Proposed CSAI: Abolition, Transformation, and Faith Formation

General Assembly 2025 GA Business
,
1

CSAI Updated June 4 to reflect changes from the Feedback Session.

This CSAI is sponsored by: Church of the Larger Fellowship Unitarian Universalist

Issue and Need

Abolition is a holistic approach to systemic social change that includes, but is not limited to: the abolition of slavery; replacing systems and cultures of violence, coercion and control with transformative justice and relational practices; and dismantling the prison-industrial complex as we now know it. It requires the transformation of our society and the replacement of our current public theologies of retributive justice and violence.

A commitment to the practices and ideals of abolition would ask our congregations to make connections among many threads of our social justice work. It is grounded in at least 200 years of Unitarian Universalist history and theology.

The CLF comes to the issue of abolition based on our accountability to the almost 2,000 incarcerated Unitarian Universalists who call our congregation their spiritual home. We believe that engaging the study-action process on this topic will be transformative for our members, our congregations, and our communities.

Grounding in Unitarian Universalism

As Unitarian Universalists, we have long made some version of the theological claim that ā€œevery person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.ā€ At the CLF, our long-standing ministry to and with incarcerated UUs has taught us that our prison-industrial complex is designed with exactly the opposite claim in mind.

The Church of the Larger Fellowship has developed, over decades, accountability to 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 on 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.

Universalism teaches us that our worthiness is not defined by our sins (or lack thereof). If we truly believe this, we are charged to develop better ways to treat people who do harm (or who are unjustly accused of doing harm). We believe that our faith calls us to imagine a future in which none of our siblings are shackled and caged.

Many of our spiritual ancestors embraced the abolition of slavery in the United States, and those who did so are rightly celebrated as heroes of our faith: Theodore Parker, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Elhanan Winchester, Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone, and so many more. And yet, their abolitionist project was left unfinished. The 13th Amendment to the US constitution abolished enslavement ā€œexcept as a punishment for crime.ā€ It is time we finished the job they started.

The job of abolition is not limited to the Prison-Industrial Complex (PIC). We believe that in order to fully embrace abolition, we need to restructure our society in ways that eliminate violence, discrimination, and the causes of these things. At CLF, we connect our theology of abolition with issues such as the genocide in Gaza, ICE detention, discriminatory housing, food deserts, climate justice, and other social justice issues.

We have heard time and time again from our partners in BIPOC communities and from both formerly and currently incarcerated individuals that it is not enough to abolish the PIC. We must, they teach us, 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.

Topics for Congregational Study

List smaller subtopics within the overall topic for congregations to study (<10 topics)

  1. UU Theologies and Abolition

  2. What is our theology of sin? Of redemption? Of repentance and repair?

  • How does our theology, centering love, ask us to respond to a public theology that is based on punishment, revenge, violence, coercion and dehumanization?
  • How do we live our covenantal declaration that ā€œevery person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion?ā€
  • What does Universalismā€“the notion that we are all saved by being reconciled with a love greater than our sinsā€“mean in the 21st century? How do we live this part of our faith heritage?
  • What does it mean to proclaim a theology that no oneā€“no matter what they have done or been accused of doingā€“is disposable?
  • How do we teach children about Unitarian Universalist theological claims and work with them to embody them?
  1. Abolition in UU History
  • 19th century abolitionists: abolishing chattel slavery in the US
  • 1970s movements for prison abolition
  • 2020s solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement
  1. Abolishing Slavery
  • Enslavement and the 13th Amendmentā€™s exception
  • Enslavement of incarcerated people as a profit center for states and corporations
  • Learning from Californiaā€™s 2024 failure to pass a ballot initiative that would have repealed slavery in that state
  1. Conflict, Restorative Justice, and Transformative Justice
  • Truth and Reconciliation processes
  • Transforming conflict to restoration
  1. Congregational Policies and Practices: Living our Theological Commitments
  • Inclusion of formerly incarcerated people in the lives of our congregations
  • Review of hiring and HR practices to make sure that they do not discriminate against formerly incarcerated people
  • Reviewing policies around conflict, safe congregations, covenant, and disruptive people with a restorative/transformative justice lens
  • Review of whether/how congregational investments/finances are supporting the Prison-Industrial Complex
  1. Abolition in Multigenerational Community
  • How do we discuss abolition in ways that are developmentally appropriate for people of all ages?
  1. Prison Ministries as Abolition
  • How can we build real relationships with people incarcerated in facilities near our congregations?
  • How can we build real relationships with incarcerated UUs around the United States?
  • How do we disrupt and reverse the dehumanization of incarcerated people?
  1. Ending Cycles of Violence, Abuse, and Trauma
  • How are we disrupting the systems that support the carceral state, that begin with punitive and abusive systems in our schools and our homes?
  • How are we doing this work in ways that are trauma-informed?
  • How are extractive systems of harm and violence related to other issues such as climate justice?
  1. Public Theology
  • Vengeance, punishment, and retributive justice
  • What is the UU theological response to atrocities like the US-sponsored concentration camp in El Salvador (CECOT)?
  1. Eliminating the Root Causes of Crime
  • Economic injustice a driver for crime
  • Housing, food, healthcare access
  • Mental healthcare: availability, cost, and addressing cultural reluctance to engage mental health services

Possible Congregational/Regional Actions

List actions that congregations and other UU bodies (such as regions or state advocacy networks) can take, such as partnering with existing organizations on the issue. (<10 actions)

  1. Partnership with state advocacy networks seeking to make change on a statewide level.

An example: in New York State, the legislature has ended cash bail and most solitary confinement. New York UU Justice is currently partnering with organizations such as RAPP, seeking to release aging people from prisons on humanitarian grounds

  1. Examining and changing congregational policies and practices
  • Hiring practices which center abolition
  • Divestment
  • Inclusion
  1. Ministry to and with people incarcerated near our congregations
  • Partnership with local organizations serving incarcerated people
  • Public witness at local carceral facilities
  • Public witness at death penalty cases/executions
  1. Advocacy for local policies and laws that reflect an abolitionist worldview
  • Work with local schools on restorative and transformative justice to replace punitive systems of suspension and expulsion
  • Public witness at school board and governmental meetings
  1. Partnership for housing, food, and environmental justice
  2. Cluster Teach-Ins on restorative relationship practices
  3. Partnership with organizations seeking to reallocate the $200 billion plus a year that our society spends on the Prison-Industrial Complex and the billions spent on violent policing to social services, community care, healthcare, etc.
  4. Partnership with local organizations helping incarcerated people with re-entry
  5. Theological conferences that address the issues raised aboveā€“perhaps with tracks for religious professionals
  6. Partnership with local organizations doing court watch activities that provide witnesses to court procedures

Related Prior Social Witness Statements

  • 1965 - Human Rights Conventions (General Resolution)
  • 1974 - Criminal Justice (General Resolution)
  • 1974 - Reform of Courts and Penal System (General Resolution)
  • 1978 - Community-Based Correctional Programs (General Resolution)
  • 2002 - Alternatives to the ā€œWar on Drugsā€ (Statement of Conscience)
  • 2005 - Criminal Justice and Prison Reform (Statement of Conscience)
  • 2005 - United States-Sponsored Torture Must End (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2008 - End Present-day Slavery in the Fields (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2012 - Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery (Responsive Resolution)
  • 2013 - Immigration as a Moral Issue (Statement of Conscience)
  • 2013 - Condemn the Racist Mistreatment of Young People of Color by Police (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2015 - Support the Black Lives Matter Movement (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2018 - End Family Separation and Detention of Asylum Seekers and Abolish ICE (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2018 - Dismantle Predatory Medical Care Practices in Prisons and End Prisons for Profit (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2020 - Address 400 Years of White Supremacist Colonialism (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2020 - Amen to Uprising: A Commitment and Call to Action (Action of Immediate Witness)
  • 2021 - Undoing Systemic White Supremacy: A Call to Prophetic Action (Statement of Conscience)
  • 2023 - Stop Cop City (Action of Immediate Witness)

Related UUA, Regional or State Action network initiatives

UU and/or Other Organizations Addressing This Issue

  • UUSC
  • BLUU
  • DRUUMM
  • UUJME
  • UU State Advocacy Networks (connections already established with networks in North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and New York)

Resource List

  • Online Resources:

    1. Mariame Kabaā€™s Prisonculture Substack: prisonculture.substack.com

    2. Mariame Kabaā€™s website includes a lengthy bibliography and links to hundreds of articles and resources: mariamekaba.com

    3. Equal Justice Initiative: eji.org

    4. CLF Worthy Now worship services available by request (Worthy Now Worship Services for UU Congregations - Google Drive)

    5. Worthy Now (2021)

    6. Light of Liberation (2023)

    7. Imagining a Post-Abolition World (2025)

    8. 13th Forward: 13thforward.com

    9. End the New Jim Crow Action Network: endthenewjimcrow.blogspot.com

    10. Release Aging People in Prison: rappcampaign.com

  • Bibliography:

    1. Kaba, Mariame. We Do This ā€˜Til We Free Us (Haymarket Books, 2021)

    2. Childrenā€™s Books by Mariame Kaba:

    3. Missing Daddy (Haymarket Books, 2019)

    4. See You Soon (Haymarket Books, 2022)

    5. Prisons Must Fall, with Jane Ball (Haymarket Books, 2025)

    6. Cawley, Ashon and Roberto Sirvent, eds. Abolition and Spirituality (Common Notions, 2023)

    7. brown, adrienne maree. We Will Not Cancel Us (And Other Dreams of Restorative Justice). (AK Press, 2020)

    8. Ruttenberg, Danya. On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World. (Beacon Press, 2022)

    9. Davis, Angela Y., Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie. Abolition. Feminism. Now. (Haymarket Books, 2022)

    10. Purnell, Derecka. Becoming Abolitionists (Penguin Random House, 2021)

    11. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation. (Verso, 2022)

    12. Kaepernick, Colin, ed. Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing or Prisons. (Kaepernick Publishing, 2021)

    13. Shelby, Tommie. The Idea of Prison Abolition. (Princeton University Press, 2023)

    14. Cullors, Patrisse. An Abolitionistā€™s Handbook. (Macmillan, 2022)

    15. Dharia, Premal, James Forman, Jr., and Maria Hawilo, eds. Dismantling Mass Incarceration. (FSG Adult, 2024)

    16. Blackmon, Douglas. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday, 2008)

    17. Ross, Andrew, Tomassso Bordelli, and Aiyuba Thomas. Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery. (OR Books, 2024)

    18. Kaba, Mariame and Kelly Hayes. Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. (Haymarket Books, 2023)

  • Films, Videos and online media:

    1. 2024 Minns Lectures by Rev. Jason Lydon: Abolition Theologies: Praying for Liberation (available online at https://www.minnslectures.org/lecture-archive)
    2. 2024 CLF General Assembly Worship: Love Unites Across Barriers of Exclusion (Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLFUU))
    3. 2023 CLF General Assembly Worship: Liberation and Incarceration: Faithfully Becoming Abolitionists (UUA has video and can make available)
    4. The Dehumanizing Theater of the Parole Process (documentary film available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBbs3R7VUwg)
    5. Slavery By Another Name (PBS Documentary, Slavery by Another Name | Episode 1 | PBS)

Other Endorsing Organizations & Individuals

  • Community Church of New York
  • UU Prison Ministry of Illinois
  • Second Unitarian Church of Chicago
  • UU College of Social Justice
  • Rev. Rodney Lemery, former CLF Director of Prison Ministry

Recording of feedback session

2 Likes
2

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. Itā€™s like the slogan ā€œDefund the Policeā€ ā€“ 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 ā€œdismantle the prison-industrial complexā€. 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 ā€œabolitionā€ to a ā€œfaith formationā€ 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 ā€œabolitionā€ to apply to ā€œgenocide Gaza, ICE detention, discriminatory housing, food deserts, climate justiceā€, and more. Some of these might deserve their own CSAIs but the impracticality suggested by the word ā€œabolitionā€ might actually turnoff more potential allies than it gains.

3

Thank you for sharing your concerns so candidly. I hear your deep desire for approaches that are grounded in practicality and effectiveness, especially when weā€™re talking about matters as serious as incarceration, public safety, and justice. I think thatā€™s something we all want ā€“ real transformation, not just rhetoric; living our values, not just speaking them.
I want to offer a different perspective on the CSAI ā€œAbolition is Faith Formation,ā€ 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. Itā€™s about spiritual and theological formation grounded in relationship ā€” particularly with those who are incarcerated, those who are system-impacted (I hesitate to call it a ā€œjusticeā€ system), and those whose voices have long been excluded from the moral conversation.
Itā€™s true that the word ā€œabolitionā€ can feel provocative or unsettling, perhaps even slogan-y ā€“ especially when itā€™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. Thatā€™s deeply aligned with the Universalist side of our tradition ā€“ 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 ā€“ 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 donā€™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 ā€“ 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. Itā€™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 ā€“ they are deeply entangled with it. When we reduce peopleā€™s humanity to a matter of statistics or punishment, we pave the way for all kinds of violence ā€“ environmental, economic, interpersonal, and state-sanctioned.
I believe that abolition ā€“ in this context ā€“ 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.

7 Likes
4

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

4 Likes
5

Please avoid insults and inflammatory langugage such as ā€œadolescent finger-pointing.ā€

Please review the community covenant here: Community Participation Covenant

2 Likes
6

NickSanchez:
Thank you for the deep reading and the thought that you put into your reply. The CLF CSAI not only describes specific suggestions for study, but also addresses the emancipation exception in the 13th Amendment, which, by rewarding states for incarceration, since they can then rent the labor of those they have incarcerated, promotes conviction and incarceration in a system based on punishment and/or profit rather than rehabilitation.
The CLFā€™s long history of engagement with incarcerated people means that they are indeed concerned with practical improvements to or even replacement of a deeply flawed system. Advocating for study and for compassion is fundamentally aligned with both Unitarian and Universalist theology (Iā€™m a life-long Unitarian who was also raised with Universalist values), and is absolutely an appropriate area for congregational RE as development of Faith Formation.

4 Likes
7

When valid critiques in pointed, but normal, language cannot be made, that is censorship. The UUA loses credibility when it opposes MAGA authoritarianism, quite rightly, but then imposes its own version.

The way I see it, the moral collapse in this country that has led to extreme polarization has come from both the Left and the Right. And, on the Left ā€“ in the UUA, Iā€™ve had a front row seat into this moral collapse. It has been centered around woke ideology grounded in science denialism, insulting abuses of language, and other reactionary tactics and attitudes reminiscent of the Right. When the UUA abandoned the principles set forth by MLK and Ghandi by promoting woke identity politics, it helped pry open the door to Trump.

Dick Burkhart

8

My congregation had a great meeting where we discussed the proposed CSAIā€™s and AIWs. And congregants were very enthusiastic about this CSAI and how it flowed well with their 8th principle work and so aligned with our UU values. Thank you for your work on this!

7 Likes
9

While ultimately we do support the dismantling of the Prison-Industrial Complex (and it is the long-term goal of embracing an abolitionist faith), thereā€™s a lot of work to be done to make that possible. We need to address the public theology of punishment that leads us to believe that prisons are somehow good things. We need to fix the root causes of crime. We need to understand the abolition of slavery as something our UU faith calls us to advocate for. This CSAI is asking us to do deep and meaningful theological work. It is neither detached from reality nor is it glib rhetoric. Perhaps you would do well to examine where your reactivity to this comes from.

3 Likes
11

@clandrumcsw Is it possible to replace the posted text with the updated version of this CSAI? The title was altered but not the contents.

1 Like
12

Iā€™d like to mention as a bibliography add-on a book that UU Faith Action NJ (UU state advocacy network) and Central Unitarian both read in discussion groups: Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration and A Road To Repair (New Press, 2019) by Danielle Sered.

1 Like
13

Thank you for this addition!

14

Done - thank you for providing the updated text.

1 Like
15

Thank you so much, Larry!

1 Like
16

Hi Michael,
Unfortunately while I can edit the text, the title is the one thing I cannot alter. But Iā€™ll ask our chair to add the final title to the body of the post. Meanwhile, please do feel free to share that correction here in the comments.

17

Oh, I see it was done! Thanks Larry!

18

Larry took care of it!