In September, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Unitarian Universalist Living Legacy Pilgrimage trip. Now in its 7th year, the trip brings people of faith to Alabama and Mississippi to visit with the heroes of the civil rights movement. We attended worship at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where a bomb blast murdered four young women on the morning of September 15, 1963, and we walked silently through Kelly Ingram Park, where fifty years ago, hundreds of children under the age of 12 were attacked by police and German Shepherds. We met with people who in 1965 marched from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights and in protest of the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson. We listened to Joanne Bland, a woman my age, who remembered being gassed and beaten on that bridge on Bloody Sunday at the age of 11.
 
We talked with the Rev. Robert Graetz, a white Lutheran minister who served an all black congregation during the Montgomery boycott and drove people in his own car to work each day for more than a year, and whose home was bombed several times. We sang with Hollis Watkins, who in 1964, spent more than fifty days in a cell on death row for sitting at a lunch counter and who wrote many of the freedom songs of that era; we met with Angela Chaney Lewis, the daughter of slain Freedom Summer activist James Chaney, and Dr. Don Cole, who followed James Meredith by a few years in integrating the University of Mississippi.
 
It was eight remarkable days, marked by songs, visits to outstanding museums, and many, many gravesites. At the headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center, there is a Maya Lin- designed memorial with the names of more than forty people who were murdered as they fought for civil rights, including ministers and seminarians who had gone south to help. The memorial does not include names of the hundreds of black men who were lynched and left to die, or black women who were raped and beaten, all of whom were very much with us as we slowly traced the better-known names on the memorial slab. (I also thought that it is time that we have such a memorial to those who have been murdered in protecting women’s right to abortion services.)
 
And we went to churches. Lots of churches. In both Alabama and Mississippi, African Americans were not allowed to gather publicly in groups and so the churches became the place for organizing meetings. As I sat in Brown Chapel in Selma, Zion United Methodist Church in Marion, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, First Baptist Brick-a-Day Church in Montgomery, and the chapel at Tougaloo College, I marveled at how central churches and people of faith were to the successes of the movement for voting rights.
 
I was awed by the courage of the people who marched and marched, rode the Freedom buses, stayed off of the buses in Montgomery, or sent their children into demonstrations. They knew that they were personally putting their lives on the line each and every time they gathered or spoke out. Rev. Graetz told us that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to tell the hundreds of people gathered to leave if they were not prepared to die in the struggle.
 
We visited the King’s first parsonage in Montgomery, Alabama, which was bombed in 1955. The guide who led us had been a child in King’s church. She allowed us to sit in the kitchen in the chair where—according to King’s own writings—he had his own crisis of faith about what he was doing.
 
I came away from this trip moved by the courage these people needed to change the world. I wonder what it would take to ignite the mainline and progressive religious leadership and people in the pews to work as hard for sexual rights, prison reform, immigrant rights, and environmental justice as they did to end segregation and assure access to voting. I thought about the recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and how it must be restored. I ask myself if I have been courageous enough to support my beliefs – and what I am willing to die for. I am continuing to struggle with these questions, for myself and for our work in the world.
 
And I came away renewed with a call to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.” Individual people made a deep difference fifty years ago in the civil rights movement, and it was their religious communities that inspired them, supported them, fed them, and brought them to action, over and over again. We can do so as well. I now have these words by Rosa Parks above my desk: “I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.” May we be known by these commitments as well.

Tell World Leaders: Protect Sexual And Reproductive Rights For The Next Generation
Many of the 1.8 billion young people worldwide still have difficulty accessing the sexuality education and reproductive health services they need to lead safe and healthy lives. World leaders will meet this year to discuss progress on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Urge them to take action to protect the health and human rights of young people everywhere.
Take action here.
 
Faith and Reproductive Justice Leadership Institute Seeks Applications
The Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress is seeking a diverse group of faith-based leaders “to lend their voice, commitment, and leadership to the reproductive health, rights, and justice movement.” The application deadline is November 1, 2013.
Read more here.

---

News

Faith-Based Health Providers And The Government Work Together to Implement the Affordable Care Act
Since October 1, faith-based community health providers and the federal government have been finding ways of working together to expand access to health care through the Affordable Care Act.
Read more here
  
SCOTUS Will Hear Two Cases with Potential Impact on Abortion Rights
The U.S. Supreme Court has two cases concerning abortion on its docket for the session that began October 7th. One case challenges a law that restricts protests near reproductive health care facilities, and the other challenges whether states can restrict doctors from providing medical abortions.
Read more here
 
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Urged Government Shutdown over Contraception
In a letter dated September 26, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged members of Congress to tie language exempting private and church-affiliated employers from the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires all insurance plans to cover contraception without a co-pay to “must-pass” government legislation to keep the government funded.
Read more here
Read the letter here

---

Faithful Voices Network

This gets at the heart of what is so important about this initiative. I know UMC clergy who have been asked to officiate same-sex weddings, but feel they cannot for fear of reprisals. I also know UMC congregants that support marriage equality, but who keep that support silent for fear of making waves. When I finally broke my own silence about my support for LGBT inclusion, I was surprised and delighted to find kindred spirits that also wanted the same thing—but none of us knew about the others, because all of us had kept silent, scared to say what was on our hearts.
 
Imagine the courage given to clergy when laypeople take a public stand for justice! It demonstrates that they are not alone, and it encourages them to speak out as well. Here’s hoping that We Did contributes to faithful voices everywhere losing their fear and liberating their prophetic voices. 

 

Religious Institute Announces Thirty Seminaries Now Designated as Sexually Healthy and Responsible
The Religious Institute is delighted to announce that thirty institutions have now met a majority of the criteria of a sexually healthy and responsible seminary, tripling the number of United States seminaries, divinity and rabbinical schools that are preparing the next generation of clergy with the training they need to address sexuality issues in ministry since our 2009 study.

Thirty seminaries now meet at least two thirds of the criteria for a sexually healthy and responsible seminary, compared to just ten in 2009. United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities and McCormick Theological Seminary are the two most recent additions to the list of Sexually Healthy and Responsible Seminaries.
Learn more and see the updated list here

All UCC Affiliated Seminaries are Sexually Healthy and Responsible
With the addition of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, all United Church of Christ (UCC) affiliated seminaries have met at least two thirds of the criteria for a sexually healthy and responsible seminary, making the UCC just the second denomination to achieve this distinction.

Rev. Geoffrey A. Black, General Minister and President of the UCC, noted "I'm proud of our UCC-related seminaries and seminarians, who take these matters seriously, make the connections between religion and sexuality, work to be inclusive communities of justice and peace, and have put in place policies and practices that create safe space and combat stigma, discrimination, sexual abuse and violence. To be sure, there is much still to be done, but this accomplishment is a significant milestone. It bodes well for the future of the church and for the ministries of health and wholeness to which we are called as persons created in the image of an ever-engaged God."
 
New Religious Institute Course: Preventing Clergy Sexual Misconduct
The Religious Institute is pleased to announce its new workshop for Unitarian Universalist clergy, ministerial candidates, and seminarians on preventing clergy sexual misconduct. It explains the new UUMA code of conduct on sexual relationships and the UUMA standards related to it, and provides information on handling attraction and boundaries in ministry. The workshop is entirely online and self-directed. The workshop will begin on November 1, 2013, and close on November 30, 2013. It meets the MFC requirement for a “learning opportunity on sexual misconduct.”
Registration is open through Nomember 1st
Read more or register here

NOTE: A session of the Sexuality Issues for Religious Professionals course is underway. Registration will remain open through October 25th.
Learn more and register here

 

Donate

Endorse the Religious Declaration or an Open Letter

Join the Faithful Voices Network

View Our Website

Email Us