Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations Southern Region records

Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious tradition that was formed from the consolidation of two religions: Unitarianism and Universalism. In the United States, the Universalist Church of America was founded in 1793, and the American Unitarian Association in 1825. After consolidating in 1961, these faiths became the new religion of Unitarian Universalism through the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

The fledgling UUA comprised 21 divisions, including the Thomas Jefferson District (TJD), organized in 1963. It consisted initially of Unitarian and Universalist congregations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, as well as most of those in Tennessee and Virginia.

In the late 1990s, the TJD was broken into three districts: Florida, Mid-South and Thomas Jefferson. Headquarters for the TJD moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, from Atlanta, Georgia, in 1997.

Concerns over the name, Thomas Jefferson, and the issue of slavery led to debate within the district. The first effort to formally change the district name came at the General Assembly in Charlotte in 1993. A similar motion to change the name was defeated at an Annual Meeting in 1996. It was brought up again in 2010 and was again narrowly defeated. Bylaws provided that any five congregations could petition for another vote, and at the Annual Meeting in 2011, the name was changed to Southeast District of the UUA.

About that time, the UUA began to push for a reduction in the number of Districts, and 19 districts were proposed to be subsumed into five regions. The four Districts which became part of the new Southern Region were Southeast, Mid-South, Florida and the Southwestern UU Conference.