? Or is that conflict, inability to agree on how to respond?
Alas, that 38% in favor looks far less spectacular in that light.
But I look forward to seeing what's next, because--as I said--I think this is really important.
