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Rev. Dr. Natalie Fenimore, recipient of this year’s Angus H. MacLean Award for Religious Education Excellence, has some advice for the RE leaders of today and those of the future: “Look to the history of LREDA: it has long been a gathering place for deep reflection, expansive collegiality, brave transformations. Religious educators need each other to ride the wave of change in our congregations and our world, and to be the change we want to see.”
Fenimore has served as a religious educator, parish minister, member of the UUA’s Commission on Institutional Change, mentor, curriculum writer, board member, and more. A past president of the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA), she is currently lead minister and minister of Lifespan Religious Education at the UU Congregation of Shelter Rock in Manhasset, New York.
In her acceptance speech at General Assembly 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland, she spoke to the strength of religious educators, who “have been at the forefront of our faith tradition—teaching, learning, and always challenging and moving us forward. That legacy is present at times of anxiety, times of fear, times when we face the worst—in times like these. Our religious educators remain dedicated to truth telling and justice making.”
Presenting the award, Nao Bethea, co-director of the UUA’s Lifespan Faith Engagement office, said Fenimore “centers religious education as a core practice of Unitarian Universalism—responding to a call to continually learn and grow, how to do the real work that needs doing in front of us, day in and day out.”
“With the many changes since the COVID pandemic,” Fenimore told UU World, “with the chaos of our current political system, with cultural conflicts, it can seem that our future is uncertain, even bleak. I don’t dismiss this reality—however, we can be a people who make a way out of no way. We can follow the learnings of communities of color, Black, Indigenous, LGBTQI communities of mutual aid, which cry and march forward, in joy, at the same time.”
The MacLean Award was established in 1972 and honors a person who has contributed to the quality of RE at the local and Associational level, brought dignity to the profession, and been a leader in UU faith development for all ages. Selected by a joint UUA and LREDA award committee, past recent recipients include Randy Becker, Lynn Sabourin, Christina Rivera, CB Beal, and Aisha K. Hauser.