OUR MISSION
Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry empowers individuals, chapters, and congregations to build justice and compassion for animals.
Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry is a group of concerned Unitarian Universalists and friends who desire to express their faith, in part, through their compassion towards all beings.
UUAM chapters across the United States and Canada work to promote compassion for animals at the local level.
WHO WE ARE
We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every being.
Events
Pet Loss Support Group
Wednesday January 1, 2025
DETAILS: The Pet Loss Support Group is held on a monthly basis, and new participants are always welcome. The meetings are held on the first Wednesday at 8:00 pm (Eastern).
In order to gain access, email Rev. Elleven (relleven at gmail dot com) and he will send you the link and password. You can also find it on the UUAM Facebook page).
In the meantime, visit Rev. Russell’s Animal Chaplain page.
Interfaith Panel
Wednesday January 15, 2025
3:30pm EST / 2:30pm CST / 1:30pm MST / 12:30pm PST
DETAILS: Interfaith Panel: “Faith in Food: Cultivating Hope in the Age of Industrial Agriculture”
Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at 3:30pm Eastern / 2:30pm Central 1:30pm Mountain / 12:30pm Pacific
The Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry and the Center for Jewish Food Ethics and invite you to an important interfaith panel about how diverse religious and cultural traditions offer a unique model for understanding and responding to the problems caused by our industrial food system.
“Faith in Food: Cultivating Hope in the Age of Industrial Agriculture” will include perspectives from religious leaders who represent Indigenous, Sikh, and Catholic communities. A major concern of this conversation is highlighting human-animal relationships in the food system, which informs other important relationships with food workers, vulnerable human communities, climate, and the environment. The panelists will begin by discussing their traditions’ foundational values and teachings around food, and move toward possibilities for hope and creativity as communities strive to nourish themselves while protecting animals, people, and the earth.
Sponsored by the Better Food Foundation.
ASL interpreter provided.
More than 300 people attended our most recent "Faith in Food" webinar. We hope you will register to join us on Jan 15, 2025! Not sure you can attend? All registrants will be emailed a recording of the webinar.
Register now for free!
“Writing for Animals” webinar
Sunday February 23, 2025
4pm Eastern / 3pm Central / 2pm Mountain / 1pm Pacific
Why writing for animals matters
Writing tips and tricks for compelling readers to action
How to write, pitch, and publish an op-ed in the news
Other strategies for getting animal issues (or any cause you care about) in the news
You’ll leave this class with a list of writing dos and don’ts, a short guide to ethical storytelling, templates for op-eds and pitch emails, and much more. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or a total beginner, this class is for you!
“An active minority always wins out over a passive majority. That is why testing cosmetics on animals, confinement of farm animals in cages and crates, operating puppy mills, trophy hunting, etc, are still legal even though polls have shown that most people oppose them. All folks have to do to make them illegal is to get active.”
Robert Thompson
DETAILS: One of the top priorities of UUAM, as articulated by the Board, is advocacy—the impetus to not only care about animal issues, but also get involved in advocating for positive change. With this in mind, UUAM is sponsoring a free online class on writing op-eds about animal issues for local newspapers. Leading the class will be Julie Knopp, a writer and animal advocate with an MA in Teaching, who currently works as Director of Communications for an international development organization and is also a Board Member of the Minneapolis-based Compassionate Action for Animals.
Op-eds are one of the most read parts of any newspaper—often on par with front-page news. They are valuable not just in raising the general public’s awareness of animal issues but will also be read by policymakers and key leaders of the community. Efforts like this do make a difference.
“Writing for Animals” is a one-time class for anyone who wants to make a difference with their writing. In this free Zoom session, you’ll learn:
Is UUAM for You?
Do you care about animals and the more-than-human world? Are you into wildlife, dogs, cats, humans, horses, pigs, leafy seadragons, Meatless Mondays, training service animals, rescuing raptors, trying veganism, volunteering at shelters, saving endangered species, or protecting ecosystems?
You’ve found a group of kindred spirits here, and you will want to learn about Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry (UUAM).
January 2025
Quote of the Month:
“Encountering an animal mind can perform the same function as a great work of art or a religious experience: it makes the familiar strange, reminding us that reality encompasses far more than we ordinarily think ... [awakening] us to the fullness of this world.”
~ Adam Kirsch, poet and literary critic
Do you have a favorite animal quote? Send it to info@uuam[dot]org and enter “quote” in the subject line.
Stay updated on all the UUAM happenings.
Sign up to be the first to know about our events and news. We’ll send a monthly newsletter that highlights important animal-related stories, UUAM chapter activities, a photo of the month, and the occasional vegan recipe. Don’t miss it.
Guiding Principles
Four guiding values keep our efforts on track:
Intersectionality – Taking seriously the interactions of racial injustice, gender, poverty, class, ability, animal exploitation, environmental degradation and more, we seek to build a world that is more just, inclusive, and equitable.
Internationalism – Based largely in North America, we serve Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists throughout the world.
Interfaith – We value the work of other faith movements and collaborate to build wisdom and effectiveness.
Interdependence – Ecologically, we protect the integrity of the web of life that human and non-human animals share; Organizationally, our board and chapters, each and all, partner in mutual support amidst our particular strengths and shortcomings; Individually, our different perspectives, journeys, passions and commitments are gifts we respectfully share and gratefully receive.
We do good work not just for non-human animals, but for people and all of life, knowing that our connection with the more-than-human world helps us live most fully, deeply, and authentically.
Sermon Contest
Sermon Contest
Enter our 2024-2025 Albert Schweitzer Sermon Contest!
$1,000 prize to be awarded for best sermon!
Click here for more information.
Juliette Moore submitted the winning entry for 2022–23. Read her sermon: “Veganism and the 7th Principle” by clicking here or watch it by clicking here.
Past Events
Getting Political for Animals
Sunday November 10 at 4pm ET / 3pm CT / 2pm MT / 1pm PT
Protests, boycotts and petition drives all have their place in advancing animal welfare, but rarely do these actions alone result in changes in the law that make animal welfare and protections permanent. Many of us don’t like to get involved in the political process; it’s often messy, unfair and even corrupt, but if you're not willing to wade through the muck, you, or perhaps more accurately the animals, lose. Led by Roland Halpern (who previously wrote on this topic for this newsletter), this webinar examines how our legislative process works and ways that you can become an effective animal advocate that lawmakers will listen to.
Roland Halpern spends most of his time volunteering for Colorado Voters for Animals, working with lawmakers to help advance animal-friendly laws in the state legislature. This has included laws banning wild animal performances in circuses, increasing penalties for animal cruelty, and allowing citizens to enter locked vehicles to rescue dogs or cats in distress, to name a few. Roland has also assisted in getting several city councils to ban pet stores from selling dogs or cats that come from commercial breeders (puppy mills). He also chairs the Ethical Eating and Animal Welfare Task Force at the First Universalist Church of Denver, and serves as a board member of UUAM.
Watch the free video recording!
Celebration & Blessing of the Animals
Guest Speaker: Dr. Sailesh Rao
Topic: “The Greatest Transformation in Human History”
Sunday October 13, 2024 at 4pm EDT / 3pm CDT / 2pm MDT / PDT
DETAILS: Just view the free video recording to join the UU Animal Ministry for this beloved annual gathering where we celebrate the blessing of animals.
We are in the midst of a transition from a Climate Heating civilization to a Climate Healing civilization, as we heal our relationships with each other and with the Web of Life. This transformation is more significant than the industrial revolution, the Agricultural revolution, the Scientific revolution and even the discovery of fire—for it involves the discovery of the spiritual fire within humanity, a revolution of what it means to be human.
This year's guest speaker was Dr. Sailesh Rao, who is a HEAL (Human, Earth, and Animal Liberation) advocate and was designated a Climate Hero by The Guardian newspaper in 2023, which recognized him as “a foremost voice on green transition and on the true scale of societal change required to save the planet.” Author of four books and Executive Producer of eleven documentaries, Dr. Rao stayed after the service for a discussion with those gathered.
Dr. Rao is the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, a nonprofit dedicated to healing the Earth's climate. (Although today Dr. Rao is an environmentalist by occupation, he is a systems engineer by profession. He invented the protocol for transforming early analog internet connections to more robust digital connections, while accelerating their speed ten-fold. Still today, any data accessed on the internet likely passed through a device implementing this protocol.
In addition to Dr. Rao, leaders of UUAM, and yourself, do you know who else we saw there? Some of the animals you’ve encountered in YOUR life! That's IF you emailed pictures of them, along with their name(s) if known, to us using the email provided on the registration page. (Every animal is is a miracle and deserves to be photographed a bajillion times, but to make things easier on our end, please send just one photo each. Thank you.)
You can watch the free video recording now!
Meet the Authors: New York Times reviewed 2024 book Our Kindred Creatures
Sunday September 15, 2024
4pm ET / 3pm CT / 2pm MT / 1pm PT
Join the UU co-authors of the New York Times reviewed book Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do about Animals!
This 2024 book by Bill Wasik, the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine, and Monica Murphy, a veterinarian and writer, examines how the fight for humane treatment of animals (led by New York Unitarian Henry Bergh) was born of the same post-abolition progressivism as other social justice movements, including those for women's suffrage & the rights of workers. In a presentation followed by a Q&A session, the authors will highlight the ideas that motivated America’s founding generation of animal activists, including their ties to liberal religious faiths of the era.
Before the Civil War, animals’ suffering was rarely discussed; horses were routinely beaten in public view, & organized dogfights were common sources of entertainment & gambling. But in 1866, activists began a dramatic campaign to change the nation’s laws and norms, & by 1900 most Americans had adopted a very different way of thinking & feeling about the animals in their midst.
In Our Kindred Creatures, Wasik & Murphy offer a fascinating history of this crusade & the battles it sparked in American life. Leading reform were Bergh, founder of the ASPCA; Caroline White of Philadelphia, who fought against medical experiments that used live animals; George Angell, the inspirational head of Massachusetts’s animal-welfare society & the American publisher of the novel Black Beauty; & many more, including some of the nation’s earliest veterinarians & conservationists.
Caught in the movement’s crosshairs were transformational figures in their own right: animal impresarios such as Universalist P. T. Barnum, industrial meat barons such as Philip D. Armour, and the rising medical establishment, all of whom put forward their own, very different sets of modern norms about animals.
In recounting this remarkable period of moral transition—which gave birth to today's attitudes toward animals—Wasik & Murphy challenge us to consider the obligations we have to all our kindred creatures today.
Please enjoy the free video recording of this event.
Planting for Pollinators
Sunday April 28, 2024 at 7pm EDT / 6pm CDT / 5pm MDT / 4pm PDT / 1pm HST
Free video recording
Featuring Shartrina White, Vice President of Education, The Butterfly Pavilion
Find out about the lives of the unsung heroes of our ecosystems at this free Zoom talk, and learn how to support them as we plan our spring gardens!
With a distinguished 23-year journey in the nonprofit sector, Shartrina White embodies a deep-rooted passion for crafting educational programs that champion the protection and reverence of all life forms. At the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster Colorado, Shartrina steers a dynamic team of educators, interpreters, and volunteers, orchestrating enriching experiences tailored for a diverse audience. Her pivotal role includes creating and executing curriculum and outreach initiatives in sync with Butterfly Pavilion’s unwavering mission—the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats.
Planting for Pollinators is sponsored by UUAM.
Please enjoy the free video recording of this event.
February 18, 2024
You’re Invited: “Love Stories”
A young couple falling in love
A mother's selfless love for her baby
Two friends who totally get each other
The complex bonds between siblings
Life companions enjoying retirement together
The transcendent love between species
UUAM Board Vice President Kathleen Jefferies is excited to bring a program of love and connection to our community during February, the month when we celebrate love, relationships, and connections. This program will be an opportunity to observe and discuss the rich emotional lives of these sentient beings who share the planet with us, but who are generally seen as ‘products’. As we honor the value of the lives of these individuals, we are reminded that our daily choices impact the lives of those who have no choice.
Join us for the virtual screening of "Love Stories" on Feb 18th as we celebrate love in its many forms. Following the 20-minute screening, Emma Schwarz and John Burton, the film's creators, will join us for a discussion to share experiences and discover ways each of us can promote positive change and peace for all living beings as we face the challenges of living in an ever-changing world. Join us and be inspired to share new gained knowledge to create a world we all want for ourselves and other living beings.
Sun Feb 18 at 7pm ET / 6pm CT / 5pm MT / 4pm PT / 2pm HT.
Emma Schwarz and John Burton are award-winning multi-medium artists who use their skills in filmmaking, 3D animation, photography, musical composition, and writing to inspire positive change. Their focus lies in illuminating the stories of farmed animals and educating about veganism, igniting a collective call for a more compassionate and sustainable future for all. Emma and John’s work has been accepted into 15 international film festivals including the Lyons International Film Festival, the International Vegan Film Festival, and the Berlin Indie Film Festival, garnering 10 awards including "Best Documentary Short," “Colorado Craft Cinema Award,” and "Audience Choice Award." Most recently, they were awarded the “Special Jury Changemaker” award at the Los Angeles-based Awareness Film Festival, at which they shared the stage with legendary musician Moby for a post-festival Q&A session. Their work has also been featured on prominent social media and streaming platforms such as Vegan FTA and UnChainedTV.
December 19, 2023
Homelessness and Animal Welfare: PUPP Act webinar
DETAILS: Did you know people experiencing homelessness are sometimes accompanied by a companion animal? Did you know these human-animal partnerships face a standard “no pets allowed” rule in emergency shelters and housing programs? But there is hope, in the new "PUPP Act."
Join the UU Animal Ministry, UUs for Social Justice, and Reverend Daniel Lawlor from UU Congregation of the Hudson Valley for a presentation and Q&A with guest speakers from the national nonprofit My Dog Is My Home. They will explain the intersecting issues of homelessness and animal welfare. Hear about how people who have already survived the trauma of losing their homes must also decide between accessing services and giving up their beloved companion animal or forgoing services to stay with their furry family members.
The bipartisan Providing for Unhoused People with Pets (PUPP) Act was reintroduced to support adopting pet-friendly policies in homeless services in June 2023. Learn about the issues that inspired the PUPP Act and what you can do to help.
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
8:00 p.m. ET • 7:00 p.m. CT • 6:00 p.m. MT • 5:00 p.m. PT
Online, via Zoom.
Rev. John Millspaugh, Executive Director