UUMUAC (You Me Act): The Unitarian Universalist Multiracial Unity Action Council

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Rev. Jack Reich opens his sermon with Isaac Asimov’s reminder that “if knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we will solve them,” setting a tone rooted in evidence, clarity, and moral responsibility. He contrasts the everyday issues Americans believe are most urgent—rising costs, taxes, crime, immigration—with the deeper, structural crises that truly threaten our collective future. This mismatch between public perception and actual danger, he argues, undermines our ability to act effectively as citizens. Reich identifies four overarching crises: climate change, extreme inequality, pervasive violence, and the erosion of voting rights and democratic functioning. These are not isolated problems but interconnected systems shaping American life. Climate change threatens long‑term survival; inequality distorts democracy; violence saturates daily experience; and political division, fueled by defensiveness and misinformation, weakens the nation’s capacity to respond. As he notes, “a population that insists on believing in the facticity of fairy tales” becomes less capable of solving real‑world problems. A major theme of the sermon is the need to look beneath surface‑level symptoms to the underlying causes: failures in education, the decline of critical thinking, the rise of defensiveness, and the cultural elevation of belief over evidence. Reich critiques the ways religious certainty, anti‑intellectualism, and lack of discernment have made Americans vulnerable to manipulation and unable to confront hard truths. Rebuilding discernment—especially through early childhood reading, civic learning, and a renewed respect for science—is framed as essential to national survival. Reich also highlights the epidemic of loneliness and alienation in American society. He calls for rebuilding community life through new forms of gathering, honest conversation, and shared purpose. He urges listeners to imagine a society that invests in children, supports teachers, guarantees healthcare, rejects violence, and cultivates courageous dialogue about the future we want. Structural reforms—such as strengthening workers’ rights, addressing inequality at its roots, and recommitting to democratic participation—are presented as necessary steps toward renewal. In closing, Rev. Reich reframes the “Four Horses of Our Apocalypse” not as biblical omens but as modern forces—defensiveness, inequality, violence, and democratic decay—that threaten the nation’s moral and civic fabric. Yet his message remains hopeful: by confronting root causes, rebuilding community, and choosing evidence over illusion, Americans can still shape a just and sustainable future. The sermon invites listeners into a deeper conversation about responsibility, courage, and the work of collective repair.

Howard Thurman: Medicine for Our Times (Kennedy, 2022)

This episode introduces listeners to the life and wisdom of Howard Thurman, the influential mystic, theologian, and spiritual guide whose work shaped generations of activists, including Martin Luther King Jr. Drawing from a 2022 video presentation by Rev. Dr. Mellen Kennedy, along with two excerpts from a 1976 PBS interview with Thurman, the episode highlights why his teachings remain “medicine for our times.” Rev. Kennedy opens with one of Thurman’s most beloved lines: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive.” She situates her message within a larger interfaith project co‑hosted by the Springfield Vermont Universalist Meeting House and the Empowerment Center in Maryland—an effort to bring Thurman’s legacy to new audiences. Listeners first hear Thurman in his own voice. In the PBS interview, he recalls his childhood in Daytona Beach, where the ocean, night sky, and a sturdy backyard oak tree formed the foundation of his earliest religious experiences. Sitting with his back against the tree during storms, he learned that beneath life’s turbulence there is a deeper stability. Nature, he explains, taught him to speak aloud to God and to feel part of a “rhythmic flow of life.” Rev. Kennedy frames Thurman as a healer for three modern ailments: fear, environmental disconnection, and social divisiveness. She describes fear as a “second pandemic” that constricts our thinking and compassion. Thurman’s practices of silence, grounding, and communion with nature offer a path back to clarity and courage. Environmental crisis, she argues, stems from forgetting our place within the natural world. Thurman’s spirituality—rooted in direct experience of sky, sea, and earth—invites us to reconnect with the living world as a source of wisdom and belonging. The third ailment, divisiveness, is addressed through a second interview excerpt. Thurman explains that when one goes deeply inward, one “comes up inside every other living person.” True self‑knowledge reveals universal kinship. Rev. Kennedy connects this insight to Mother Teresa’s practice of seeing the divine “in all of his many disguises.” She also highlights the influence of Thurman’s grandmother, an enslaved African woman whose stories instilled in him a lifelong sense of dignity: “You are not slaves. You are a child of God.” This grounding enabled Thurman to resist fear and to become a spiritual anchor for the Civil Rights Movement. John Lewis called him a saint; King drew heavily from his teachings, especially on nonviolence. Rev. Kennedy closes by urging listeners to practice what Thurman lived: silence, rootedness, connection, and love. She quotes his reminder that we are living “where the old is breaking up and the new is being born”—a moment not for despair but for engagement. Thurman’s legacy calls us to become healing presences in a bruised and beautiful world.

The God-No-God Divide (Matthew Shear, March 2026)

Rev. Dr. Matthew Shear’s presentation explores the long‑standing divide between those who believe in God and those who do not, beginning with the observation that people often mean very different things when they use the word God. As he notes, when asked whether he believes in God, he responds, “Tell me what you mean by God,” because most people describe not a biblical figure but “a spirit or a presence, something outside of and greater than themselves.” This divide, he argues, is no longer just theological but increasingly political, shaping how people perceive one another across social and ideological lines. To illuminate the complexity of the God–No‑God question, Shear draws on cultural and literary references. He reflects on the song “From a Distance,” which evokes what transcendentalist Theodore Parker called the “infinite God,” a perspective from which human differences diminish. He then turns to Isaac Asimov’s story “The Last Question,” summarizing its exploration of entropy and cosmic evolution. The story ends with the line “Let there be light and there was light,” prompting Shear to suggest that scientific and religious narratives may not be as incompatible as they seem—perhaps the Big Bang and creation stories are different expressions of the same mystery. Shear then situates the God–No‑God divide within a broader historical and cultural context. He traces how scientific advancement, humanism, and shifting religious identities have shaped Unitarian Universalism, sometimes pushing it toward defining itself by what it rejects rather than by a positive spiritual vision. He cites contemporary political commentary, including David French’s warning that “we have reached end‑stage polarization,” to show how religious identity and political identity have become entangled in ways that deepen division. To offer a path forward, Shear highlights the work of Krista Tippett, who emphasizes the importance of language, deep listening, and love as tools for navigating polarization. Tippett argues that “we are starved for fresh language to approach each other,” and that listening requires “a willingness to be surprised… and take in ambiguity.” She frames virtues as “spiritual technologies” that can help communities move beyond tribalism. Shear also discusses Amanda Montel’s analysis of cultish language and cognitive bias, noting how easily people can be drawn into rigid ideological groups—and how religious communities can instead cultivate “ritual time” that supports meaning without fanaticism. In closing, Shear argues that congregations have an opportunity to counteract polarization by fostering wisdom, transcendence, and spiritual practice rooted in compassion rather than dogma. As he puts it, “we can make the choice to turn away from… fanaticism and… practice speaking of a faith dedicated to becoming wise.” The presentation ultimately invites listeners to reconsider the God–No‑God divide not as a battleground but as a space for curiosity, humility, and shared human striving.

Dancing with the Panthers Part One (Campbell & Rice, c2000)

This episode of Dancing with the Panthers features a conversation recorded around the year 2000 with Rev. Dr. Finley C. Campbell and historian Dr. Jon Rice, reflecting on their involvement with the Black Panther Party roughly thirty years earlier. Barbara Jean Walsh introduces the discussion by explaining that both men—Campbell in Indiana and Rice in Chicago—became deeply influenced by the Panthers’ philosophy, especially its emphasis on multiracial unity, socialism, and community self‑determination. Dr. Campbell opens with personal reflections on race, class, and the spread of economic oppression, using a chance encounter as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of racial and class struggle. He recounts how he was “drafted” into the Panthers’ Ministry of Education in Indiana, helping organize Black Student Unions and translating Panther ideology for largely white academic audiences. Campbell describes his political awakening, shaped by the Panthers’ Ten‑Point Program, their critique of capitalism, and their insistence that commitment—not racial purity—defined solidarity. Dr. Rice then shares his experience as a young volunteer in the Chicago chapter beginning in 1969. He traces the Panthers’ roots to the moral courage of the civil rights movement, arguing that the collapse of legal segregation revealed deeper economic inequalities that required more radical solutions. Rice explains how the Panthers studied global revolutionary movements, equated racism with capitalism, and sought to build class‑based coalitions across racial lines. This vision led to groundbreaking alliances with groups like the Young Patriots (poor white migrants) and the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican organization), forming Chicago’s original Rainbow Coalition. Both speakers emphasize the Panthers’ boldness, youth, and idealism, as well as the challenges they faced—from internal discipline to external repression such as COINTELPRO. The episode highlights the Panthers’ community programs, their efforts to unite marginalized groups, and the lasting impact of leaders like Fred Hampton, who was only 21 when he was killed. Together, Campbell and Rice offer a vivid, personal account of a turbulent era and the revolutionary imagination that shaped it.

A Different Take on The Good Samaritan (Richard Trudeau February 2026)

Rev. Richard Trudeau’s sermon invites listeners to reconsider the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan by challenging the interpretive frame supplied by the Gospel of Luke. Trudeau argues that Luke, writing as a non‑Jewish Christian several generations after Jesus, misunderstood both the cultural meaning of “Samaritan” and the nature of Jesus’s parables. Luke’s framing dialogue—“Go and do likewise”—is presented as a later moralizing overlay rather than Jesus’s own teaching, a point Trudeau underscores by noting that Jesus’s parables are rarely, if ever, straightforward morality tales. Instead, he insists, they function as puzzles meant to “tease the mind into active thought,” not as ethical instructions. To recover Jesus’s original intent, Trudeau urges listeners to begin with what Jesus’s audience would have known implicitly: Samaritans were not merely outsiders but longstanding enemies, viewed as heretical descendants of a breakaway kingdom with its own temple and Torah. This cultural memory, he argues, is essential to hearing the parable as Jesus’s contemporaries would have heard it. The peasants and displaced farmers who made up Jesus’s audience would not have identified with the priest, Levite, or innkeeper, but with the man “left for half dead”—the only character present throughout the story. The shock of the parable, then, is not that a Samaritan behaves ethically, but that the victim experiences compassion from someone he has been taught to despise. From this vantage point, Trudeau reframes the parable as an expression of Jesus’s central proclamation: the “Empire of God,” a term he argues is more accurate than the traditional “Kingdom of God.” In this vision, God’s reign is not an afterlife reward but a transformed social reality marked by justice, sufficiency, and mutual care. The parable becomes an imaginative doorway into that world—a world in which one’s supposed enemy becomes the agent of one’s healing. This, Trudeau contends, is the parable’s true theological force: not a call to imitate the Samaritan, but an invitation to imagine a society reordered so profoundly that compassion flows across entrenched lines of hostility. The discussion that follows the sermon reflects how Trudeau’s reframing resonates with listeners. Participants connect the parable to contemporary prejudices, institutional failures of compassion, and the perennial question of what brings antagonistic groups together. Some raise textual or historical questions—such as whether ritual purity laws would truly have prevented the priest and Levite from helping—while others affirm the power of reading the story through the lens of social estrangement and unexpected grace. The conversation underscores Trudeau’s central claim: that the parable’s enduring power lies not in moral exhortation but in its capacity to unsettle, reorient, and expand the moral imagination.