“Who will we choose to be in these times?” UUs close out the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the American Unitarian Association

Banner with a blue background, featuring "In Good Faith" in bold white text. A yellow microphone and "Stories from the Association" in purple are at the bottom

Carey McDonald wearing a gray blazer standing over a glass case filled with written documents that are UU artifacts. Carey is pointing to one document.

UUA Executive Vice President Carey McDonald with UU artifacts

Over the past year, the Unitarian Universalist Association has celebrated the 200th anniversary of the founding of the American Unitarian Association (AUA), established in May 1825. It has been an opportunity for Unitarian Universalists (UUs) across the country to reflect on the denomination’s past as a liberal faith tradition but, even more importantly, to contemplate the important role that Unitarian Universalism plays in the present moment.

This set of celebrations included a meeting of the President’s Council, a chance to view key UU artifacts at Harvard Divinity School, and closed out with a service on April 12th at First Church Boston, a congregation whose history extends back to Boston’s earliest Puritan residents. Attendees heard from Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, the UUA’s President; Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, the UUA’s Vice President for Communications and Development; and Professor Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School.

All three speakers reminded the audience – and us – of the central role that Unitarian Universalism has played in American history. It is this denomination who has produced the preachers, poets, philosophers, writers, thinkers, and activists that have shaped who we are as a nation and as a people. And they reminded us that the legacy of those founders lives in both the spirit and actions of Unitarian Universalists today and tomorrow.

Below please find a selection of quotes from their remarks. You can also watch the full service at First Church Boston’s YouTube channel (YouTube video, 1:32:00).

Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, UUA President

A hand is lighting a golden chalice, which is besides a vase with a single yellow daffodil and a second golden cup. A crowd looks on in the distance.

“We are both the inheritors and the interpreters of our liberal tradition… And it is ours to raise critiques in love, to transform our faith in light of current circumstances, and pass it on to those who will carry Unitarian Universalism forward long after we are gone.”

“The question in these times, Beloveds, is not only what are we called to do as Unitarian Universalists, but who will we choose to be in these times? …I am simply reminding us that we are the inheritors of those who chose to dream together, to build concrete expressions of their values, to transform what they already knew into what they believed might be possible, and to then to courageously invest in that dreaming again and again over time.”

“In this current struggle to preserve democracy, I believe we have everything we need to be resilient together and meet this moment faithfully, even when we are afraid. We will protect our neighbors, support our congregations, invest in our freely chosen Association, and pass our living tradition on to the next generations refined by the fires of this moment. We will do this together, Beloveds, because our very history teaches us that the things we build together, in community, are greater than anything we can do alone.”

Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, Vice President for Communications and Development

Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd’s sermon focused on the relationship among Anthony Burns, an enslaved person who had fled from Virginia to Boston; Rev. Leonard Grimes of Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church; and Rev. Theodore Parker, a Unitarian Minister. The arrest of Burns and the mobilization of Boston to prevent him from being returned to Virginia made headlines in the 1850s. You can read more about that incident at the Boston African American National Historic Site webpage.

“Three ministers, bound in a network of relationship, essential parts of the ecosystem of resistance. Three ministers, who needed each other to meet their moment and in so doing changed the flood-tides of unjust history. A people who bowed low under the chain of oppression. A people who rose up to mutual aid. The parallels, I hope, are clear enough.

This is not the first time Boston has confronted the creeping hand of federal authoritarianism and America has known the bleeding occupation of our own cities. But it is also not the first, or even the second, time it has resisted. And this resistance has always been based in networks of relationships that relied on institutions to be the solid ground beneath their secret weaving.”

“Neither Parker, nor the American Unitarian Association, nor even white abolitionists of Boston as a whole, personally made freedom happen in their days. But they did their part, turning congregations and institutions into places to galvanize liberative thought — turning proximity to power into the power for change — feeding our souls so that those souls in turn might give sustenance to the forming edge of a fairer world.”

Professor Dan McKanan, Harvard Divinity School

“My charge to you today is to embrace the unknown future. The founders of the American Unitarian Association, most of them New England federalists, reached across a political divide to create something new with Jeffersonians from Pennsylvania. They didn’t know what would come of it, but they did it anyway.”

“With all their old structures falling apart, [the AUA founders] had the courage to plant something new… We should think of them instead as faithful sowers who planted seeds on rocky, dry, and windswept ground as well as fertile soil. Over 200 years, those seeds have flowered and borne seeds and died. And those seeds have been planted and borne their own new seeds over and over and over again. So I charge you to plant your own seeds for the future.”

“We cast all these seeds out into a stormy world. The rising waters of climate change are swamping the foundations of our fossil fuel economy. And our democracy is crumbling under the weight of authoritarian cruelty. In such times, we cannot know which of our seeds will take root.

And that knowing is the reason we must plant them again and again and again as abundantly as possible. Just as our ancestors could not imagine us, so too we cannot imagine which of our seeds will grow to bless our children’s children’s children. We honor both our ancestors and those children with every seed we plant.”

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