On Tuesday, Senator Raphael Warnock won re-election as senator from Georgia. In his victory speech, Senator Warnock referenced two Unitarian Universalists, Viola Liuzzo and Rev. James Reeb.

What we call the “Sources” of our liberal religious faith include “Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.”

Rev. James Reeb, at the request of Martin Luther King, Jr, had gone to Selma in 1965 to protest for voting rights. He was attacked by white supremacists and died shortly after.

After his death, there was a second call for people to come to Selma to march against racist violence and for voting rights and racial justice. Viola Liuzzo drove down from Detroit and did what I feel is most important, especially for white people working for racial justice: she said, “What can I do to help?” When they said, “make copies,” she made copies. When they said, “make coffee,” she made coffee. And when they said, “Help drive the marchers back from Montgomery to Selma,” she did so. It was in doing that, that she was murdered by another band of white supremacist men.

“Challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.” 

The lives and deaths of Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo challenge me. We stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. We are numerically, a small faith. But throughout history, Unitarian Universalists have always had an outsized influence because of our commitment to justice.

A friend of mine who didn’t know about UUism, kept running into it as she did research about the abolition and civil rights movements. She is Black and she said, “Y’all have always been ride or die for us.” I know that this is not unequivocally true. Not all Unitarians and Universalists have answered the call when it was issued.

But we can. We can learn from the past and we can feel the weight of responsibility on our shoulders. Because there may be people in the future who will look to our lives for inspiration. It is their weight we feel.

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Note: it is not only UUs from the past who can inspire us. We are also woven into the present. The potentially pivotal case in American Democracy, Moore v. Harper is being heard by the Supreme Court right now. “Harper” is Becky Harper … a Unitarian Universalist.