Peter Morales

Peter Morales is the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, elected in 2009. Morales is the first Latino president.^[1] He was formerly the senior minister of the Jefferson Unitarian Church in Jefferson County, Colorado, a rapidly growing Unitarian Universalist congregation in the northwestern Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area.

Personal history

Reverend Morales was born in San Antonio, Texas. His mother, Oralia López, was of Mexican-American heritage; his father, Peter Morales, was an immigrant from Spain. His initial language was Spanish. As a youth he greatly enjoyed baseball. On graduation from high school he attended Raymond College at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Active in student government, he studied history and social theory.

Upon graduation in 1967, he married his wife Phyllis and taught school for three years. Faced with the draft during the Vietnam War he immigrated to Revelstoke, British Columbia. There he worked in a lumber mill and as a reporter for a community newspaper. No longer in danger from the draft, he returned to the United States when he was 26 and entered a program in American Studies at the University of Kansas. Following a summer in Mexico studying Spanish, Morales was granted a lectureship in 1976 as a Fulbright lecturer in American literature and American history at the University of Oviedo in Asturias in northern Spain.

However, while in Spain, his son (born in Canada and then four years old) was diagnosed with cancer, necessitating a return to the United States, where the son was treated at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. Faced with daunting medical bills, Morales accepted a job in 1977 working for the California Department of Social Services in Sacramento where his second child, a daughter, was born. He worked there until 1985 on tasks related to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.

In 1985, Morales ventured into newspaper publishing as the owner of community newspapers in Rogue River and Cottage Grove, Oregon, being a pioneer in the use of desktop publishing. As an experienced and innovative journalist, in 1995 he was awarded one of the first Knight International Journalism Fellowships and spent 5 months teaching and advising at La Industria de Chiclayo in Chiclayo, Peru.

Unitarian Universalism

Peter Morales first became involved in Unitarian Universalism at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Eugene, Oregon. Very active, he served on the congregation's board of trustees. He enrolled in Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California and on graduation in 1999 was called to the Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colorado. Active in liberal evangelism while still in seminary, under his leadership the Jefferson Unitarian Church grew rapidly. The leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2002 asked him to serve as Director of District Services for two years, returning to Jefferson Unitarian Church in 2004. In 2008, in an address to his congregation, he announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association on a platform of inclusion and growth.^[2][3][4]

Presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association

On June 27, 2009 the Rev. Peter Morales was elected president of the Unitarian Universalist Association at the General Assembly of the Association in Salt Lake City, Utah. The vote was 2061 for Rev. Morales and 1481 for his opponent, Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, formerly senior minister of the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Texas.^[5][6]

Notes

External links

• UUA YouTube Channel - Meet UUA President Peter Morales
• UUA YouTube Channel - Rev. Peter Morales' vision for the UUA