The Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) just sent an email to congregational leaders saying: “The Ministerial Fellowship Committee voted recently to remove the Rev. Dr. Marian Stewart from fellowship for violating the terms of her probation. These terms were set in 2023 by the Committee based upon a complaint against Rev. Dr. Stewart. Refusal to adhere to those terms violates Rule 21 of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, which requires ministers in fellowship to fully cooperate with the terms of their probation.”
Marian Stewart has already been removed from the online UUA database of professional staff. But her name is not listed on the UUA webpage “UUA Clergy Removed of Resigned from Fellowship with Completed or Pending Misconduct Investigations.” So maybe this is not misconduct? If so, then what’s this all about? Your guess is as good as mine as to why she was removed from fellowship.
Another website says that Stewart is retired from active ministry. So the violation of MFC probation could be anything from she just didn’t bother filling in MFC paperwork (because: retired), to — who knows what.
I understand the desire for transparency has to be balanced with the need for privacy and confidentiality. But somehow this email makes me feel that the balances have tipped well away from transparency in this case.
I also understand how hard it can be to come up with a process that covers all eventualities, so I’m willing to cut the MFC a fair amount of slack. But still, this email feels like it’s aimed at insiders, people who are already in the know — and those like me who are not insiders are left outside wondering what’s going on.
Part of my angst here is that I’ve spent a good part of my career in Unitarian Universalism cleaning up after clergy misconduct (and misconduct by other paid professionals). Clergy misconduct, in my view, thrives in secrecy and ambiguity. Thus when I see ambiguous statements like this one coming from the UUA, it bothers me.
Oh well. Listen to me whining. Heck, lots of things bother me. Just because something bothers me, don’t let it bother you.
I got that email, too, and was able to find out much more about the case than I would have expected from the website of the church in question. I will leave for others to decide whether that is wise, but because it is one-sided it doesn’t provide any illumination.
I thoroughly hate the UUA’s damned ministers list. It mixes the living and the dead, and those who committed serious crimes with those who fell afoul opaque (and sometimes surely political) internal transgressions. The charges sometimes raise more questions than they resolve, and I’ve come to the point that if the cause wasn’t established in open court, I’ll assume the disfellowshipped ministers are innocent. Why shouldn’t I?
It would be interesting to see cast-out ministers fight in public, but this rarely happens — an utter mystery to me, but I’ve thought for years a subcurrent of shame and desperation infects the ministerial college. And to what end?
As for the gaps on the list, I suspect the intervention of lawyers — there has been at least one legal fund-raiser — which does nothing to assure me.
Cast this in a world where churches can’t get ministers and experienced ministers are dropping out continually and I think the UUA has a problem on its hands: one of its own making.
Scott, it does feel like a problematic system. For years, the MFC was notorious for its insensitivity to the victims of clergy misconduct. I’ve spoken to a victim of clergy misconduct who felt (to use their own word) abused by the system. What you’re saying in part is that now the system has become insensitive to clergy who may be wrongfully accused. Your comment makes me realize that the MFC (and the UUA more generally) might be encountering the classic management problem of navigating complexity through managing polarities. Harvard Business Review has a brief online article on exactly this topic that could serve as a jumping off point for UUs everywhere who would like to address this problem in a positive way.
I’ll only add that this issue did not cause the current shortage of ministers (not that you said that it did, I just want to emphasize the point). There appears to be a shortage of clergy across religious communities. Ministerial discontent, as documented in the 2024 study “I’m Exhausted All the Time”: Exploring the Factors Contributing to Growing Clergy Discontentment” (see also), continues to drive the shortage of all clergy, not just UU ministers.
I need to write a post about this whole topic… I’ll get to it Real Soon Now….
Marian Stewart is now listed on the UUA site of “UUA Clergy Removed of Resigned from Fellowship with Completed or Pending Misconduct Investigations”.
https://www.uua.org/uuagovernance/committees/mfc/clergy-misconduct-investigations
According to the post, she refused to comply with the requirements of her probation and opted to resign (“retire”) instead.
I too learned more than I should have been able to from the church in question’s website. The difference is I have personal experience with Marian, and am therefore not at all surprised by what I learned/the church in question’s experience with her. I am however saddened to learn I now have this in common with other UUs at this church. Yet gratified Marian will no longer be in a ministerial position at least within the UU community.
Kimberly and Scott, so I finally took the time to track down the congregation you both mention. Good for them for trying to be transparent by putting a great deal of material online. I was particularly impressed that they dug into their congregation’s history to track patterns of behavior that may have allowed misconduct to happen. This is not to place blame on a congregation for clergy misconduct, but it makes sense to investigate what role the congregation may have had in allowing or even encouraging misconduct; for if there are in fact conditions that encourage misconduct, you surely want to get rid of them so it doesn’t happen again! Similarly, it’s important to look for any other systemic problems that may allow misconduct to exist or even flourish (e.g., ethical breaches on the part of lay leaders, a history of unresolved conflict, lack of boundaries, etc.). Some things that I’ve seen in congregational histories that seem to create ideal conditions for leader misconduct: the whole “open marriage” thing of the 1970s; excessive alcohol consumption; lack of accountability structures; unsafe programs for legal minors; etc.
Clergy misconduct is a complicated thing. In my experience, if you’re going to deal with clergy misconduct adequately, you have to deal with human communities and relationships — systems — not just with individuals. Furthermore, if you’re going to heal your community from a history of clergy of misconduct you’ve got to be careful about appearances of secrecy, lack of transparency, excessive confidentiality, and the like — all those kinds of things are going to look like cover-ups.