Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, Rev. Josh Pawelek, January 18, 2026

An early lyric sheet for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” published by Philadelphia: Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, c. 1863.

We’ve sung through various iterations of the late 18^th-century American camp meeting song “Say, Brothers Will You Meet Us?” Just prior to the Civil War, federal soldiers in Massachusetts set the explicitly abolitionist lyrics of John Brown’s Body” to the same tune. Then, as the story goes the poet, author, abolitionist, prison reformer, women’s rights activist and campaigner for a “Mother’s Day for Peace,” Julia Ward Howe, on a visit to Washington, DC in 1861, heard troops singing “John Brown’s Body.” She found it crass—good for marching, not so good for moving the heart of a nation. A minister accompanying her suggested she write her own version of the song for the abolitionist cause, something more transcendent and scripturally-based to inspire not only the troops but the Union itself. Awakening from a dream the next morning she wrote down the lyrics to what became the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”[1]

            It’s a call to arms, a spiritual rallying cry for civil war. The scriptural references come not from Jesus’ sermon on the mount, but from the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation. They invoke themes of divine justice: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” In her mind the nation’s great sin was slavery. War would end it. A line from a verse we didn’t sing says, “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.”

Please know I am not invoking Howe to suggest that we are on the verge of civil war today. I don’t believe that. But I recognize that in communities and cities where there has been state-sanctioned violence -- immigrant abductions, tear gas raids on apartment buildings, and the ICE murder of Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis last week and other recent ICE shootings -- something akin to war is happening. The reason I am invoking Julia Ward Howe is because it has always been my intention in this sermon, on the eve of the national Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration, to reflect on a few figures in our UU history who have worked for racial justice; and then to ask what lesson or wisdom from their lives speaks to our lives. Julia Ward Howe, though raised Episcopalian, became a Unitarian in her early forties. She was friends with a number of Boston-area Unitarian ministers, including Theodor Parker, as well as many of the Boston and Concord, Massachusetts Transcendentalists. She was a member of Boston’s Unitarian Church of the Disciples where, though not a minister herself, she occasionally delivered the Sunday sermon.  

While there are many dimensions to Julia Ward Howe’s life and activism I could explore this morning, mindful of last week’s service on art as resistance, I lift up what is perhaps her most enduring contribution to American culture, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” While I don’t resonate with its apocalyptic Bible references, and while it is certainly not a song designed to de-escalate tension, I do find in her Abolitionist lyrics a kindred spirit, naming injustice with searing moral clarity and reminding us we are called from the depths of our faith to confront it. I proudly claim her as a spiritual ancestor.

Next, let's turn to late 18^th-century Philadelphia where, in the fall of 1793, the mosquito-born yellow fever caused the deaths of 10% of the population. After yellow fever subsided, Richard Allen (who at this same time founded the first Black Methodist Church in the nation, and eventually became the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church) and Absalom Jones (who, a few years earlier, had founded the first Black Episcopal Church in the nation, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas) published an article defending Philadelphia’s free black community for its heroic response to the yellow fever. They wrote the article to counter criticisms white journalists were leveling against the black community. One paragraph in the article has always made me proud.  They wrote: “When the sickness became general, and several of the physicians died, and most of the survivors were exhausted by sickness or fatigue, that good man, Dr. Rush, called us more immediately to attend to the sick.”[2]

That "good" man was Dr. Benjamin Rush, perhaps most well-known as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was an avowed abolitionist long before the Abolitionist movement coalesced in the 1830s, and a committed Universalist. Though not trained as a minister, he was an avid reader of Universalist theology; he was close with Philadelphia’s leading Universalist minister, the Rev. Elhanan Winchester; and he was present in 1790 at the founding of the Philadelphia Convention of Universalists, the first attempt at creating a national Universalist denomination. That Convention drafted “Articles of Faith and a “Plan of Government” which, according to the Universalist historian Russell Miller, “were submitted to Dr. Benjamin Rush … for correction and arrangement.”[3] Miller also says that Rush was gifted at translating Universalist ideas into action. “Almost every Universalist social reform impulse,” he writes, “from anti-slavery, temperance, and prison reform in the pre-Civil War era to participation in the Social Gospel movement of the late nineteenth century can be traced to Rush’s influence.”[4]

Rush was relentless in his opposition to slavery. In 1773, at age 27, he wrote a tract entitled “An address to the inhabitants of the British settlements, on the slavery of the Negroes in America,” in which he systematically dismantled the popular pro-slavery arguments of the day. He called for an end to the slave trade, for the dissolution of the African Committee of Merchants who were chiefly responsible for carrying out the trade, for the shunning of those involved in the trade, for the education of African Americans in reading, writing, business and religion, and for giving to African Americans all the privileges of free-born British subjects. He called on magistrates, legislators and advocates to use their offices to suppress this evil. To clergy he said “Ye who estimate the worth of your fellow creatures by their Immortality and therefore must look upon all [hu]mankind as equal,—let your zeal keep pace with your opportunities to put a stop to slavery.”[5]

            I mentioned Rush’s work with Allen and Jones in confronting the yellow fever crisis of 1793 for a very specific reason. They likely didn’t think of it this way, and I don’t want to overstate what was happening between them, but from my vantage point 230 years later, I see a multi-racial, multi-faith effort to organize a public health response to a pandemic. I want to repeat those words: I see a multi-racial, multi-faith effort to organize a public health response to a pandemic. I stress this because, given efforts today to disrupt, disable and create mistrust in the American public health system, and given a multitude of efforts to sow racial and religious discord throughout the United States, I cling to this story. I cling to this story of these relgious leaders--each of them in the midst of founding new chuches--working together to bring healing to a devastated city. As we engage in social justice work in multiracial, interfaith coalitions, especially when we work on health care justice, I proudly claim Benjamin Rush as a spiritual ancestor.[6]

            A third person I’d like to hold up is the Rev. Ephraim Nute. There’s actually way too much to his story to adequately tell it in a few paragraphs. He really deserves an entire sermon, or maybe a book group.[7] But briefly, an entry in the online Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography describes Nute as “an outspoken and aggressive abolitionist [who] was the American Unitarian Association … missionary to the Kansas territory during the “Bleeding Kansas” years prior to the Civil War. A conductor on the Underground Railroad, he was a key figure in the free state cause. He lost family and friends to the violence there and had to fight to save his own life.”[8]

He was clearly heroic, clearly passionate about ending slavery.[9] And a number of sources say that because the denomination was divided over how best to address slavery, Nute was also “frustrated at being ignored, denied, and underfunded in his mission”[10] by denominational leaders in Boston. In February of 1859 he wrote a letter to an unidentified friend thanking him for a $10 donation, and describing a recent failed attempt to help eleven escaped slaves and two free blacks travel to Oskaloosa, Iowa. The party was captured. Nute wrote to his friend: “The great trouble was the want of funds. This hindered us from sending them forward as fast as they arrived, as before has been done, & so permitted such a large number to accumulate here.”[11] They had to wait for sufficient funding; when they were finally able to leave, the group was too large and thus too obvious to their pursuers.

Nute’s concern about funding resonates with me precisely because, as I’ve named a number of times, I am encountering increasing requests to raise money for people who are directly impacted by authoritarian policies, specifically immigrant families who have seen a primary breadwinner abducted, detained or deported; and transgender people or families with transgender members who are leaving states with anti-trans laws, hoping to resettle in safer states. I am not trying to equate the challenges escaped slaves and their supporters faced with the challenges facing immigrants and transgender people today. But to the extent people working directly with these groups are in touch with me, there is enormous financial need, and there is understandable frustration. I am hopeful we can respond with generous spirits. I won’t say more about this here, except to note that our Social Justice / Anti-Oppression Committee is weighing some proposals for how we can invite the members and friends of this congregation to support specific individuals and families that our partners identify to us. Those conversations will unfold in the coming months.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not comment on the ICE murder of Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis on January 7^th. It was an excessive and unjustified use of force by an officer of the state. The Department of Justice’s decision not to open a civil rights investigation is yet more evidence of authoritarianism. There is a historical echo for Unitarian Universalists in Good's murder. I lift up the name of Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a white woman, mother of five, who was murdered for her involvement in the Civil Rights movement.  In March of 1965, as a relatively new member of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, she heard Martin Luther King, Jr’s call for religious leaders to come to Selma, AL to support the voting rights march. Though not a member of the clergy, as a 2006 article in the UU World reports it, “Liuzzo took the call to heart. She drove … to Selma, intending to stay a week. She volunteered at the … Brown [Chapel] African Methodist Episcopal Church and used her car to drive protesters back and forth from Selma and Montgomery. On March 25, Liuzzo was giving a ride to fellow civil rights worker Leroy Moton when four Klansmen pulled their car alongside hers and shot her. Liuzzo was killed instantly while Moton was able to escape.”[12] About her murder, Martin Luther King is reported to have said: “If physical death is the price some must pay to save us and our white brothers from eternal death of the spirit, then no sacrifice could be more redemptive.”[13][14][15]

I am not trying to draw too close a comparison between these two murders separated by 60 years. The immediate circumstances are not the same. But both happened in the context of a larger struggle for racial justice in the United States. Both remind us, sadly, that there is no way for anyone of any identity to engage in this struggle, or even be simply adjacent to it, with complete safety.

These are hard, frightening, enraging times. These are also sad times. So much is being lost. But not our spirits. I turn to people like Benjamin Rush, Ephraim Nute, Julia Ward Howe, Viola Gregg Liuzzo, as well as Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many more, as reminders that though the times are hard, frightening, enraging and sad, we inherit a historical legacy that strengthens and inspires us. We claim Unitarian Universalist principles and values that center us. We work in solidarity with partners in the wider community who guide us. And we have this Unitarian Universalist congregation for support, comfort, care, love and a vision of the beloved community. In all of this, our eyes see the glory and our spirits are renewed.

Amen and blessed be.

[1] See “The Battle Hymn of the Republic: The Story Behind the Song” and the Trump (sic) Kennedy Center Website: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/music/story-behind-the-song/the-story-behind-the-song/the-battle-hymn-of-the-republic/#:~:text=Howe's%20new%20words%20also%20angered,was%20on%20the%20North's%20side. For more information on Julia Ward Howe, see: https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/cambridge-harvard/julia-ward-howe/.

[2] Allen, Richard and Jones, Absalom, “A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Colored People During the Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793; and a Refutation of Some Censures Thrown Upon Them in Some Publications,” in Miller, Ruth, ed., Blackamerican Literature: 1760 – Present (New York: Macmillan Publishing co., 1971) p. 65.

[3] Miller, Russell E., The Larger Hope: The First Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1770-1870 (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1979) p. 77.

[4] Ibid., p. 39.

[5] Rush, Benjamin, “An address to the inhabitants of the British settlements, on the slavery of the Negroes in America. To which is added, A vindication of the address, in answer to a pamphlet entitled, "Slavery not forbidden in Scripture; or, A defence of the West India planters." / By a Pennsylvanian. ; [Fifteen lines of verse, signed Proteus] (Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1773) pp. see: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=evans;idno=N10229.0001.001;node=N10229.0001.001:2;rgn=div1;view=text.

[6] In proudly claiming Rush as a spiritual ancestor, I don’t want to suggest that he was free from the racist assumptions of his day despite his belief in the equality of all people. For example, like many white residents of Philadelphia, Rush assumed that people of African descent had greater immunity to the yellow fever virus. This assumption was false. I guess I should also point out that Rush’s approach to treating the virus included bleeding. This treatment had no impact on the virus whatsoever.

[7] Groth, Bobbie, the Incredible Story of Ephraim Nute: Scandal, Bloodshed and Unitarianism on the American Frontier (Boston: Skinner House, 2011). Currently available at: https://www.abebooks.com/9781558966093/Incredible-Story-Ephraim-Nute-Scandal-1558966099/plp.

[8] Groth, Bobbie, “Nute, Ephraim” Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, 2009. See: https://www.uudb.org/nute-ephraim/. Also check out “Ephraim Nute, Free State Minister,” in the Unitarian Universalist World, March 17, 2015 at https://www.uuworld.org/articles/ephraim-nute-free-state-minister.

[9] This is yet another instance where proudly claiming someone as a spiritual ancestor shouldn’t prevent us from naming the ways they participated in racism even as they advocated against slavery. While it is beyond the scope of this sermon, I feel it is important to note that the abolitionist New Englanders who travelled to Kansas in the 1850s often framed their activities in the language of settler colonialism, claiming a right to the land that was God-given—a species of Manifest Destiny that ignored the indigenous people of the region.

[10] Groth, “Nute,” Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.

[11] Nute, Ephraim, “Ephraim Nute to unidentified, February 14, 1859” posted at “Slave Stampedes on the Southern Borderlands. See: https://stampedes.dickinson.edu/document/ephraim-nute-unidentified-february-14-1859.

[12] Greer, Jane, “UU civil rights martyr posthumously honored: Viola Liuzzo inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame,” UU World, November 19, 2006. See: https://www.uuworld.org/articles/uu-civil-rights-martyr-posthumously-hono.

[13] This quote appears in the entry for Viola Gregg Liuzzo at the online Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography. See: https://www.uudb.org/liuzzo-viola/.

[14] A personal note: My father joined the voting rights march for its final leg into Montgomery. He was in the area at the time of Liuzzo’s murder. We once determined he would have been somewhere between downtown Montgomery and the airport at that time, and thus he was no more than 14 miles away from murder when it happened.

[15] Learn more about Liuzzo, including the aftermath of her murder, at the Jim Crow Museum website at https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/witnesses/violaliuzzo.htm#:~:text=He%20eventually%20flagged%20down%20a,The%20murder%20of.