UU World

Civil disobedience and faithful dissent from oppressive policies and actions are fundamental practices of the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition, according to an historic statement issued on September 30 by the Unitarian Universalist Association. The Statement on Faithful Dissent, Noncompliance, and Civil Disobedience can be found at the UUA’s website. Rev.

What happens when Dungeons & Dragons meets Unitarian Universalist religious education? The answer: something very much like Journeys of Deeper Joy, a new roleplaying game developed by staff in the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Lifespan Faith Engagement office. The game uses the power of play as a catalyst for community building, self-expression, and exploring UU values.

With the 2026 midterm elections right around the corner, UU the Vote—an initiative of Side With Love, the UUA’s Organizing Strategy Team—is holding a series of Solidarity Summits, regional interfaith gatherings to build community and develop skills for justice work. Solidarity Summits are “designed to strengthen the connections, skills, and capacities needed for this moment,” according to the official website of the events. The events are already underway.

On an unseasonably chilly May Day in Binghamton, New York, a small upstate city near the Pennsylvania border, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton crackles with vitality. On the lawn, musicians play medieval music while adults and children skip around a maypole to celebrate Beltane, an annual event organized by the congregation’s pagan community.

We built a shrine with our bodies, re-consecrating the ground desecrated by their cruelty. His uniformed body wedged, me inadvertently falling against the glass door, jarring him. His defensive response; my impulse to reassure, outstretching my hand, gently squeezing his fingers. Two humans, opposite sides, Willing, for the briefest of moments, to affirm each other’s humanity. I did not yet know that just before, at a different door, he had elbowed a friend. In the temple. Twice. Chuckling.

“Bring a photo of your church.” That was the assignment for a group of young clergy. All of us were in our first congregational settings, all freshly formed from the clay of seminary education, all a little frightened. When we gathered for the first time, we would decorate our makeshift retreat-center altar with images of the churches in which we served. To me, this assignment was fantastic. I could not wait to show off the church in which I was somehow officially appointed to serve.

In 1950, my father, Rev. Chadbourne Spring, got his big professional break: becoming the second Unitarian minister in Washington state rather than one of hundreds in Massachusetts. He would be the first settled minister of East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue, a town just changing from summer community to suburb after the floating bridge across Lake Washington opened. The congregation met in a funeral parlor, bright and plant-filled, while fundraising for its own building.

Molly Howes has been a member of Unitarian Universalist Area Church First Parish in Sherborn, Massachusetts, since 1990. In 2019, she told a friend about UUAC and its values. Her friend uses a wheelchair and asked Howes a critical question: Could she get into the white steeple-topped church and navigate it? When Howes described the space, her friend said, “‘It doesn’t matter what your values are. It’s not a church for me.

Before being arrested and dragged away from an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility in Williston, Vermont, on September 4, Rev. Karen G. Johnston joined other faith leaders in speaking the names of people killed by ICE agents. “We spoke their names, their country of origin, their ages, and the circumstances around their deaths,” said Johnston, who is senior minister of First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington.

“Amazing, improbable, oddball, creative, diverse …” Those are the words we used to describe Fairbanks, Alaska, when writing our first ministerial search packet in 2014, after more than fifty years as a lay-led congregation. Without a minister or other Unitarian Universalist churches nearby to learn from, the UU Fellowship of Fairbanks’ early history was often one of making it up as we went along. As UUs and Alaskans, we felt doubly exceptional.