Sofía Betancourt

Full name: Rev. Sofía Betancourt

The Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt is the tenth president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. She was elected in June 2023. As president of the Association, she is responsible for administering staff and programs that serve its more than 1,000 member congregations. She also acts as principal spokesperson and minister-at-large for the UUA.

Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt’s twenty-year ministry has included serving as a parish minister, seminary professor, scholar and environmental ethicist, and public theologian. Rooted in her lived identities as a queer, multiracial, AfroLatine first-generation daughter of immigrants from Chile and Panamá, Rev. Dr. Betancourt has already helped Unitarian Universalism live further into its commitments to be a radically welcoming, counter-oppressive, pluralistic faith movement. In addition to her many years of service as Director of the UUA’s Office of Racial and Ethnic Concerns and on many denominational leadership bodies, she also has previous experience with the role of president—in early 2017 she was appointed interim co-president to finish a vacated term, making her the first woman to lead the Unitarian Universalist Association. She most recently served as Resident Scholar and Special Advisor on Justice and Equity at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Rev. Dr. Betancourt has contributed to the education of future faith leaders at Yale Divinity School, Starr King School for the Ministry, and Drew University Theological School, teaching courses on topics such as ministerial leadership, theologies, womanism and Earth justice, and combatting oppression. Her own scholarship focuses on environmental ethics of liberation in a womanist and Latina feminist frame. She holds Ph.D., M.A., and M.Phil. degrees in Religious Ethics and African American Studies from Yale University, an M.Div. from Starr King School for the Ministry, and a B.S. from Cornell University with a concentration in ethnobotany. Rev. Dr. Betancourt is the author of Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics (2022). She lives in the Washington, DC, area.

From Sofía Betancourt

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What are the stories that shift and shape your understanding of yourself, and have you had the opportunity to share them with someone else?

By Sofía Betancourt | October 1, 2023 | From UU World

Beloveds, we are called to communal care like never before.

By Sofía Betancourt | December 7, 2022 | From UU World

In our responsible search for truth and meaning, we are called to wrestle with our theological legacy and engage with it in the search for deeper spiritual depth and communal inspiration for the work of transformation.

Webinar | By Elías Ortega, Mykal Slack, Sofía Betancourt, Ranwa Hammamy | September 14, 2020 | From LeaderLab

Questions probing the heart of Unitarian Universalism.

Feature | By Elandria Williams, Carey McDonald, The Rev. Mr. Barb Greve, Sofía Betancourt, Elías Ortega | September 1, 2019 | From UU World

We seek to reform Unitarian Universalism because we can never be the bearers of love and justice if the foundation that sustains us is still perpetuating the very problems we long to solve.

Sermon | By Sofía Betancourt | September 1, 2018 | From Spirit

As a queer woman of color, I experience the diminishment of my own humanity when people try to convince me that focusing on racism somehow ignores sexism, heterosexism, and all the other “isms” that work to make us small. Instead I understand white supremacy to cast a wide range of identities as somehow less than, in order to maintain systems of unearned privilege that benefit the few over the many.

By Sofía Betancourt | June 12, 2017 | From Uplift

From the interim co-presidents: We are committed to making this a time of opportunity and not merely a troubled time to be survived.

By Sofía Betancourt, William G. Sinkford, Leon Spencer | May 15, 2017 | From UU World

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