The Unitarian Universalist Association released a powerful religious statement on just action in support of liberation for all people, and faithful dissent against oppression. The Board of Trustees of First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh unanimously supports the statement. 

September 30, 2026

July 17, 2026

Rooted in our powerful religious history of both just action and faithful dissent, Unitarian Universalists today stake our faith tradition on the urgent call to act for liberation in this country, including through civil disobedience, noncompliance and direct actions of protest when needed. This commitment is essential to sustain the integrity of our UU religious values of justice, equity, and interdependence; to protect our Constitutional rights and freedoms; and to honor the pluralism of a democratic society.

Justice & Equity
As Unitarian Universalists, our religious beliefs compel us to create a more just world. Unitarian Universalism holds the active pursuit of a just society and liberation for all people as an inescapable commitment for a faith which proclaims each person’s inherent worthiness, asserts the centrality of equity and the right to flourish, and embraces the interdependence of all life. We articulate this goal as working towards “diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all feel
welcome and can thrive.”

This commitment has led UU’s to support humanitarian aid, to found schools and community organizations, to care for those most vulnerable, and to dedicate ourselves to lives of service. As one example, the UU Urban Ministry is a community service provider in Roxbury, MA. It traces its founding to a “benevolent fraternity” of 19th century Unitarian churches in Boston who sought to resource and empower impoverished immigrant communities. The UUUM shows how our faithful commitment moves beyond charity to solidarity, as a truer way to honor our mutual humanity.

Faithful Dissent & Covenant
UU theology is also rooted in dissent against oppression, over centuries of religious thought. Our forbearers were called “heretics” because their beliefs were different than the prevailing state aligned orthodoxy, such as the 16th century Socinians of Poland and Transylvania. We hold that the right of conscience and the search for truth are foremost in our religious aims. Such aims are not merely individual, nor imposed by external authority, but practiced through collective discernment in the covenant of our faith community. This is rooted in the Cambridge Platform of 1648, established by our Puritan religious ancestors, who emigrated to this continent to avoid persecution. It established that 1) freely entering into a covenant (sacred agreement) with one another binds us in religious community, 2) true covenant must be practiced and not merely professed, and 3) congregations cooperate to ensure one another’s welfare and faithfulness.

Our religious tradition is a living one, an ongoing mutual revelation of how our shared values oblige us to live our lives, rather than a faith fixed to a single creed. We will not surrender the power of that revelation to any government. At times when Unitarians and Universalists have been divided over social justice questions, such as internal debates over the Fugitive Slave Act in the 19th century, it has been our practices of shared discernment that have guided us towards a Beloved Community that honors human dignity.

Opposing Injustice
Weaving together our commitments to just action and faithful dissent has historically led UU’s to actively oppose unjust governments and policies as a religious act, guided by our covenantal religious practice. This practice of witness has been repeatedly affirmed by the General Assembly, our highest religious authority.

We uphold the courage and wisdom of our forbearers who exemplify this commitment:

• Unitarians and Universalists were leading figures in the American revolution against the tyranny of the British crown and for the creation of the early republic, including elected leaders like John Adams, intellectual leaders like Judith Sargent Murray, and social leaders like Joseph Priestly.
• Unitarian Henry David Thoreau published his famous essay “Civil Disobedience” in 1849 in response to the unjust Mexican American War, a foundational text for later American and international movements for non-violent resistance. “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn”, Thoreau wrote.
• Waitstill and Martha Sharp, two American Unitarians, spent months in Nazi-occupied Europe in World War II to help hundreds of Jews and others targeted by the Nazi government escape to freedom. The symbol they created — the flaming chalice — remains the primary religious symbol of our faith.
• Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. James Reeb and lay person Viola Liuzzo were martyred during the 1965 Selma march to Montgomery, which they attended in response to the call to protest issued by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the past few decades, UUs have been deeply embedded in movements for social justice in the United States. That includes participation in lawsuits and advocacy for marriage equality, protest actions in Arizona for immigration justice, Black Lives Matter mobilizations, and most recently resistance to state-sponsored violence in Minneapolis, DC and elsewhere.

Pluralist Democracy
We embrace pluralism as one of our core religious values, and the bedrock of an inclusive democracy. The US Constitution guarantees the pluralism of free religious practice and the right to dissent. We fiercely protect our Constitutional rights, as a foundational American faith tradition who is also a religious minority. We take most seriously threats to civil liberties or human dignity as antithetical our faith. This is why the UUA became a plaintiff in a 2025 lawsuit against the change in Federal policy that would allow immigration agents to raid houses of worship.

Today, leaders at the highest levels of the US Federal government have openly declared their goal to establish right-wing Christian nationalism as the religion of the state, in violation of the Constitution. This agenda seeks to consolidate authoritarian power by changing the law to turn protected expression into criminal activity, such as mischaracterizing free protest as “domestic terrorism” and outlawing bathroom usage and medical care. As people of faith and conscience, we must confront these threats to our democratic, pluralist system of government and our very way of life.

Rooted in our powerful history of religious witness for just action and faithful dissent, we declare that Unitarian Universalists must stake our faith tradition today on the urgent call to act for liberation in our country, and condemn the anti-democratic forces of authoritarianism. Such a call encompasses civil disobedience, noncompliance and direct actions of protest, as it has in the past, while preserving our commitments to human dignity and democratic society. This commitment is
essential to sustain with integrity our UU religious values of justice, equity, interdependence and pluralism, and our Constitutional rights and freedoms.

Passed by the UUA’s Board of Trustees on August 10, 2026