To Advance Justice

“To Advance Justice” is the personal memoir of Richard Scobie“s years of leadership at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. In it, he describes his efforts to build this small, value-based organization into an effective force for human rights during a period of rapid social change in the United States and the world. In candid detail he recalls the behind-the-scenes struggles, organizational and interpersonal, to make UUSC live up to its mission: “to advance justice.” The story moves from the board room in Boston to the rural villages of El Salvador, Eritrea and the Philippines, from meetings in local churches in middle America to the halls of Congress. It encompasses the intellectual challenges of planning and management, and the emotional stress of leadership in the face of conflict, illness, and mortality. This book is a case study of how one religiously motivated organization has tried to be a force for positive social change, written from the perspective of a person who played a major role in the process.It will be valuable reading for students of denominational history, practitioners of non-profit management, people with an interest in the social issues that rocked the last quarter of the Twentieth Century, and people wanting to make a more nearly just world.