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Editor’s Note: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly described the hymnal “Las voces del camino.” It was created to serve the worship needs of Spanish-speaking participants at UU congregations and includes songs from “Singing the Living Tradition” and selections from Spanish-speaking cultures around the world.
The theme of General Assembly 2025, held June 18–22 on site in Baltimore, Maryland, and online, was Meet the Moment—and as ground-shaking world events unfolded around them, Unitarian Universalists showed what meeting the moment looks like in real time.
On June 18, the first day of GA, the Unitarian Universalist Association moved swiftly to condemn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to curtail the rights of transgender people in the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti.
“The Supreme Court’s decision today will irreparably harm transgender youth by allowing states to deny them the kind of care they need for their physical and mental well-being,” said Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, the UUA’s president. “As a part of our faith tradition, Unitarian Universalists embrace transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender diverse people. This is a central expression of our faith.”
And hours after the United States announced on Saturday, June 21 that it had bombed Iran, the UUA issued a statement condemning the action, saying it “represents a moral failure and Unitarian Universalists (UUs) are compelled through our religious beliefs to speak out against it.”
The next morning, during the Sunday worship service, the Rev. Dr. Nicole Kirk said, “Friends, we gather this morning as a community of faith under the weight of deeply disturbing news” of the military strikes against Iran. Noting that the action “marks a dangerous escalation of a conflict that has already claimed too many lives,” Kirk added, “Our Unitarian Universalist tradition has called us to repudiate aggressive and preventive war and to recognize that while we cannot stop the violence, we can hold space for the grief, the anger, the fear, the conflicting emotions that we carry. Our faith calls us to be peacemakers, not warmakers … Let this worship service be an act of moral resistance.”
More than 3,279 Unitarian Universalists from 592 congregations in forty-eight states and four countries—Canada, France, Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—participated in GA this year. There were 2,483 attendees onsite, as well as 143 children, according to UUA Secretary John Simmonds.
The annual gathering of UUs included many other real-time expressions of responding to the urgency of the times. In response to the Supreme Court’s Skrmetti decision, a special session was added to the Thursday agenda. “Skrmetti Case: Information, Misinformation, and Implications,” was led by civil rights lawyer Sam Ames and UUA General Counsel Adrienne Walker, who explained the implications of the decision and took questions from the audience. “We cannot cede the ground of faith, religion,” Ames said. “We cannot cede the ground of the sacred.” The session was followed by the workshop “Building Trans Justice: Safety and Belonging.”
Saturday night’s Ware Lecture, with award-winning journalist and trans rights activist Imara Jones, drew numerous standing ovations. Emphasizing that Christian nationalists have “captured a major political party,” Jones said the attack on trans rights is a deeply researched and heavily funded effort to “undermine democracy” and warned UUs to “take it deadly seriously.” She added, “One of the ways to counter the role that anti-trans politics is playing in the undermining of democracy is to actually care about trans people.” She urged UUs to take action, including calling their state legislators to oppose anti-trans legislation and challenging people who make anti-trans comments.
Imara Jones, an award-winning journalist and trans rights activist, delivers the Ware Lecture on June 21, 2025, at the Baltimore Convention Center in Maryland.
Each year, the UUA president and GA Planning Committee invite a distinguished speaker to present the Ware Lecture. Previous lecturers include Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mary Oliver, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Van Jones, and Winona LaDuke. Betancourt said of this year’s lecture: “There are Ware lectures that change us fundamentally. Let this be one of those years.”
Program offerings were also informed by the Meet the Moment theme, with workshops focusing on timely topics such as “Preventing Catastrophic Loss: Community Care & Deportation Defense,” “Apartheid-Free Communities in Solidarity with Palestinians,” and “Disrupt Church: Fascism Update.” One especially well-attended workshop on anti-oppression and resistance to empire, drawing inspiration from the Star Wars franchise, was called “One with the Force: Love, Justice, and Resistance.” Rev. Sam Teitel, one of three presenters, said, “The Brilliance of Star Wars, then, is not only that it portrays an evil empire, but that it also portrays resistance. It shows heroic people, marginalized people, poor farm kids and scoundrels and outcasts and weirdos showing up … in the face of a totalitarian regime that seems impossible to resist. Star Wars gives us a vision of hope that oppression and empire can be resisted and that they can be resisted by the likes of us.”
GA also included a series of cohort meetings specifically focused on Meet the Moment, such as “Being Guided by Youth into the Future,” “Beyond Generosity: Practicing Our Values in Funding UU Projects,” “Shaping Our UU Future,” and “Queer and Trans Communities in Crisis.” Meet the Moment is a movement-wide framework helping UUs analyze, discern, and take values-based action in response to today’s religious, cultural, generational, and political realities. GA attendees considered their cohort topics in relation to three guiding questions:
- What is the moment that we are in as UUs and in our wider world?
- What are the most urgent and important needs and opportunities of this moment?
- How do our UU values call us to respond to this moment?
During the President and Executive Officers’ Report, President Betancourt said, “Beloveds, we are a people who make dreams of a better future real through concrete action. We have always found new ways to advance the values that we hold together, and I have every faith that our collective efforts can change the landscape of this hurting and beautiful world.” She added, “It will take all of us, in community, to respond to these times. Our faith, our nation, our values, and our world demand nothing less.”
General Assembly Business
Rev. Kierstin Homblette Allen (left) and Rev. Ashley Horan, UUA vice president for programs and ministries, address UUs during General Assembly on June 22, 2025, at the Baltimore Convention Center.
This year saw the return of Congregational Study/Action Issues, which invite UU congregations to engage in a multi-year period of study, reflection, and action around a topic voted on at GA. In the third year of the process, GA delegates can vote to approve a Statement of Conscience resulting from two years of congregational feedback on the CSAI. Delegates ultimately voted for “Abolition is Faith Formation,” after also considering “Housing: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” and “Fat Liberation: Building Justice and Inclusion for Larger Bodies.”
Delegates also voted to affirm all three Actions of Immediate Witness (AIWs) under consideration: “Faithful Defiance of Authoritarianism, a Call to Action: Reaffirming Our Covenants for Democracy and Freedom” (98.3 percent of votes), “Funding Global LGBTIQ Freedom Amid Crisis: A Call for Immediate Action and Solidarity” (98.3 percent of votes), and “We Declare and Reaffirm: All People Have Inherent Worth and Inalienable Rights” (99.2 percent). AIWs are statements about a significant action, event, or development in the world that necessitates immediate engagement and action among UU congregations and affiliated groups.
In this year’s only contested election, Rev. Kimberly Quinn Johnson and Bill Young—who were running as a team against solo candidate Natasha Walker—were elected to a six-year term as UUA co-moderators, with 74.9 percent of the vote. Johnson and Young were installed at a ceremony on Sunday afternoon, taking the reins from outgoing co-moderators Rev. Meg Riley and Charles Du Mond, who were honored throughout the week.
Others elected in uncontested races were Mary Heafy, Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Rev. Dr. Adam Robersmith, and Rev. Justine Sullivan to the Board of Trustees (3-year term); Rev. Dr. Tracie Barrett, Rachel A. Feltner, Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson, and Rev. Dr. Rodney Lemery to the Commission on Appraisal (6-year term); and Debra Gray Boyd, Kathy Charles, and Courtney McKenny to the Nominating Committee (3-year term).
This year’s recipients of three of the Association’s most prestigious awards were Paula Cole Jones, who received the Award for Distinguished Service to the Cause of Unitarian Universalism; Rev. Dr. Natalie Fenimore, who received the Angus H. MacLean Award for Religious Education Excellence; and Larry Ladd, who received the President’s Award for Volunteer Service.
Outgoing General Assembly Co-moderator Rev. Meg Riley (left) and Paula Cole Jones, recipient of the Award for Distinguished Service, on June 22, 2025, at the Baltimore Convention Center.
Working Together for a Better World
Speaking at the 2025 GA Synergy Service, the annual service run by young UUs, 17-year-old Logan Dam spoke about the experience of being a young person today. “Coming of age right now feels heavy,” Dam told the audience. “It’s not just about growing older—it’s about waking up to how much is broken, to how much is at stake, but also to how powerful we can be when we don’t give up and when we work together.”
As an example of that call, the GA service project brought together seventy-three GA volunteers from around the country to work with local partners to beautify an urban lot in South Baltimore. The lot is owned by the South Baltimore Community Land Trust, where Black Yield Institute hosts a weekly food market. Black Yield Institute is a Black-led, community-based organization working to end food apartheid, by which historically marginalized people experience food and land disparities rooted in race and class. The weekly market provides fresh, affordable, and culturally appropriate food in an area where there are no grocery stores, and acts as a hub for organizing efforts to end food apartheid, said Eric Jackson, a co-founder of the Black Yield Institute. The South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT) is a community organization working to create permanently affordable housing, development without displacement, and zero waste in Baltimore. It was the recipient of the special collection during GA Sunday worship.
Other volunteers at the project, which took place on Friday of GA, included students from Benjamin Franklin High School, as well as SBCLT partners from Coal Free Curtis Bay, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Thumper’s (a neighborhood bar), and Black Yield Institute. The volunteers picked up over two dozen contractor bags of trash from surrounding alleys, constructed a fence, planted flowers, repaired fences, and cleaned out a storage space for an affordable housing conversion, said Valerie Hsu, local area coordinator for GA 2025.
Innovations: A Virtual Hymnal and Upcoming GA Format Changes
Unitarian Universalists worship together during the virtual hymnal hymn sing on June 22, 2025, at the Baltimore Convention Center.
The Meet the Moment concept has also been inviting the UUA to think creatively about how to adapt to the changing needs of UU communities, including new ways to engage with music and reimagining what the GA experience itself might look like.
During GA, the UUA unveiled its first-ever virtual hymnal, Sing Out Love, which was the result of a multi-year collaborative project between the UUA’s Virtual Hymnal Task Force and the Association for UU Music Ministries. The subscription-based offering is the first new hymnal from the UUA since the 2009 release of the Spanish-language Las voces del camino. Attendees gathered together before the Sunday morning worship to celebrate the virtual hymnal’s release with a joyful sing-along that included many of the new hymns and songs included in Sing Out Love.
And next year, GA is trying out a new format. Scheduled for June 14–21, 2026, it will comprise an all-virtual business meeting followed by professional development opportunities, caucuses, and community connection, with optional in-person gatherings, including, potentially, a UUA host site plus live streamed programming, the Ware Lecture, and Sunday worship. Allowing time between the governing aspect and meaningful programming creates a more manageable GA pace, said LaTonya Richardson, General Assembly and Conference Services director. “The model is designed to both meet the moment and scale up our reach,” she said.
GA 2027, June 23–27, 2027, will return to a multiplatform format, both online and in-person in San Jose, California.
Additional reporting by Maryann Batlle, Sonja L. Cohen, and Kristen Cox Roby.