We have a legacy of “deeds not creeds.” Our work for a better world calls us to unexpected places as we harness love’s power to stop oppression. From grassroots community organizing to interfaith state, national, and corporate advocacy; in protest marches, prayer vigils, and press conferences; in homeless shelters and in prisons, Unitarian Universalists put our faith into action.
Our justice efforts are grounded in our congregationally-driven social justice statements and our call to break down divisions, heal isolation, and honor the interconnectedness of all life and all justice issues. We model these commitments by creating just, welcoming, and inclusive congregations. We act in partnership with groups and communities most impacted by injustice on local, state, national, and international levels.
Our ministry focuses on organizing and includes service, education, advocacy, and public witness (the spiritual practice of taking a public position in support of justice). Our UUA Organizing Strategy Team drives strategy, strengthens the capacity of UUs to organize for justice, and to mobilize people and power for liberation.
Our justice ministries focus on key priorities for our congregations and communities:
Side With Love is the Organizing Strategy Team of the Unitarian Universalist Association—a network of organizers, leaders, congregations, and justice partners faithfully working to transform our world. Through campaigns, organizing programs, and movement partnerships, Side With Love accompanies communities across the country as they move from values to action, faithfully, strategically, and together.
Building a world where all people are free and thriving requires more than hope—it requires action, taken together, every week.
The Action Center is your home base for that work. Here you’ll find weekly updates on what’s happening across our justice priorities, organizing guides and resources to strengthen your practice, upcoming events, and spiritual grounding to sustain you for the long haul.
Democracy is more than a political system. It is a sacred practice of how we live together, rooted in covenant, collective accountability, and the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Through UU the Vote, Side With Love’s flagship democracy campaign, Unitarian Universalists across the country are organizing to build a genuine multiracial democracy. What began as an election-year initiative has grown into a year-round movement, mobilizing people of faith to defend voting rights, strengthen democratic participation, and cultivate communities committed to justice.
Congregational organizing is how we turn values into action. It is the work of equipping UU congregations not just to respond to the crises of our time, but to become rooted, resilient centers of justice and transformation in their communities.
All life is interconnected. Creating a sustainable way of life is central to our view of a just and compassionate world. We act knowing that those who are most impacted by environmental destruction are often with the least power.
Across the country, communities are being criminalized for surviving, whether through migration, protest, poverty, or identity. Systems of policing, incarceration, detention, and deportation punish people rather than addressing the conditions that create harm. They divide communities and reinforce inequality rather than nurturing safety and healing. Criminalization is a tactic used by the powerful to divide and control, and it is not keeping us safe. Together, we work toward a future where justice means restoration, where safety is rooted in community care, and where every person is treated as sacred.
Each of us has worth and dignity, and that worth includes our gender and our sexuality. As Unitarian Universalists (UUs), we not only open our doors to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, we value diversity of sexuality and gender and see it as a spiritual gift. We create inclusive religious communities and work for LGBTQ justice and equity as a core part of who we are. All of who you are is sacred.All of who you are is welcome.
Every person has value as a member of the human family. The suffering caused by racism must be ended if we want to create fair and loving communities. We work to end racial discrimination and injustice, starting within ourselves and moving out into the world around us. We support multiracial, multiethnic congregations and advocate for stopping racist policies like mass imprisonment and attacks on voting rights. Our multicultural ministries will continue until there is peace, liberty, and justice for all.
Decisions about children, families and sexuality are some of life’s most profound. We advocate not only for the freedom of those choices in each person’s life journey, but also for the ability of all families and communities to realize a sense of wholeness with regard to their sexual and reproductive lives. We create safe and healthy environments for children in our faith communities and campaign publicly for just and compassionate laws for family planning, reproductive health, and gender equality.