Imagining a Congregational Year, Part I, Rev. Josh Pawelek, September 14, 2025

UUSE's Oak Burl Chalice, on the globe table in the garden level chapel

We are in the midst of launching our congregational year. I am using this morning’s sermon as well as my September 28^th sermon to imagine what the year will look and feel like. There are a few things I really want to do with these two sermons, and one thing I don’t want to do. Broadly speaking, I do want to convey excitement about everything we have planned: worship, concerts, movie nights, game nights, classes, small groups—all the ways we grow and learn together—meeting new people, building new relationships, engaging in the wider community. I do want to emphasize our September ministry theme, building belonging. As I said in my newsletter column, I like having this theme front and center in our hearts and minds as we launch the congregational year. It’s a reminder that, all year long, one of the most critical aspects of congregational life is the way we welcome, include and empower people, the way we build and strengthen our community here at 153 West Vernon St., and the way we work to strengthen relationships beyond our meeting house. I do want to express my joy at being amongst you after my summer vacation and study leave. I do want to express my enthusiasm and excitement to be practicing ministry in and with a congregation that, by so many measures, is thriving.

          And then there is one thing I really don’t want to do this morning, but it would be spiritually negligent for me as your minister to not do it, which is talk about authoritarianism in the United States. I notice we often use euphemisms to talk about it. We refer to “the difficult times in which we live.” We refer to “everything going on in the nation and the world right now.” We say, “I can’t watch the news anymore.” So I will say it as clearly and as plainly as I can, because we need to call it by its true name: Every day, the United States government, under the leadership of President Donald Trump and the architects of Project 2025, slides more deeply into authoritarianism, enabled by a federal judiciary and a Congress that, on the whole, refuse to and/or fail to use the tools available to them to limit the excesses of the executive branch.

          I recognize there are many who will accuse me of being an out-of-touch liberal (and much worse), that I am contributing to the polarization plaguing our country, that I am being divisive, that I am somehow brainwashed by woke ideology. I really don’t know how to counter those arguments, except to say that I am trying to respond to facts. For example, it is a fact that masked government agents are abducting people off the streets without warrants and detaining them without any semblance of due process. That is evidence of authoritarianism, not democracy. That is evidence of a failure to follow the Constitution which requires due process. I want to launch our congregational year with joy, pride and excitement. I really don’t want to talk about authoritarianism. But it is our reality now. It is shaping our congregational life, and it requires a faithful response. (I note that our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly passed an Action of Immediate Witness this past June in Baltimore entitled “Faithful Defiance of Authoritarianism, a Call to Action: Reaffirming Our Covenant for Democracy and Freedom.”) So, in imagining the congregational year, I understand it is my task (though certainly not mine alone) to articulate—first to myself and then to you—what it means to stay true to our Unitarian Universalist principles, values and traditions as a liberal religious congregation in the midst authoritarianism.

          Hint: there is nothing in our principles or values or our Unitarian and Universalist traditions of theological and spiritual freedom, innovation and searching, our traditions that center human dignity, our traditions that align us with human rights and social and environmental justice movements—nothing!—that would prompt us to comply with authoritarianism. Nothing. Everything about our principles, values and traditions calls us to resist authoritarianism.

          And given the political assassination earlier this week, I feel compelled to say what should go without saying: our principles, values and traditions call us to engage in nonviolent resistance. I am convinced violence only leads to more violence. In resisting authoritarianism, the central question for me is how we do it with love, compassion and empathy.

I said talking about it is the one thing I really don’t want to do this morning. There’s some nuance here. Some of it is emotional. As I’ve had time to pause, reflect, read, volunteer and pray during my vacation and study leave, I’ve realized that I, like many of you, have big feelings about the rise of authoritarianism in our beloved country and the weakening of our (admittedly imperfect) democratic institutions.  It’s hard to talk about it when the feelings are so big. I am grieving. I am angry. I am frightened. I am also mindful that my fear as a middle-aged, upper middle-class, white, cis man is not the same as the fear of those directly targeted by the new administration’s policies: my transgender and queer siblings whose identities are being erased, my siblings of color whose history is being erased, my immigrant siblings who are being disappeared, my low-income siblings facing the loss of Medicaid and SNAP, my siblings with disabilities, my siblings who’ve lost jobs due to federal budget cuts and the economic impact of the tariffs. Even so, my fear and all my feelings are still big and, frankly, I am not entirely sure how to bring them into the pulpit. I don’t want to rage in this pulpit, especially when so many of you come here in search of respite and peace. I don’t want to weep uncontrollably in this pulpit. I don’t want to panic in this pulpit. But I feel all these feelings. AND THEY ARE BIG. I would much rather feel the joy, pride and excitement of our homecoming, our new congregational year, our beloved community. I will get there. We will get there.

More nuance: Through my engagement in the wider community as your minister since 2003, through the engagement of our Social Justice / Anti-Oppression Committee with coalitions like the Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance, Connecticut for All and HUSKY for Immigrants, through the engagement of our Sustainable Living Committee with organizations like the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network, through our work at Verplanck Elementary School, through our work with the Manchester Interfaith Social Action Committee—and much more—our congregation is part of a loosely-organized statewide progressive advocacy structure. This structure has evolved over decades. Its goal is to build political, social and economic power that can be used to make progressive change in Connecticut. Over the years, as participants in this structure, we’ve organized to win better access to safe, affordable healthcare, affordable housing, affordable childcare, excellent and well-funded k-12 and higher education, tax equity, criminal justice reform, marriage equality, the addition of ‘gender identity’ to the state anti-discrimination statutes, environmental justice, etc. I’m very proud of the victories we’ve won, and very mindful of where we’ve fallen short, what the barriers to success are and where we need to build more power. But here’s the rub: this loosely-organized statewide structure is not designed to resist an authoritarian federal government. We’ve never imagined, for example, that a significant portion of the approximately 6 billion federal Medicaid dollars Connecticut receives every year could disappear overnight. We’re not ready for that kind of health care catastrophe. We’re not structured to address it. Not every recipient will lose benefits, but what if half do? What happens if four or five hundred thousand neighbors lose access to health care? What happens to them? What happens to emergency rooms? What happens to the hospitals that will close without those Medicaid dollars coming to the state? What happens to the associated businesses, the doctor groups, the nurses, the PCAs, the nursing homes, the health care unions?

And that’s just the Medicaid question. There are hundreds, if not thousands of ways authoritarianism is manifesting. There are new expressions of it every day: firing federal officials deemed uncooperative or disloyal, recission of funds Congress has already appropriated, deployments of federal troops to American cities, ICE abductions, supportive Supreme Court shadow docket decisions with no explanations, disregard for long-standing scientific consensus, decimation of the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, halting of renewable energy projects, threats against the media, threats against universities. People complain that the Democratic Party has been ineffectual, but I argue that pretty much all of us who care about the survival of our democracy have been ineffectual, not because we aren’t committed—we are—but because the underlying nation-wide organizational structure needed to resist a genuinely authoritarian executive doesn’t yet exist. It will come into existence, of that I am confident. But it’s not here yet.

When I say I don’t want to talk about it, what I mean is I don’t want to spend significant time and energy in the pulpit exploring all the specific ways the authoritarian government in Washington, DC is undermining our democracy. It would be easy to do that, though I am not sure how much you would learn from me that you don’t already know; and more importantly, we’d be no closer to discerning our place in emerging structures designed to nonviolently resist authoritarianism. That’s what I want to preach about. What new structures are emerging? Where do we fit in? How do we contribute? That’s the discernment I want us to engage in this congregational year. That’s what I want to preach about.

I don’t want Executive branch cruelty, racism, lies and corruption setting my preaching agenda. Over the decades we have built a strong, thriving, vibrant, growing, caring, fun, creative, principled, justice-seeking, earth- and land-stewarding Unitarian Universalist community here atop Elm Hill on the Manchester/Vernon line, up above the Hockanum River. We’ve served as a beacon of liberal religious principles and values, compassion, service and love for two generations. We have a lot to offer the emerging resistance movement. I want to preach about that. I want our congregational year to be about that.

We have deep and always-deepening institutional relationships in Manchester and across the state: Power Up CT, MLAC, AABAC, GHIAA, Moral Monday CT, Connecticut for All, CT Students for a Dream, Hartford Deportation Defense, HUSKY for Immigrants, IREJN, SEIU 1199, 32BJ, AFL CIO CT, Equality CT, Working Families Party, Third Act, She Leads Justice, Universal Health Care Foundation. And we’re always getting to know new organizations, one of my favorites being Kamora’s Cultural Corner in Hartford. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize all the initials. Just know that everyone in the structure is trying to figure out how to conduct their work in ways that effectively build a nonviolent resistance movement. I want to preach about that. I want our congregational year to be about that.

Then there’s the role this congregation plays in keeping each of us healthy, whole, and hopeful; the role it plays in reducing our anxiety, in calming our bodies, in soothing our souls, in accompanying us in our sadness and grief, in validating our anger. Some of my studies this summer looked at the ways stress and trauma get lodged in our bodies, and how simple practices like breathing, singing, chanting, humming, and rocking back and forth can help dislodge it, making healing more accessible. (See My Grandmother's Hands by Rezmaa Menakem and Liberated to the Bone, by Susan Raffo.) When we engage in such practices in groups they are even more potent than when we engage individually. So I’ve been expanding my understanding of the purpose of worship. I am beginning to understand worship more clearly as an invitation to calm and dislodge the stress and trauma that are part and parcel of living under authoritarianism. Let this be a house of peace, a house of respite, a house of healing in trying times. I want to preach about that! I want our congregational year to be about that.

Some beloved little one said it well....

Now, imagine, as I’ve heard many of you say, things get worse before they get better. Imagine a few years from now, people out in the wider community are tired, angry, fearful, panicking, grieving. Imagine people are struggling. Imagine people are feeling lonely and isolated, distrustful, not able to talk openly and honestly with their neighbors. They know something needs to change, something needs to happen, but they’re just not sure what it is. And all along, we’ve been doing our work as a spiritual community, figuring out how to be true to our principles and values in public; figuring out how we fit into the movement to end authoritarian rule in the United States. All along we’ve been caring for each other, loving each other, breaking bread with each other, singing, chanting, humming and rocking back and forth with each other, facing our fears together, expressing our rage together, crying our tears together, calming our bodies together, settling in, relaxing, breathing together, building up our strength, our resilience and our resolve together, remaining hopeful together, being in the struggle together. In the midst of authoritarianism, people need what I’m describing. People will want to belong.

I want to preach about that. I want our congregational year to be about that!

Amen and blessed be.