Linking Mother's Day to Unitarian Universalism, and as a Day of Peace
March 15, 2009
Looking for a way to involve your congregation in social justice this spring, educate the larger community about the true meaning of Mother’s Day, and keep the pressure on the Obama administration to end the war?
Last Mother’s Day Sara Sautter, director of religious education at Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church in Overland Park, KS, got more than 500 people to stand along a busy street in a peace vigil. Sautter had a media hook that worked—that Unitarian Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” later turned antiwar and founded Mother’s Day as a day of peace.
The group that Sautter formed last year, Julia’s Voice, is gearing up for another event this year in conjunction with All Souls UU Church in Kansas City, MO, and she is hoping many other congregations will organize events in their communities.
Go to Julia's Voice for a start-to-finish tool kit, including a DVD, on how to organize such an event. Sautter says, “All of the news media we talked to last year were just transfixed by this idea of a woman who wrote a pro-war song then went on to found Mother’s Day as an anti-war event. And they also focused on the idea of turning Mother’s Day away from a day of commercialism back to a day focused on peace. This is a chance to educate our communities about the true meaning of Mother’s Day and to identify Unitarian Universalism as a denomination that stands for peace.”
For more information contact interconnections @ uua.org.
Last updated on Tuesday, March 3, 2009.
