We live in a time where partisan divides are deeply entrenched and impact nearly every facet of our life—from the people we spend time with, to the products we buy, the media we consume and the churches we attend. We tend to seek out sources, friends, and experiences that will confirm our world views. On both the left and the right, we cherry-pick Bible verses and retroactively develop theologies that will support political positions we already believe. So I don’t blame anyone for being a bit cynical when it comes to faith-based arguments for particular political or civic positions.
Unfortunately, we also live in a world where support for democracy itself has somehow become a partisan issue. Polls about whether or not voting is a fundamental right show clear divides based on party affiliation, and measures to restore and expand provisions of the voting rights act in Congress have failed after strict party line votes. A study from Yale University found that “only 3.5% of U.S. voters would cast ballots against their preferred candidates as punishment for undemocratic behavior, such as supporting gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, or press restrictions.”
Friends, there are many instances where faith-based claims for various partisan positions are nothing more than a cynical attempt to claim the moral high ground. But support for democracy is not one of them. It is part of our religious inheritance and a position that has deeply considered theological grounding.
We are descended from a people who held ideas of self-government and self-determination as sacred. We pride ourselves on being the first church gathered in America to practice congregational polity. It was in the puritan churches of New England that ideas about self-government were planted and allowed to take root and eventually grow into the broader, more equitable, and far more inclusive vision of democracy we hold sacred today.
Our commitments to democracy have been deepened and sharpened by thinkers who challenged overly optimistic liberal theologies that saw democracy as inevitable. In 1944, with the Nazis occupying much of the European continent and D-Day still months away, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr began writing The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In this book he carefully considers questions of human nature, free will, and our relationship with God and concludes that an active democracy is the only faithful, ethical, and effective governing structure. He did not see democracy as an inevitable evolutionary development but as something we must continually work for and carefully tend. He wrote, "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
Born from our congregationalist foundations and strengthened by centuries of theological wrestling and inquiry, our current Unitarian Universalist values continue to call us, again and again, back to the work of democracy. In a blog for Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice, Meleah Houseknecht writes, “Democracy is given sacred sanction by the simultaneous affirmation that we are all equally divine, by quality of being human, and all equally limited in our perspective, and thus dependent on the perspectives and wisdom of others to make decisions that are, in the aggregate, more moral than immoral, more liberatory than constraining.”
Preserving democracy is a religious calling and an ethical obligation. So remember to vote this Tuesday, remind your friends and family to vote, volunteer to drive someone to the polls, and follow the UUA’s Side With Love to see how UUs across the country are turning out to protect democracy.
Whatever happens next week, First Church will be here to help you hold your joys, fears, hopes, anxieties, and dreams of a more just and caring world. We will continue to show up together in community, rooted in faith and guided by love.
In solidarity,
Rev. Danielle
© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026
