You, UU, and Social Justice

Doing justice as you is great. Doing justice as UU is even better.

Take heart, friends. The opposition is forming. In an article two days ago, Quinta Jurecic noted that the administration “is encountering persistent and growing opposition, both from courts and from other pockets of civic life.” There may be an attempt to defy court orders, but Jurecic notes,

“there is significance to the fact that the administration already has a hefty stack of court orders it might want to defy. Litigants have sued the administration over the seemingly unlawful freezing of federal funds, the deferred-resignation program for civil servants, the destruction of USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the handling of sensitive government data by Musk’s aides, the removal of scientific data from government websites, the attempt to write birthright citizenship out of the Constitution, the barring of transgender people from military service, the transfer of undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay, and more.”

Court orders already in have prevented the administration

“from dismissing a government watchdog without explanation, and granted restraining orders barring the administration from slashing funds for crucial scientific research. They have prevented [DOGE] from meddling with Treasury Department systems and insisted that the government halt its transfer of an incarcerated transgender woman to a men’s prison. Four separate judges have issued orders requiring the government to stand down on its effort to dismantle birthright citizenship. The deferred resignation program for federal employees was closed on Wednesday as a number of government employees had expressed defiance. Posted one: 'Before the "buyout" memo, I was ready to go job hunting, but then a revelation hit. I took an oath under this position to the American people.'”

As the Office of Personnel Management

“had called the program a ‘fork in the road,’ some federal employees adopted the spoon as a symbol of their opposition. Earlier this week, federal workers rallied at a protest outside the Capitol holding signs that read Public Service is a Badge of Honor!”

During a visit by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a U.S. military installation in Germany, an eighth grader organized a walkout at her middle school to protest Hegseth’s attacks on diversity efforts within the military.

And Unitarian Universalists are in on the resistance. We are numerically small, but we are mighty. A number of folks have observed that we UUs punch above our weight when it comes to making a difference for social justice. This week my inbox has brought me notice that our national Unitarian Universalist Association

“has joined with a multifaith coalition and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection to bring a lawsuit challenging Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s “sensitive locations policy. Churches, as well as schools and hospitals, had previously been protected from ICE enforcement actions, but a Department of Homeland Security memo rescinded that protection on January 20.”

Our UUA is standing strong for the principle

“that subjecting places of worship to ICE enforcement actions without a judicial warrant substantially burdens our religious exercise in violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Our UUA President, Sofia Betancourt, said,

“We know that many of our congregations include members who are immigrants, both documented and undocumented, and many of you carry out important ministries that serve immigrant communities in church spaces. The UUA is committed to supporting and protecting your ability to continue this vital and life-saving work.”

Our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee has been working for human rights around the globe, with projects, for instance, in Haiti, supporting civil groups on the forefront of resistance and rebuilding. UUSC has been working with partners and allies around the world to end Israel’s human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. UUSC is part of coalition calling for the temporary ceasefire to be permanent, and for a ban on arms transfers to Israel.

If you go to the UUA.org website, the first thing you’ll see at the top of the page is a tool to find a congregation near you. Then there are three prominent links: “Meet your region” which will show you a map of the US divided into the 5 UU regions. (Iowa is in the Mid-America region.) And the second link is “Act for Justice.” That’s such a prominent part of who we are. If you click on that, you’ll read:

“Justice is at the core of our faith. Our congregations are called to make a positive difference in our wider communities. We work to serve, to raise awareness, and to support and partner with people who face injustice. We advocate, organize, and act for justice to live out the values of our faith.”

Unitarians and Universalists haven’t always been so big on social justice. Yes, our denomination was the faith home of a number of prominent abolitionists before the Civil War – but, sad to say, we also had a number of members whose wealth came from enslavement and who quietly (usually), or vociferously (if necessary), snuffed out any fledgling congregational effort to take a stand for abolition.

The Unitarian minister Rev. John Haynes Holmes prominently opposed World War I, but he was roundly denounced by pretty much all the rest of the Unitarian establishment.

In those days, Unitarianism was basically “Christianity Lite.” The story is told that in those times a woman was asked why she was Unitarian, and she answered, “Everybody’s got to be something and Unitarian is the least you can be.”

In the 1920s and 30s we see the beginnings of the shift that would lead to the way we see ourselves today. This was when the humanist movement got going within Unitarianism and, to a lesser extent, within Universalism. Humanism dropped God out of the picture altogether and emphasized the scientific method. Religious concepts were redefined “into human, non-magical, understandings." We started to sing hymns such as:

"Where is our holy church?
Where people unite in the search for beauty, truth and right.
Where is our holy land?
Within the human soul, wherever free minds truly seek with character the goal.”

By the middle of the 20th century, in most Unitarian and Universalist congregations, the crosses had been taken down and the communion silver stashed in a basement closet. Now we were becoming the resistors. We weren’t just a lower-demand version of the prevailing Christianity.

In the 1950s, business interests were combining with mainstream Protestantism to emphasize pro-business values and fight the Cold War. Prayer breakfasts swept the country, bringing together business leaders and church leaders to praise God and denounce communism. The 1950s so thoroughly conflated patriotism and religion that in 1954 Congress added the words “under God” to the pledge of allegiance. It was no longer enough to be “one nation, indivisible.” We had to be “one nation, under God, indivisible” – because the enemy of both the business establishment and the religious establishment was Godless communism.

US church attendance was at its peak in 1959. Just about everybody was in church on Sunday morning, and what was preached there was a theology of God, country, and General Motors -- albeit rather less so in Unitarian and Universalist congregations. We were beginning to find ourselves in a counter-cultural place.

The American Unitarian Association (this was before Unitarians had consolidated with the Universalists) objected to putting “under God” into the pledge of allegiance and argued that the new version violated the separation of church and state. When a plan was advanced to let kids out of public schools on Wednesday afternoon so they could attend religious instruction in their churches, it was a coalition of Unitarians and Jews that resisted.

Through the 19th-century Unitarians had been the epitomize of the well-heeled establishment. Amid the prevailing buttoned-down “God and country” anti-communism of the 1950s, Unitarians shifted to resistance. We weren’t even the slightly more skeptical wing of the respectable elite. We had evolved into centers of resistance to the prevailing conventional opinion.

Yes, the Unitarians and the Universalists go back 200 years in this country – and 400 years in Europe – but we were formed into what we are today during this 1950s phase of massive cultural conformity. The humanism that we moved into in the 30s put us in a position of cultural resistance in the 50s. Our humanism shifted us from insiders to outsiders.

When this congregation’s own Edna Griffin took on Katz drug store in 1948, she did so without overt involvement of her congregation – but also without the kind of objection from her chosen church she would have gotten at many other churches. The way was being paved. The idea that involvement in social and political issues was what it means to live Unitarian faith was catching on. By the mid-1950s we were, tentatively at first, getting involved in Civil Rights issues. In this congregation, we gradually moved from ignoring Edna Griffin’s activism to organizing support of it. By 1965, large numbers of Unitarian Universalists went to Selma to march with Dr. King.

When I was a youth in the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta in the early ‘70s, I saw a lot of anti-Vietnam-war activism going on, and I joined in in what ways I could as a kid. So, yes, Justice is at the core of our faith. It’s what we do. It wasn’t always. It is now, and has been for about 3 generations. On our UUA web page, just below the paragraph I quoted earlier, you’ll read:

“Our intersectional justice priorities are:
Climate Justice (inclusive of Indigenous sovereignty and Climate Resilience)
Decriminalization (inclusive of Racial Justice and Immigration Justice)
Democracy and Electoral Justice (inclusive of Voting Rights and electoral participation)
LGBTQIA+ and Gender Justice (inclusive of reproductive justice and abortion access).”

Our justice work is carried out in five ways:

• Service,
• Education,
• Organizing,
• Advocacy, and
• Witness.

Service means direct helping for people materially suffering: things like soup kitchens and clothing drives.

Education involves organizing classes and forums to learn and teach about justice issues.

Organizing refers to forming partnerships and coalitions to amplify our voice for justice.

Advocacy means speaking and writing publicly in support of justice, including lobbying legislators.

And witness refers to using the media effectively to get our message out – whether through paid advertising or news coverage.

Here at First Unitarian of Des Moines, we have a range of social justice initiatives. Our Faith in Action Coordinating Team selects two nonprofit organizations each year to which to particularly encourage our members to contribute. This year, we’re supporting Al Exito! and the Young Women’s Resource Center.

For Environmental Justice, we have our Green Sanctuary initiative. We have been accredited by the UUA as a Green Sanctuary since 2015. Our ongoing Green Sanctuary team focuses on engaging church members on energy efficiency, recycling, composting for our building and grounds. The team also promotes outside activities that our members can get involved with to improve the greater Des Moines community.

We have a FEDS task force. FEDS stands for Feed Every Deserving Soul – or every deserving stomach – although it seems to me that “deserving” is redundant. There’s no such thing as an undeserving stomach or soul. Our FEDS task force facilitates projects to alleviate hunger in central Iowa. This task force prepares and serves dinner monthly for Des Moines’ unhoused population.

Our Immigration Justice task force heads up our congregation’s is involvement in immigration and sanctuary issues in Central Iowa. We are a part of the Iowa Sanctuary Movement. In 2017, we became a Sanctuary Church for people facing the threat of immediate deportation. Subsequently, our immigration task force has been involved in various efforts, including assisting asylum seekers and other issues as they arise.

QTAG is our Queer and Transgender Action Group. This group increases awareness of queer and transgender lives and issues within the church community, and provides a safe haven and resources for queer and transgender people in need. The group educates the congregation on gender identity is, the difference from sexual orientation, and how to support queer and the transgender folk in our community.

We have a relatively new task force called Peace, Justice, and Democracy that has been organized for education and advocacy on this broad range of issues.

You should know the acronym CBCO – it’s Congregation-Based Community Organizing. It’s a thing. Our congregation is a part of a couple CBCO efforts. One of them is AMOS – which evokes the Biblical prophet Amos, who cried out “let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” – and which is also an acronym for A MidIowa Organizing Strategy. AMOS members include about 30 churches and other community organizations that work together to plan and carry out projects to move the needle toward justice in central Iowa.

There’s also a statewide CBCO of just UU congregations called IUUWAN: Iowa UUWitness Advocacy Network. IUUWAN brings UUs together to effect state-level actions for justice.

Justice is at the core of our faith, and the need during these times is great. What can you do? There’s an awful Unitarian Universalists are doing. You can add your efforts to one of our Social Justice initiatives at this congregation, or you can form a new initiative. Our policy declares that if three members of this congregation get together for a social justice initiative, they will be recognized as a social justice group of this congregation – meaning you can get space in our Intercom newsletter, use the building for meetings, and get spotlight segments in the Sunday service.

I know that many of you do social justice outside of the congregation. On your own, you might be a part of Habitat for Humanity, or be in the Sierra club for environmental justice, or be in the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) or Planned Parenthood or write checks contributing to various justice efforts. Thank you for that. That, too, is living your faith, and it’s so important. I will just note that it is helpful to have a religious grounding for your social justice work.

We are here to nurture our spirits and help heal our world – and those are not two separate things. We help heal our world by nurturing our spirits. Yes, the world becomes more whole when any person – including you – nurtures their spirit, becomes more grounded in a spiritual awareness that everything is connected. And we nurture our spirits by helping heal our world. The work of justice expands and deepens our spirits.

You’ve heard the saying: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But those, also, are not two separate things. Let yourself be afflicted out of comfortable complacency, and you will discover that the action you are goaded to take ends up for you a comfort against all that afflicts you. Being afflicted in your comfort functions in fact to comfort you in your affliction. So your justice work is not a separate thing from your spiritual path – it’s a crucial part of your spiritual path. And your spiritual path – the meditation, your prayer life, your jounaling, the fostering of friendships with other UUs – strengthens and supports you for justice work. It’s a helpful thing to bring them together – to weave together your religion and your social values rather than practicing them separately.

So if you’re ardent in your support of the ACLU, or Planned Parenthood, or the Sierra Club, maybe get together with some other members of these congregation who share that commitment and form a support task force for the organization you love. Doing justice as you is great. Doing justice as UU is even better. It helps to think together about how the work is a reflection of your theology, your faith.

Clarify and articulate the UU values that impel your justice work. We have to be the change you wish to see. As I mentioned last week, to promote a world that is less cruel, we do need to attend to reducing our own penchants for cruelty, even if unintentional. Model being centered, passionate, open-minded, and welcoming. That’s bringing your spirituality to the justice task.

And when you’re talking to people outside this congregation about the justice issue you are working for, identify yourself as a person of faith – a Unitarian Universalist. Make references to your congregation and couch your advocacy in terms of your UU values. Also: include rituals in your activities: start with a chalice lighting, reading, and/or meditation. End with a closing reading or brief sharing. Always plan time for reflection and discussion following significant activities or events. And ask the others in your social action group about their personal and spiritual motivations.

We Unitarian Universalists are doing and have done a lot. We’d like to make a visual display of that, and that’s where the sticky note comes in. Please write social justice initiative that you have been a part of in the last year – or that you want to be a part of in the next year. Add your sticky to our map in the back – put it in the sea of service, the education estuary, the cove of community organizing, the advocacy alps, or the woods of public witness. We’ll make an inspiring visual representation of all that we are doing, have done, will do.

May it be so. Blessed be. Amen.