UUs to ‘Reimagine Together’ During First-Ever Climate Justice Revival

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from a longer feature published on UUClimateJustice.org. To learn more about the intersections of climate and other justice priorities, follow Side With Love’s Climate at the Intersections video series.

Happening from Sept. 22-29 is Climate Week NYC, which coincides with the opening of the United Nations General Assembly each year.

Like many Unitarian Universalists learning about the imminent UU Climate Justice Revival, scheduled for September 28-29 at congregations around the country, my mind conjured movie depictions of religious revivals that include giant tents and sweaty, animated preachers. Curious about the choice of name, I read some book excerpts about the tradition of revivals.

One anthology of essays noted, “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 sounds like the formula employed in successful justice organizing today!

Another scholarly work on revivals cites “optimistic fatalism” as a defining quality. The author describes an unwavering confidence or faith—embedded into participants through communally-generated energy—that any challenge, from personal to societal, can be overcome.

Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, a Revival co-organizer and UUA Director of Communications and Public Ministry, describes revivals as places that people go “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 Climate Justice Revival is unifying Unitarian Universalism’s long-standing commitments to caring for the planet and to advance racial justice and justice for all vulnerable communities.

Rachel Myslivy, the UUA Climate Justice Organizer, describes climate justice as both an understanding and a commitment to action.

“Climate change affects some communities more than others and that’s often by design, with the same root causes as the systems of oppression we fight so hard against,” said Myslivy.

For example, communities previously harmed by racist housing policies and redlining by financial institutions now suffer the greatest temperature extremes due to the heat island effect, heating those neighborhoods up to 12 degrees hotter than adjacent ones.

Communities of color also are more likely to have their neighborhoods occupied by polluting industries, resulting in Black children dying from asthma at nearly eight times the rate of white children. Latinos are three times more likely to die from heat-related causes on the job.

With some of the highest rates of housing insecurity and discrimination, LGBTQIA+ people, especially trans people, are at an increased risk of harm from climate disruption.

People with disabilities face increased risk from heat, cold, and severe weather events.
Voting rights and democracy are also thoroughly interwoven in climate justice, as polluting corporations fund schemes to disenfranchise people in communities most affected by pollution and climate harms, and then stifle their ability to protest.

UU Climate Justice Work Reimagined

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 connecting our work across issues to transcend those limitations.

UUs have invested energy in a wide range of work to advance environmental justice. Green Sanctuary 2030 (GS 2030) was launched four years ago as a re-visioning of the Green Sanctuary Program, which helped 230 UU congregations improve their own environmental impacts. GS 2030 provides structure, leadership, community, and support for teams to tackle the climate crisis with holistic action.

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 another gas pipeline (and resist their criminalization by Canadian authorities), and others.

Two years ago, the UUA elevated its commitment by hiring Myslivy as the first full-time Climate Justice Strategist.

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. UUA President Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, who earned a Ph.D. focused on environmental ethics of liberation, strongly supports the work.

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, citing UUs’ willingness to tackle difficult conversations and then take actions that make it easier for other faiths to follow.

“Ihope the Climate Justice Revival is another one of those opportunities for UUs to break the ice for others," says Betancourt.

Betancourt mentions many UU climate justice partnerships that excited her, including work with native Alaskan nations, Pacific Islanders, and Louisiana bayou residents—all of whom face erosion, flooding, and displacement as sea levels rise.

Dorothy Swain, a member of UUs of Grants Pass, Oregon, eagerly anticipates the Revival, saying, “ 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.”