A challenge to the notion that military personnel do not deserve to be as much a part of the UU community as anyone else. A need to reach out to those in the military who would be UUs.

Rachel Stevenson, a young member of UUCMC and now a student at Towson University in Maryland, spoke of her perceived need for young members of the armed forces to have contact with a religious body while away from their homes.

Continuing an activity that she was involved in while at UUCMC, organizing worship by and for young members, Rachel is now active in the Church of the Younger Fellowship, a part of the Church of the Larger Fellowship in Baltimore. She founded a group there that is cooperating with other youth groups, e.g. Reform Jews, to reach out and give support to the great number of enlisted men and women in that area.

In her talk, Rachel noted that whereas mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews can generally avail themselves of chaplains of their own faith, or at least one acquainted with their faith, a UU or UU-minded soldier or sailor typically finds no such comfort. There are few UU military chaplains. Contacts with military personnel, brought about as part of her self styled ministry, has shown a need, on the part of a number of them, for the kind of message that Unitarian Universalism has to offer. The idea of reaching out to military personnel, especially those serving in combat zones, may seem like a stretch considering the history of UU peace activism over the past decades but she pleaded with the audience to think otherwise.

"They are not a bunch of baby killers," she said. Rachel suggested that UUCMC, because of its proximity, is ideally suited to reaching out to enlisted young people at both Fort Monmouth and Earle Naval Station to welcome them into our congregation, and also that we keep our personal political and public opposition to war and conflict out of our services so that our support for the troops is demonstrated even though our views on their military and naval activities may not coincide with theirs.

In the dialog portion of the program, UUCMC's Reverend Virginia Jarocha-Ernst spoke about the conflicts UU ministers feel in serving as chaplains in the services, but also noted that more and more of them are now serving in that capacity.