Resolution on Racial Justice As individuals, we commit to a new level of engagement, to continually seek ways to use our voices, our privilege, our standing in the community to effect change. As a congregation, we commit to turning a new page. We declare the obvious—that Black lives matter to our beloved community. We affirm the need for powerful words and collective action, both to call out injustice and to call in love.
RRUUC Land and Labor Acknowledgment We acknowledge that the land on which we worship is the traditional land of the Nacotchtank and Piscataway people and the land through which other Indigenous Peoples traveled. We acknowledge that enslaved African people and their descendants likely labored and lived on this land. We recognize these and other people displaced, enslaved, or harmed by past injustices.
We pledge that we will follow our faith in love and work to make our congregation and our larger community more accessible, inclusive, and equitable. We pledge that we will be good stewards of the land by encouraging healthy ecosystems. We pledge to remember the past while building a more just and welcoming future for all.
RRUUC has a number of ongoing social justice groups but new energies, needs and ideas do arise. The Social Justice Ministry Team wants to assure that those that become full-fledged new groups reflect the passions of a critical mass of members (a minimum of five persons). Contact the Social Justice Program Committee to apply to create a new Team or lead a discrete effort.
Social Justice Ministry Groups carry out activities focused on specific areas of concern. Most teams work independently, but also work with other teams and members of the congregation on shared social justice issues. Meetings are open to visitors and potential members. Current groups are listed below.
Recent news reports indicate that there is a sea change happening with regard to how animals are viewed. Evidence of this change is provided by the retirement of elephants from the Ringling Brothers circus and the cessation of orca breeding at Sea World. Even the shooting of Harambe the gorilla brought up the bigger question of whether he should have been in captivity in the first place. Recently President Obama signed into law some significant new restrictions on animal testing. Nearly every day now there are stories that inspire hope for a world that is safer and kinder for all types of animals. Many UUs want to be on the forefront of this movement.
The Animal Ministry group at RRUUC has been meeting since March of 2016. Our purposes are to explore the human relationship to pets, wildlife, and livestock who share our world, considering this relationship as a moral and religious issue; and engage in concrete action that bring about change on the individual, family, congregational, community, and societal level.
In addition to our own monthly meetings, we have been in contact with other Animal Ministry chapters at UU congregations and also to the national UU Animal Ministry. We plan to implement joint activities with the Animal Ministry chapter from the Columbia UU congregation, and we intend to offer programs at RRUUC that will be educational for both adults and children. We will also reach out to various animal-related organizations in our community.
The Prevent Gun Violence Ministry attacks the root causes of the plague of gun violence ravaging our communities and the nation. The numbers of killed and wounded are obvious, along with the anger and hate that drive the shooters and the lifelong pain and sorrow they inflict on the loved ones left behind. They tear at the fabric of our lives and destroy the threads that link us to each other. As the epidemic of gun violence rages out of control, we are working to pass laws at the state and federal level that limit the use of guns and, on the streets of Baltimore’ and DC, to mediate disputes that lead to violence and help the people there find jobs that keep them from participating in gun violence.
But gun violence is a pestilence with many vectors. Police shootings of unarmed back men, the economics of the gun industry, the Second Amendment, motivating voters — you name it and we’ll help you work on it. If you have ideas about how to attack this horror, and the willingness to empower yourself to act on your convictions, join us by contacting us. Let’s come together to eradicate this disease.
The UUA Partner Church Program was established in early 1990 to organize a support network of North American churches to help over 150 Unitarian churches in Transylvania, Romania recover from decades of persecution by the Ceausescu regime. Resources from abroad have been essential to keep alive the Unitarian movement in the land where it originated. In the meantime, the Partnership Program has been expanded to provide support to the Unitarian movement in Hungary, the Czech Republic, India and the Philippines.
The Partner Church Task Force here at RRUUC was established in February, 1992, when we were matched with the Unitarian Church of Fiatfalva, Romania. Eight delegations from RRUUC have visited Fiatfalva, with our former minister, Bill Murry, being in the first group.
On January 11, 2007 RRUUC established a second partnership with the Unitarian Church of Kyrdem in the Khasi Hills of Northeast India.
This slideshow video shows highlights of visit to our partners.
Dedicated to promoting justice, economic fairness and dismantling racism through relationship-making, learning, witness, action and philanthropy, the chartered mission of the Racial Justice Task Force (“RJTF”), guided by the RRUUC Covenant and spiritually grounded action, is to:
Incubate and support ideas across Pathways to Racial Justice and the congregation directed at achieving racial justice in the greater District Metro Vicinity (DMV).
Serve as the institutional memory and conscience for racial justice work of the RRUUC congregation.
Identify, invite and support new leadership, and develop new resources, through the Pathways to Racial Justice.
Each Pathway to Racial Justice implements a unique element of racial justice action as voiced by the congregation (Racial Justice Task Force Framework, Spring 2016).
Witnessing 4 Justice: Develops witness opportunities for RRUUC community (including Black Lives Matter Vigil).
Engaging Communities: Develops opportunities for RRUUC to partner and ally directly with diverse communities.
Families4Pathways to Racial Justice: Engage racial justice action through a parent and child/youth lens, accounting for different patterns of availability and developmental needs of children and youth.
Supporting Educational Access: Supports fundraising, awards scholarships and partnerships with College Access and Beacon House.
Educating 4 Change: Develops opportunities to increase personal self-awareness about racial justice through intentional learning and reflection. Learn more about the group and its work here.
Racial justice work is not contained solely with the RJTF, but is interwoven in the fabric of congregational life including formal educational practices (Beloved Conversations), social justice groups (AIM, LATN, Immigration), worship and individual professional leadership by ministers and other staff.
Racial justice events or classes can be found on the Social Justice Ministry calendar available here and posted in the RRUUC Lounge.
Have more questions, read the FAQs about Racial Justice here. Contact the Convener here.
For the last 36 years, volunteers from RRUUC have been feeding as many as 200 hungry and needy people on the second Tuesday of very month at The Shepherd’s Table, a soup kitchen operated since 1983 as a cooperative interdenominational effort by 30 churches, synagogues, congregations, and other religious institutions. The total RRUUC team numbers about 25 congregational members and friends, with the 12 participants serving each month changing based on their availability.
If you want to learn more about RRUUC’s role at The Shepherd’s Table, or if you are interested in volunteering to participate, contact Peter Benjamin at kp.benj@verizon.net.
The goal of the Middle-East Task Force (METF) is to achieve greater understanding of this important region and its complexities and issues and through that promote peace and social justice. To achieve this end the METF:
Seeks to educate the congregation and legislators about current problems and obstacles to peace in the Middle-East;
Fosters mutual understanding among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and concerned citizens of the world;
Collaborates with coalitions, religious communities, and organizations that share similar objectives;
Supports the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations’ (UUA’s) membership in Churches for Middle-East Peace (CMEP) and Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME);
Updates members on lectures, symposiums, meetings and other events in the Washington area dealing with the Middle East; and forwards interesting articles on the Middle East to members.
For over a decade the Task Force has brought speakers to RRUUC with real expertise on the Middle East to talk on most of the countries and issues in the region. It has sponsored courses on understanding Islam and the history and complexities of the Israel/Palestine dispute.
