Resolutions

This Resolution celebrates that since 1853 the United Church of Christ Church Building & Loan Fund has been helping the church live into God’s Economy. The resolution commends the many resources and programs of the United Church of Christ Church Building & Loan Fund to churches, conferences, and religious institutions for the transformation of communities and congregations toward an abundant life for all.

This resolution seeks to affirm both Licensed Ministry and Commissioned Ministry as Authorized Ministries of the United Church of Christ in accordance with the current Constitution and Bylaws of the UCC and to direct the Ministerial Excellence, Support, and Authorization of Local Church Ministries (a Covenanted Ministry of the United Church of Christ) to amend the Manual on Ministry: A Guide to Authorizing Ministry in the United Church of Christ © 2018 to include recommended processes and procedures for authorizing these forms of ministry.

Content warning: abortion, sexual violence, miscarriage

In June 2022, the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturned the fifty-year precedent of Roe v. Wade, which established the right to abortion. This resolution denounces the Dobbs decision, affirms abortion as healthcare, and calls upon the various settings of the United Church of Christ to nonviolently resist abortion bans, protect legal abortions where they exist, and accompany people seeking abortion care.

This resolution calls on the United Church of Christ to do a new study on the United Church of Christ’s relationship with Indian boarding schools and boarding schools in Hawai’i. On May 11, 2022, the Department of the Interior held a press conference to reveal a “Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report.” The report showed that between 1819 and 1969, the United States operated or supported 408 boarding schools including 7 schools in Hawai’i. Although the Executive Summary mentioned 7 schools in Hawai’i, within the report 11 schools are named.

This resolution calls on the United Church of Christ to continue strengthening its longstanding leadership role in the global community in working for digital and communications justice. In the United States and globally, many people do not experience full digital inclusion – that is, they are unable to access electronic communications technology, at an affordable cost, with the digital literacy to use it. Cost, access, and literacy weave together imposing barriers to full civic, economic, and educational inclusion. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the need for virtual access to employment, education, civic, and religious activities and exacerbated the severe impact of gaps in digital inclusion. Moreover, systematic changes in our public and private lives since the beginning of the pandemic demonstrate that online access will continue to be an ever more prevalent need. This resolution calls for: 1) identifying the digital divide–a failure of digital inclusion–as a justice issue; 2) adopting frameworks for ensuring digital justice in UCC programming; 3) advocating for digital communications systems that are accountable to users and workers, are owned by diverse peoples, offer the highest-quality services to all people at affordable prices, and respect and facilitate the autonomy, privacy, and humanity in all people; and 4) reaffirming and celebrating the UCC’s leadership in communications rights and equity and the work of United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry in improving digital equity and communications rights for all people.

This resolution calls on United Church of Christ congregations and individuals to actively plan for and promote electrifying space heating and cooling equipment, appliances, and machines when old ones fail or become outdated as one of the ways to protect God’s earth and its people from climate change emissions, and to become role models for just and equitable electrification for individual members and the broader community.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a one-year period ending in April 2021, over 100,000 beloved people died from an entirely preventable cause of death, accidental drug overdose. The national response to the overdose crisis has been largely shaped by the criminalization and dehumanization of people who use drugs, disproportionately impacting Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. In the enduring spirit of Nixon’s “all-out offensive against public enemy number one (illegal drugs),” the war on people who use drugs has decimated families, incarcerated millions of mostly Black and Brown people and the communities they live in, enabled the spread of infectious diseases such as HCV and HIV, and failed to prevent problematic substance use or make evidence-based treatment for substance use disorder more widely accessible.

There is a more loving and just way, and that way is Harm Reduction. Harm Reduction has been proven to save lives, heal communities, and is positively transforming social narratives and policies on drugs and the people that use them. Harm Reduction finds its roots in the creativity and wisdom of people with lived and living experience of substance use. Harm reduction is understood as a set of practices for minimizing drug related harm, a person-centered philosophy for addressing substance use across the spectrum, as well as a movement for social justice which recognizes the multitude of social determinants that impact a person’s relationship with substance use and their vulnerability to drug related harm.

This resolution calls on the Thirty-Fourth General Synod of the United Church of Christ to support churches and all other settings of the United Church of Christ in engaging in meaningful action to address the scourge of gun violence in our country. Each church and setting is called to pursue a course of action that best fits their skills, capabilities, and understanding. Actions that seek to end gun violence include but are not limited to organizing Guns to Garden events, organizing events promoting safe storage of firearms, participating in raising awareness and fostering education concerning gun violence, advocating for legislative action concerning gun control, and broader mental health services.

This resolution calls on the United Church of Christ and its conferences to collaborate with the Federal government, local organizations and protestant entities to fund the Association of Hawaiian Evangelical Churches Christian Hawaiian language revitalization program (adult education, preschool programs). In 1819 the Federal Government funded the civilization act that funded boarding schools which initiated acts of cultural genocide on Hawaiians and American Indians. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionaries assisted to translate and develop the first Christian Hawaiian language Bible. The Kamehameha Schools was one of eleven boarding schools listed in the May 2022 Department of Interior investigative report that implemented policies of cultural genocide on Hawaiian children. The spoken Christian Hawaiian language has been extinct for centuries. Two hundred years later the AHEC would like to undo the atrocities that were committed by Kamehameha Schools and others by providing Christian Hawaiian language luakini education programs.

Animal consumption damages the earth, fosters violence in families, exploits workers, poisons neighbors, diseases our bodies, misuses land and water. The effects of animal consumption are worse for People of Color and Communities of Color; the work to raise and process animals for consumption is exploitative of the labor of immigrants, people in poverty, and People of Color.

Yet our faith begs us to live in harmony, in covenant with the earth and one another.

This resolution asks the Church to take steps toward understanding, advocating, and in ways with-in its purview implementing, plant-based consumption.

Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues in the 21st century. The increased production of disposable plastic products and the failure of manufacturers to recycle plastic bottles and single use plastics is overwhelming the waste management and the disposal of plastics into landfills or improper disposal. In developing nations with less efficient waste disposal systems, they are disposed and are breaking down and polluting the environment. Plastics pollution has escalated and have become ubiquitous in the soil, water, and the food system. It impacts the health of human and more than human life. It is time that United Church of Christ join environmental organizations, faith communities, and other concerned groups to take action to reduce the plastic pandemic that impacts and threatens life and God’s creation.

Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues in the 21st century. The increased production of disposable plastic products and the failure of manufacturers to recycle plastic bottles and single use plastics is overwhelming the waste management and the disposal of plastics into landfills or improper disposal. In developing nations with less efficient waste disposal systems, they are disposed and are breaking down and polluting the environment. Plastics pollution has escalated and have become ubiquitous in the soil, water, and the food system. It impacts the health of human and more than human life. It is time that United Church of Christ join environmental organizations, faith communities, and other concerned groups to take action to reduce the plastic pandemic that impacts and threatens life and God’s creation.

This resolution is intended to voice support of public-school educators, academic freedom, and equity efforts in schools at a time when public education is threatened through attempts to control curriculum, ban books and media, and restrict strategies to ensure the advancement of equity. The intent of this resolution is to raise awareness and provide members of the United Church of Christ with information that can be used for the development of talking points about these issues.

This Resolution calls on the Thirty-Fourth General Synod of the United Church of Christ to publicly proclaim its support of the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, or like-legislation that establishes a body to study and design Reparations proposals for African Americans. This Resolution also urges partnership between UCC settings where appropriate to organize education, discussion, and direct-action opportunities to further a ministry of Reparatory Justice and Reparations.

This resolution calls on the United Church of Christ to condemn prolonged solitary confinement as a form of torture. The resolution calls on the United Church of Christ to: 1) demand that governments globally end any use of prolonged solitary confinement in their prisons, jails, and detention centers, whether publicly run or contracted with private companies; and 2) raise our voices with human rights groups, survivors of the torture of prolonged isolation, and their loved ones, to replace the practice with humane, rehabilitative alternatives rooted in community and racial justice.

For several decades, political and theological conversations related to LGBTQ+ issues have centered around same-sex relationships for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Even as those conversations have led to significant gains for human and civil rights for LGBTQ+ people, the volume of faith resources dedicated to LGBTQ+ advocacy often have excluded reflection on the unique considerations related to gender identity. Some people have suggested that taking the Bible seriously requires people of faith to stand in opposition to the existence, health, and humanity of transgender and non-binary people. Consequently, gender-expansive people of all demographics and Christian traditions have been made to feel that they must choose between their faith and living a whole, healthy, and authentic life.

The United Church of Christ has staked its claim to be a diverse community of believers and belief. It is our diversity that creates our strength. This diversity calls us to a radical welcome and to widen the table of welcome to our transgender and non-binary siblings.

Transgender and non-binary people already are actively preaching, teaching, leading, pastoring, and offering their time, talent, treasure, and a variety of gifts for ministry and service in the United Church of Christ. The question is not if a person can be transgender, or non-binary, and Christian, but how might we as a Christian denomination advocate for and empower those whom God is already working through to enrich the whole life of the body of Christ.

This resolution calls on local churches of the United Church of Christ of predominantly European descent and UCC local churches in general to declare themselves, their communities and settings as “A White Supremacy Free Zone,” and to publicly express that “We are confronting white supremacy” through declaration, intentional study and action. Calls upon local churches to use “Journey Towards Confronting White Supremacy and Creating a White Supremacy Free Zone Local Congregation: an Intentional Study and Action Guide to challenge Racism and White Supremacy” as a program for implementation.