Proposed CSAI: Abolition is Faith Formation

General Assembly 2025 GA Business
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This CSAI is sponsored by: Church of the Larger Fellowship Unitarian Universalist

Issue and Need

The Church of the Larger Fellowship proposes a CSAI which utilizes what we’ve learned through our Worthy Now Prison Ministry to bring Abolition Faith Formation to the wider UU community. We define Abolition with a holistic lens that includes how to establish transformative justice practices all the way through dismantling the prison industrial complex.

Abolition and how it relates to our Unitarian Universalist theology is largely not understood or misunderstood as a foundational practice of our faith.

Grounding in Unitarian Universalism

The Church of the Larger Fellowship has developed, over decades, accountability with the incarcerated Unitarian Universalist population. This relationship has been formed through worship, activities, faith formation classes, pen pal correspondence, pastoral care and other advocacy

Additionally the CLF has been one the forefront of faithful and progressive embodiment of our Unitarian Universalist faith in terms of speaking out through its platforms and practices for the hiring of previously incarcerated individuals.

In terms of Abolition in community, in the past 4 years, the CLF has been intentional in linking our Unitarian Universalist theology with abolition practices such as speaking out about the genocide in Gaza, ICE detention, discriminatory housing, food deserts, climate justice, and other social justice issues. This is so that the aforementioned practices are more easily understood as part of an Abolition theology. Too frequently equating abolition with the abolition of the carceral system is misunderstood to be the only expression of our faith practice of Abolition.

Through the CLF’s weekly podcast The VUU (Voices of Unitarian Universalism) we have brought in faith leaders, community leaders, and members of affected communities from both within and outside the traditional UU community. These discussions have ranged from what we/they see as our potential for partnership and our tendency as UUs for usurping roles which should be held by affected community leadership.

We have heard time and time again from our partners in BIPOC community and formerly/currently incarcerated individuals that it is not enough to Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), we must Abolish the processes of dehumanization which made the PIC possible in the first place. That combination of changing systems, hearts, minds, and spirit is ALL a part of the liberatory theology of Unitarian Universalism. This relationship and conversations is what has directly influenced the CLF to approach Abolition in the holistic manner we have as it directly responds to the direction of those most impacted.

Topics for Congregational Study List

  1. Abolition as UU Theology
  2. Restoration, Retribution and Universalism
  3. Abolition as Faith Formation
  4. Prison Ministries as Abolition
  5. Abolition in Worship
  6. Abolition in Music
  7. Abolition as a Religious Professional/Lay Leader - transforming conflict to restoration
  8. Abolition in UU History
  9. Enslavement and the 13th Amendment’s Exception ii. etc

Possible Congregational/Regional Actions

  1. Putting the above study areas into action
  2. Partnering with local organizations seeking reallocation of policing funds to social services
  3. Hiring practices which center Abolition
  4. Public witness at local carceral facilities
  5. Public witness at dealth penalty cases/executions
  6. Public witness at school board and governmental meetings
  7. Cluster Teach-ins on restorative relationship practices

Related Prior Social Witness Statements

  • 2015 - Support the Black Lives Matter Movement 2015 Action of Immediate Witness
  • 2018 - AIW: End Family Separation and Detention of Asylum Seekers and Abolish ICE
  • 2018 - AIW: Dismantle Predatory Medical Care Practices in Prisons and End Prisons for Profit
  • 2020 - AIW: Address 400 Years of White Supremacist Colonialism
  • 2020 - AIW: Amen to Uprising: A Commitment and Call to Action

Related UUA, Regional or State Action network initiatives

UU and/or Other Organizations Addressing This Issue

  • Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
  • Black Lives UU - CLF leadership in direct relationship
  • DRUUMM - CLF leadership in direct relationship
  • UUJustice in the Middle East - CLF leadership in direct relationship
  • UU State Advocacy Networks (connections already established with networks in North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and New York)

Resources

Online

Bibliography

  • Kaba, Mariame.We Do This ‘Til We Free Us (Haymarket Books, 2021)
  • Cawley, Ashon and Roberto Sirvent, eds.Abolition and Spirituality (Common Notions, 2023)
  • Gilmore, Ruth Wilson.Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation. (Verso, 2022)
  • Ruttenberg, Danya.On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World.
  • (Beacon Press, 2022) v. Davis, Angela Y., Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie.
  • Abolition. Feminism. Now. (Haymarket Books, 2022)
  • Purnell, Derecka.Becoming Abolitionists (Penguin Random House, 2021)
  • Kaepernick, Colin, ed.Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing or Prisons. (Kaepernick Publishing, 2021)
  • Shelby, Tommie.The Idea of Prison Abolition. (Princeton University Press, 2023)
  • Cullors, Patrisse.An Abolitionist’s Handbook. (Macmillan, 2022)
  • Dharia, Premal, James Forman, Jr., and Maria Hawilo, eds.Dismantling Mass Incarceration.
  • (FSG Adult, 2024) xi. Blackmon, Douglas.Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of
  • Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday, 2008)
  • Ross, Andrew, Tomassso Bordelli, and Aiyuba Thomas.Abolition Labor: The Fight to End
  • Prison Slavery. (OR Books, 2024)

Films, Videos and Online Media

Other Endorsing Organizations & Individuals

CLF has identified the following potential partners who have either been simply identified or have been contacted and are interested but will need congregational Board approvals to formally sign on:

  • Community Church of New York
  • First Universalist Church of Minneapolis
  • North Texas UU Congregations
  • Second Unitarian Church of Chicago

Recording of feedback session

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This CSAI hints at long standing issues with US prisons but instead of offering solutions it pours forth a flood of revolutionary woke ideology and rhetoric. It’s like the slogan “Defund the Police” – adolescent finger-pointing - so detached from reality that it leaves much of the working class, even key parts of the middle class, inclined to cast their ballot for a smooth-talking authoritarian.
Not surprisingly, the most specific agenda item cited is to “dismantle the prison-industrial complex”. Well-tested model programs to replace it are never cited, let alone the difficulties to be overcome, or how to build alliances or a track record of success.
But the idea that adding “abolition” to a “faith formation” already centered around a militant identity politics will somehow galvanize UUs into revolutionary action, in a world full of far more urgent problems, was implausible even to the authors of this CSAI. Their solution? Extend “abolition” to apply to “genocide Gaza, ICE detention, discriminatory housing, food deserts, climate justice”, and more. Some of these might deserve their own CSAIs but the impracticality suggested by the word “abolition” might actually turnoff more potential allies than it gains.

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Thank you for sharing your concerns so candidly. I hear your deep desire for approaches that are grounded in practicality and effectiveness, especially when we’re talking about matters as serious as incarceration, public safety, and justice. I think that’s something we all want – real transformation, not just rhetoric; living our values, not just speaking them.
I want to offer a different perspective on the CSAI “Abolition is Faith Formation,” one that is informed by my Unitarian Universalist values and my experience in ministry. To me, this CSAI is not about slogans or abstract ideology. It’s about spiritual and theological formation grounded in relationship — particularly with those who are incarcerated, those who are system-impacted (I hesitate to call it a “justice” system), and those whose voices have long been excluded from the moral conversation.
It’s true that the word “abolition” can feel provocative or unsettling, perhaps even slogan-y – especially when it’s unfamiliar or has been caricatured in public discourse. But within this CSAI, abolition is presented not simply as the tearing down of flawed institutions, but as a faith-driven commitment to building up systems rooted in restoration, compassion, and accountability. That’s deeply aligned with the Universalist side of our tradition – which has always said that no one is beyond love, no one is disposable, and salvation is not an individual enterprise, but something we build together.
The Church of the Larger Fellowship, which proposed this CSAI, has decades of direct engagement with people inside the carceral system – not from a place of theory, but from deep, ongoing relationships formed through worship, pastoral care, and mutual learning. The insights shared in this CSAI come from those experiences, and from listening carefully to what currently and formerly incarcerated UUs and their communities are calling us to consider.
I don’t see this as an abandonment of practical solutions. I see it as a call to widen our moral and theological imagination. Programs and policies are necessary, of course – but they emerge from the values we teach, the stories we center, and the sacred commitments we make. This CSAI is about shaping our formation so that we are prepared to support and create alternatives that are humane, community-rooted, and accountable to those most impacted. It’s note about having ready-made solutions created by a few to dole out to the many, but to build those ideas together across our whole faith while also living into the values behind abolitionist thought.
I would also gently suggest that issues like ICE detention, environmental injustice, food deserts, and systemic racism are not distractions from the work of abolition – they are deeply entangled with it. When we reduce people’s humanity to a matter of statistics or punishment, we pave the way for all kinds of violence – environmental, economic, interpersonal, and state-sanctioned.
I believe that abolition – in this context – is not a rejection of law, order, or safety. It is a moral and spiritual call to reimagine them in ways that are just, restorative, and rooted in love. And that, to me, feels like the kind of faith formation we need right now.

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Thanks for this thoughtful reply. These are really critical issues. I appreciate the CLF’s long-standing engagement with those entangled in the criminal injustice system.

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