Reimagining Together: UU Climate Action Enters New Era
Image description: a mural of graphic notes from a recent Side With Love Climate Justice webinar include a sunflower with a raised fist as its stem at the top, a depiction of a Council of Grandmothers, and illustrations of healthy landscapes.
By Jeff Milchen
Like many Unitarian Universalists learning about the UU Climate Justice Revival coming in September, my initial mental images were based on memories from movie depictions that included giant tents and animated, sweaty preachers. Curious to discern why UU organizers chose “Revival” to frame the evolution and merging of our work to mitigate climate disaster and advance racial justice, I dug into some writing about the tradition of revivals.
The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism notes, “Revivals establish new forms of community as well as practical, activist expressions of faith. Revivals [transfer] power from centre to periphery. People not previously given a voice, or a chance to lead, are suddenly thrust into the limelight. Women, people of colour, the young, and the less educated have all played central roles…” Such decentralization of power sounds like the formula for successful justice organizing today!
It didn’t take long to learn some potential motivations for invoking the term “revival.” In his book Global Awakening, scholar Mark Shaw cites “optimistic fatalism” as a defining quality of traditional Christian revivals. The label describes an unwavering confidence or faith -- embedded into participants through communally-generated energy -- that any challenge, from personal to societal, can be overcome.
Such confidence clearly would be valuable as we face a climate crisis that often appears overwhelming. Of course,the unwavering faith of revival-goers resulted not solely from the collective enthusiasm of participants, but was enabled by facilitators’ thorough preparation and planning.
Rev. Kelly Dignan, who co-directs UU Ministry for Earth -- one of the UU partners convening the Climate Justice Revival -- said the naming decision was rooted in desire to reenergize and recommit. “Instead of more gloom and more technical solutions, we aim to revive everybody’s soul and spirit through liturgical worship experience,” said Dignan. She notes the Revival will be “full of joy and art and accessible movement.”
Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, a Revival co-organizer and the new Unitarian Universalist Association Director of Communications and Public Ministry reflected, “a summer tent revival was not a place that you went to think deeply. You went to be overcome by the power of your commitments and leave willing to live those commitments in a way that placed demands on you.”
A cornerstone of the Revival is unifying Unitarian Universalism’s long-standing commitments to caring for the planet and our work to advance racial justice and justice for all vulnerable communities. McDonald Ladd called it “reframing and reimagining environmentalism and social justice activism and advocacy in a way that is connecting instead of disparate.”
Rachel Myslivy, the UUA Climate Justice Organizer for Side With Love describes climate justice as both an understanding and a commitment to action. “The Revival is designed to support congregations to imagine a future where everyone in their community thrives and then to identify impactful, actionable steps to start building that future together.”
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The Revival involves UU congregations organizing concurrent local gatherings in their own communities and regions, bringing together not only people who focus on climate work, but also those who care about justice in all its forms. In part, the Revival is designed to help faithfully break down silos between realms of justice work and equip congregations to enter into a new era of climate justice action through greater collaboration among congregational teams.
On September 28-29, congregations will host UU Climate Justice Revivals to collectively reimagine a spirit-filled and liberatory future (congregations can opt for different dates if necessary). The Revival theme is “Reimagine Together: From an Extractive Age to a New Era.”
The program will help congregations make connections, nurture relationships, and build capacity through conversations, worship, and advocacy. The UU organizing team will provide everything your congregation needs to facilitate a successful participatory event, including facilitation toolkits, training, music, projects, and coordinated justice action ideas. Activities will be provided to engage children as well. The Revival is open to every UU congregation of any size and budget.
Registrants will receive training for at least two people to facilitate the Revival discussions (offered on multiple dates in August and September), a facilitator’s toolkit, video content to support conversations, and more.
Register Now and join the more than 250 other UU congregations - approximately 25% of our denomination - in at least 42 states hosting this landmark event! See the Welcome Packet, or FAQ for more information. Still have questions? Email Environment@UUA.org
Climate Justice Protects the Vulnerable
“At the most basic level, it's understanding that climate change affects some communities more than others and that’s often by design,” says Rachel Myslivy. “With the same root causes as the systems of oppression we fight so hard against, addressing climate change is an intersectional justice issue. We need to understand these connections and center justice in our climate organizing.”
For example, communities previously harmed by racist housing policies and redlining by financial institutions now suffer the most from temperature extremes due to the heat island effect, which can make those neighborhoods up to 12 degrees hotter than adjacent non-redlined neighborhoods. That added heat stress, Myslivy notes, “contributes to increased mental health issues and violence, which, in turn, yield increased criminalization and incarceration of our BIPOC neighbors.
One notable climate justice initiative from the Biden Administration dedicates $1 billion to grants for projects that green urban neighborhoods
In Texas, more than two-thirds of imprisoned people live in facilities without effective cooling and temperatures often exceed 120 or even 130 degrees. Such inhumane conditions are common in Southern states’ prisons and it took a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice last year to force Mississippi to install cooling.
Myslivy emphasizes the disproportionate impacts upon communities of color whose neighborhoods are occupied by polluting industries that cause climate change and continue to experience systemic disenfranchisement. “Roughly 40 percent of Black children in the United States live in areas with poor environmental and health conditions. As a result, Black children are nearly eight times more likely to die from asthma than white children,” said Myslivy. “Similarly Latinos are 21 percent more likely to live in urban heat islands and are three times more likely to die from heat-related causes on the job.” Once you learn these impacts, the connections between climate change and racial justice are clear.
In addition, with some of the highest rates of housing insecurity and discrimination, LGBTQIA+, especially trans people, are at an increased risk of harm from climate disruption, which makes climate justice a trans justice issue.
Climate is also a disability justice issue since people with disabilities also face increased risk and are often the last to be evacuated in extreme weather events.
Voting rights and democracy are also thoroughly interwoven in climate justice, as polluting corporations fund schemes to disenfranchise people in communities most impacted by pollution and climate harms and then stifle their ability to protest.
The Climate Justice Revival is both an opportunity to celebrate the successes of UU climate organizing to date and an occasion to recognize the limits of what we can achieve without better integrating our justice priorities -- and then connect our work across issues in order to transcend those limitations.
“The Revival at its very core, recognizes that climate justice is social justice; is racial justice; is immigrant justice; is advocacy for a healthier democracy,” says Rev. Dignan.
Revival organizers say shifting from an extractive age to a new era demands we reject systems of harm like corporate capitalism and white supremacy to create the possibility of a future where all communities thrive. They also stress the need to complement defensive battles with spreading a proactive vision of collective liberation. “While we focus on the tasks of today, we must equally hold a vision of the world we want tomorrow,” says Myslivy.
A hand-painted sign reads '“CLIMATE JUSTICE REVIVAL”
The Evolution of UU Climate Justice Work
Since the seeds of UU Ministry for Earth (UUMFE) were planted in 1989 with discussions about how to bring to life UUism’s principle of respect for the interdependence of all life, UUs have invested energy in a wide range of work to advance environmental justice and mitigate climate change damage, while building on earlier work for other aspects of environmental protection.
A 2006 Statement of Conscience on Climate Change further elevated the issue among UUs. Subsequent years have delivered a steady flow of progressively ambitious steps: an environmental justice curriculum from UUMFE, dedicated staff within multiple UU entities, and the Green Sanctuary Program, which has helped more than 230 UU congregations take direct responsibility for improving their environmental impacts.
In 2020, that program evolved to become Green Sanctuary 2030, which transcends greening church facilities and practices. The UUA is administering the GS 2030 program to provide structure, leadership, community, and support for teams working to transform our congregations through climate justice work through a four-step process.
“I hope the Climate Justice Revival is another one of those opportunities for UUs to break the ice for others.”
The UUA elevated its commitment to climate justice in 2022 by hiring Rachel Myslivy as the first full-time Climate Justice Strategist as a core part of the Side with Love team. Myslivy organizes UUs to realize a world with no fossil fuels and extractive systems of harm, where clean energy is a human right, and all communities thrive.
Myslivy is revitalizing the GS 2030 to spotlight our four essentials for climate action: Justice, Community Resilience, Congregational Transformation, and Mitigation. With a goal of “less paperwork, more action,” GS2030 provides shared leadership and mutual supports for UUs seeking to transform their congregations through climate justice. As a part of the Green Sanctuary 35th Anniversary celebration, updated materials will be released post-Revival to help congregations deepen and expand their climate justice work through yearly renewals.
In recent years, UUs increasingly have aligned themselves behind Indigenous-led climate justice campaigns, including the successful work to halt the destructive Keystone XL Pipeline, helping the Wet’suwet’en peoples of British Columbia fight the Coastal GasLink pipeline (and resist their criminalization by Canadian authorities), and others.
And at the recent 2024 General Assembly, UU members overwhelmingly approved an Action of Immediate Witness to tackle climate damage, with a focus on social justice.
The UUA’s role in climate justice continues to grow under the leadership of President Rev. Sofía, who also earned a Ph.D. at Yale with scholarship focused on environmental ethics of liberation within a womanist and Latina feminist frame.
Betancourt recalled a recent conversation with a woman studying to become a rabbi who likened Unitarian Universalism to an Arctic icebreaker ship within the faith community. Betancourt’s colleague observed a willingness among UUs to have the difficult conversations and then take actions that make it easier for other faiths to follow. “I hope the Climate Justice Revival is another one of those opportunities for UUs to break the ice for others," says Betancourt.
UU Congregation Laying Local Groundwork
Betancourt mentions many UU climate justice partnerships that excited her, including one with native Alaskan nations, Pacific Islanders, and Louisiana bayou residents -- all of whom face erosion, flooding, and displacement as sea levels rise.
Some UU congregations enjoy time to build relationships and work proactively to prepare for climate change impacts. The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis, OR is taking small, meaningful steps in multiple realms, including planting dozens of oak trees in low income, largely Latino neighborhoods over the last three years.
Corvallis UU congregant Michael Hughes says members have also been helping a local non-profit, Seeds for the Sol, to provide weatherization for low-income residents, which includes his successful grant-writing to help fund the work.
Nearly 200 miles to the south lies Grants Pass, an overwhelmingly white and conservative city of 39,000 whose ban on sleeping on public property was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. After facilitating Side With Love’s Abolitionist Visions in Climate Justice webinar last May, Rachel Myslivy recalled the first post-event contact came from the small lay-led UU congregation in Grants Pass, requesting a worship service based on the webinar. Such material had not yet been considered. “Next thing I know, they're sending me materials from the worship service they created and held in their congregation,” recalls Myslivy.
Some congregation members got involved in Grants Pass Remembrance, part of a statewide program engaged in public education work about Oregon’s history of racial violence in the name of Remembrance, Repair, and Redemption -- striving to develop a new reputation for being welcoming to all.
“What is climate change, other than a failure to love our sisters, our brothers, and every other living thing that shares our planetary home?”
Congregation member Dorothy Swain says they know it will take time to build relationships that form the foundation for any future change, but “some of us have really poured our hearts and souls into that work.” Many UUs from Grants Pass and the nearby Klamath congregation support the Indigenous-led Klamath River dam removal projects, knowing it may take decades to fully restore the river.
Swain speaks excitedly about the coming Climate Justice Revival, “I am looking forward to being transformed. I want to be pushed into a new level of ideas and inspiration and integration…weaving together these issues that we've been working on separately for years.”
Myslivy emphasizes that “UUs have been at the leading edge of climate organizing for decades. Now our congregations are ready to embrace a visionary approach that integrates the interconnected systems of oppression we fight so hard against. When we make that shift, we can truly - and radically - center love in the climate movement. The UU Climate Justice Revival is the perfect place to start.”
The writer, Jeff Milchen, is the UUA Justice Communications Associate
To learn more about the intersections of climate and other justice priorities, follow Side With Love’s Climate at the Intersections video series.
The Climate Justice Revival is organized by the UU Climate Justice Coalition and friends. Coalition members include the Unitarian Universalist Association (including Side with Love and UU the Vote), UU State Action Networks, UU Animal Ministry, UU College of Social Justice, UU Women's Federation, UUs for a Just Economic Community, UU Ministry for Earth, UU Young Adults for Climate Justice Caucus, UU Service Committee, and UUs for Social Justice. Other organizations represented on the planning committee include: Cedar Lane UU Congregation, River Road UU Congregation, Meadville Lombard Seminary, Neighborhood UU Church of Pasadena, and Community Church of New York. The Revival is funded by generous support from our sponsors - with more added every day! See UUClimateJustice.org for a full listing of sponsors.