Unitarian Universalist Association Turns to Branding Firms to Address Declining Membership

In early 2012, Reverend Peter Morales, president of the Boston-based Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), wrote a manifesto that began as a personal journal entry and announced to his congregations that something needed to change radically. He described the Unitarian Universalist church as being in crisis. Despite its progressive reputation and its historic intellectual figures, the denomination was losing ground. People were not attending services, those who came were not staying, and many had never heard of the church. Morales noted that since its heyday in the 1960s, the church had lost about half of its membership.

Morales concluded that many modern faiths were facing a broader change, namely that people no longer felt they needed religion. He observed that in the past the UU church might have competed with Methodists or Episcopalians for Sunday mornings, but prospective members now spent that time on other activities. Morales believed the religion-wary were already close to UU principles, pointing to Millennials’ views on marriage and income inequality and to the church’s history of work on education, prison reform, aid to the poor and the abolition of slavery. His explanation for the decline was blunt: “Church is becoming a bad brand for young people.”

To counter that perception, Morales had urged congregations to “repel fewer visitors.” The UUA considered presenting itself more as a movement, with church as an option. The article notes that the denomination had long been uncertain about calling itself a religion. The source describes the denomination’s roots in the Reformation and in 19th-century New England. The American Unitarian Association was founded in Boston in 1825, and the Universalist church founded in Gloucester in the late 18th century was described as more evangelical and inclusive. The two churches merged in 1961 to form Unitarian Universalism. According to the article, Morales embraced the faith’s lack of strict doctrine, saying, “I believe religion is much more about what you love than about what you think.”

The rebranding effort began in early 2012. Morales worked with Reverend Terasa Cooley, the UUA’s program and strategy officer, who turned to Kristi Kienholz, a Boston-based marketing strategist. Kienholz introduced Cooley to Quicksilver Foundry, a branding firm in Portland, Oregon, which helped the UUA develop tag lines, core language and “core themes.” Proposed lines included an elevator pitch that described the faith as “steeped in reverence, brazen in acceptance and limitless in compassion,” and the tag lines “The Unitarian Universalist Association: Fierce Love” and “Live it. Fight for it. Surrender to it. Preach it. Light a Flame.”

Defining the denomination’s mission proved difficult. Cooley said the discussion repeatedly returned to the question of what the mission of Unitarian Universalism is, and that this had been a long-standing struggle. She noted that the denomination’s decentralized structure made it hard to say who speaks for the faith. Cooley said the firm’s founder had asked the group, “How does this look for people beyond you?” The effort also carried a risk of alienating members. The article reports that UUs are wary of evangelism, and Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, observed that “one church’s marketing is another church’s proselytism.”

Because the UUA also needed a new website and possibly a new logo, which Quicksilver did not provide, Kienholz ran a nationwide search for a design firm. The search led to a boutique agency in Boston’s South End, which was named Proverb.

Source: Read the original report