A Theology of Unitarian Universalist Community Organizing
2025 Sophia Lyon Fahs Lecture by Rev. Sean Neil-Barron
This post is an adaptation of the Liberal Religious Educators Association 2025 Sophia Lyon Fahs Lecture I was privileged to deliver at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Baltimore, Maryland.
When Worlds Collide
The drag show has just started. I feel my husband's hand in mine. Dark room, deep bass. Sweat.
I chose a mesh top deliberately—after doing church in the morning, changing into a clerical collar for Pride, I wanted something a little more free.
"Excuse me."
I turn. A woman is looking at me with this expression I can't place. Her eyes are moving between my face and my chest, I feel exposed, and for a moment, I really don't know what's going on.
"You're that priest from Pride, right? The one who was blessing people?"
My throat goes dry. Because yes—a few hours ago, armed with as much biodegradable glitter as the RE supply closet contained (a lot!), we had shown up and spent hours blessing anyone who needed it. Saying to each person:
You are beloved. There is nothing you can do to change that. You are made of the same stuff as the stars, which means, you belong in this universe, and you deserve to shine.
But now I'm here in mesh and dark jeans, sorta kinda trying to disappear into the crowd.
"Yeah," I say. "That was me."
"Are you like... a real priest?"
"I'm a real minister, yeah." Not wanting to get into a conversation on the specific definition of priest, as a drag performer death drops to the floor.
She studies me, not with suspicion, but with quiet doubt. Like I’m a puzzle piece that almost fits, but might belong to another picture entirely.
Priest giving a blessing? That fits.
Gay guy at a drag show? Of course.
But both in one body?
That’s when people start to squint, like the math ain’t mathing.
"I watched you today,” she continued. “For a long time. Like, maybe a creepy long time. I was trying to figure out if you were for real. And how you fit into all this."
"But the way you looked at those kids... it was like you could see right into their souls. You were just emanating love for them."
My collar is draped over the bedroom chair at home. You know the used clothes chair, but I might as well be wearing it to the club, because there is no off-duty when it comes to community, not really.
Even when you really really want there to be.
My father's voice echoes in my head: Wherever you go, there you are.
And the sacred, it’s always there.
Even when you can’t figure out what exactly you should say, or do.
Here's what I'm learning about community organizing: There's a 101 level and a 201 level.
Community organizing 201 is about strategy and tactics. It's about power analysis and policy change. It's about building coalitions and making lasting social change. It's relational, it's gritty, it's wicked smart. We have brilliant people in our movement who could teach 101 and 201 in a heartbeat, folks like: Revs. Ranwa Hammamy, Ashley Horan, Cathy Rion Star, Joseph Santos-Lyons, Elizabeth Nguyen, Jason Lydon, UUA Organizers like Nicole Pressley, State Action Network Power houses like Revs. Jo Murphy at UU Mass Action, Erin Walter at UU Texas Justice Ministry, Lisa Garcia Sampson at UU Justice Ministry of North Carolina , and many many others.
But I'm a 101 person. And just a 101 person.
Community Organizing 101 is not about mass mobilization, it's about moments like I had standing in a bar, when you really want to not be working, but here you are.
It’s about moments where you find yourself standing in between worlds, holding all of who you are, letting other people witness what that looks like, and doing the same for them. And together, imperfectly, fumbling, towards a belonging that is our birthright.
A belonging that is deep, and real. A belonging that might touch us, bless us and invite us into the dream that love has had for us, that our ancestors tended to, that the earth nurtures.
Belonging is where community organizing
begins, ends and spirals back to, again and again and again.
Here are my three primary credentials for having any authority to speak about community organizing":
Not to brag, but I am an okay-ish human, most of the time.
Sometimes I can say things that are entirely obvious, and it's helpful.
I make it a practice to try to keep saying yes, when people in my life ask me to show up. And even though I succeed maybe 50% of the time, I rest in the grace that is enough.
Thus, my deepest hope is that you will realize that you too far surpass the very low bar I embody, and might feel empowered to begin in your own way and your own community, the work of community organizing.
What’s Your Name?
Back to the bar—it still smells like stale beer and possibility. I'm clutching my drink, stumbling to figure out what the hell to say, and my husband, who is used to my social inadequacies, introduces himself to the woman who has just said a nice thing about me that has caused me to seemingly malfunction.
This prompts me to remember what the socially appropriate thing to do next is.
"My name's Sean, what's yours?"
It's so small.
But you know that moment when someone not only asks for your name, but three weeks later when you run into them at the grocery store, they pull it right out—"Hey, Sean!"—and suddenly you think to yourself: Holy shit, I'm worth remembering. I'm not just another face in the crowd. I'm not just interchangeable human being number four thousand seven hundred twenty one. I'm me, and somehow, that matters.
It's so small, but it changes everything.
Because when I know your name, conversations start to deepen. I might get to hear what you like to do, what makes your heart race with excitement. As trust builds, I might get the privilege of learning where you're really from—not just the zip code, but who shaped you, what broke you open, what put you back together.
And then, when I know where you're from, I might hear the raw edges of your pain, what keeps you up at time. Which always, always leads to glimpses of the powers hiding inside each of us—that might just change everything.1
It's so small—just remembering a name, just asking what matters, just listening to someone's story.
But here's what I've learned:
when you take someone's grief and mix it with their power,
adding their deepest passions, and then give it time...
You don't get followers. You don't get volunteers.
You start to assemble, family.
And family is messy. And family is beautiful.
And as Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen reminds us, "we fight like hell for family"
And that's why you can't organize strangers.
Because strangers don't bleed for each other.
But people who know each other's names?
Who've heard each other's stories?
Who's seen each other's scars and gifts? Who have invested in each other?
They do.
Organizing isn't about convincing strangers to join your cause—it's about creating the conditions where strangers become people, seeing your lives and liberation bound up together.
Don’t Weaponize Empathy
But here's the thing: Please don't miss the point of what I am saying:
Organizing strategy number 1 is NOT: Learn people's names so you might better be able to hoodwink them into doing whatever thing you are trying to do.
Naa-ahh. Nope. Do not pass go.
We can't weaponize intimacy.
We don't learn someone's name so you can manipulate them.
People can smell that from a mile away.
They know the difference between genuine care and strategic empathy. They can tell when you're collecting their stories like trading cards instead of holding them like sacred trust.
As a covenantal people, the core of our religion practice, is the resistance to objectifying one another. Covenant is a meeting of equals. There is no coercion in covenant.
The moment you start building relationships in order to organize people, you've already lost. Because authentic relationships can't be manufactured for a cause—they have to emerge from who you are, not what you want to achieve.
The Resistance to Relationship
For years, you will show up to boring, dull, confusing community events where you feel like a complete outsider. You'll have this resistance to relationship.
Some of you will be trying to figure out who the "right people" to connect with are, and you'll make judgment calls that shut doors before they even open.
Some of you will be so timid that you won't think you're worthy of being known—convinced you have nothing to offer, nothing interesting to say.
Some of you will try to take control of the agenda of whatever encounter you find yourself in, so addicted to the allure of productivity and control that you can't just... be present.
You'll walk into rooms where everyone seems to know each other and you might think, they don't want me here, and you may be right.
But if you keep showing up. Keeping stumbling awkwardly, making mistakes, making amend, focusing on actually getting to know the people in this community
(because you know there are people in community right?)
If you keep doing this,
Time after time.
you will feel, after a while….
That you have accomplished…..
…..Absolutely nothing.
But in hindsight you will realize this is actually a gift. Because without your agenda, without you trying to recruit anyone, or advance your pet cause, You'll just be showing up. Curious. Lost. Offering to help, and maybe if you are lucky genuinely curious.
You can't organize strangers.
And how can we become family if I don't even know your name?
So, "My name's Sean, can I learn your name?"
So that we might cast of our strangerness2, just a little
Because the pain of the world needs us to fight like family.
The Natural Progression
I've lived in Fort Collins, Colorado for nine years, and it's only in the past three years that I've felt the years of showing up finally start to bear fruit.
Six years of appearing at the gay bars and community meetings in my clerical collar. Showing up for vigils, too many vigils. Accepting coffee invites from random community members. Making new connections and then having them move away, change jobs, burnout or blow up.
Now when I show up at a Pride event in my collar and someone's religious trauma gets activated and I can see them eyeing me with suspicion like I am the worlds worst undercover homophobe. Someone else will step in and introduce me to them: "This is Sean, he's from that good church—what is it? Unity? United? It’s that gay church."
When Contact
Over time, in the long arc of showing up, you will find, that slowly, awkwardly, you are weaving a network of contacts that will transform, slowly (did I say slowly) through coffee dates and meal trains and rides to the airport, into something you never expected.
CONTACT becomes RELATIONSHIP. That stranger whose name you learned becomes someone whose story you know. Your curiosity about them deepens into trust—theirs in you, yours in them.
RELATIONSHIP becomes SOLIDARITY. When you've heard their pain and witnessed their power, when they've done the same for you, trust transforms into something bigger. You start taking risks together—showing up for each other's struggles, not because you have to, but because their liberation is bound up with yours. And the lines between a protest action and showing up for their family will blur.
SOLIDARITY becomes CO-CREATION. And when you're willing to risk together, when you trust each other enough to be vulnerable, to fail, to try again—that's when you discover you can build something together that neither of you could create alone.
This is the alchemy: CURIOSITY → TRUST → RISK → SHARED POWER.
And it can't be rushed. It can't be manufactured. It can't be strategized into existence.
It can only be grown.
Critical Connections Over Critical Mass
As the late great Grace Lee Boggs reminds us: "Movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass."
Your power isn't in your follower count—it's in who will take your call at 10pm. Who trusts you enough to say yes before they know what you're asking. That trusted currency—earned through showing up, through care that isn't a performance, through being present when it doesn't benefit you—that's what moves mountains.
Back to the bar. We’ve finish our introductions but just as we get to talking, the Drag show host cuts through and introduces the next performer—Krisa Gonna, this Brazilian goddess—she glides on stage and we all turn to take her in.
Krisa loves to begin her numbers slow. Sensual. Almost coy, before throwing off her outer garb to reveal what is truly a legendary ass that she can shake.
And as I watch her shake that thing, I'm overcome, just a little.
I’m remembering the first time I went to Pride—which my Unitarian Universalist church took me to, by the way—where I felt my queer loneliness lessen just a little.
I remember my baby gay self, being terrified of Drag performers. Fascinated but terrified.
And I remember the first time I met Krisa. On zoom. No makeup, no wig. And we negotiated what was meant to be a one time gig, for her to perform during worship. A gig she would never have taken if she hadn’t heard rumors of what our church was really about in the community.
And how something magical happened in-between her religious trauma and the welcoming embrace of our congregation, still imperfect but committed to caring and growing, receiving her art (because drag is art!), of seeing the divine spark within her.
The performance caused a chain reaction: how she didn’t laugh at me, when I approached her months later and said, “want to put on a drag nativity pageant together”, she said, yes.
And how after months of rehearsals, casting, script rewrites,
Our sanctuary was filled over two nights with 700 people,
for the opening of A Drag Christmas Spectacular,
Congregants, neighbors, queer families from Wyoming, and even Texas came,
Most of whom I didn’t know
And I saw my 92 year old congregant, in the same row, as a 16 year old.
And we told a story of queer and trans sacredness,.
And how I watched the cast, become family for each other,
And start to support each others show and lives,
And thank me, and the church, for allowing them to do this,
Because they never thought of their art as sacred,
And all I could say back to them was,
How could you not.
And then we did it again, the next year.
And the performers, were a little bit more trusting,
Opened up about the challenges of their lives,
of rent hikes, and medical bills, and the cost of their art,
And they didn’t ask directly at first,
But I could see a wondering,
But then one of them, the sorta drag king mama,
Came out and said it,
can the church,
Can your church,
Do something to help drag performers who are struggling,
And my first thought was..
Well the ministerial discretionary fund is only for church members,
But I knew that was the wrong answer.
So how could we not start a mutual aid fund,
That will launch this summer,
Supporting our NoCo Drag family,
because we are fierce together.
And if you are reading this and thinking,
I could never do that.
I don’t know how to do that.
Honey, that’s what I said every step of the way too.
But I didn’t do any of it alone. We stumbled together.
Remember my only qualification,
In this work, is that I am an okay-ish person.
And that when people get under my skin,
I don’t want to let them down.
So I do the next thing.
And trust.
And trust.
And trust.
Culture Creates Belonging (not Belief)
Standing in that bar, watching Krisa perform, I'm seeing not just art, but a friend. A partner. A sacred presence. I look around at this gathering of sweaty humans and feel something I recognize—the experience of worship, just by another name.
And I had the strangest thought:
I think this is why people go to Trump rallies.
We're going to hit pause for a moment and I'm going to ask you to hold some complexity with me. I am not equating a drag show to a Trump rally. But I’m sure some of the queer and gender theorists might enjoy the challenge of a comparative analysis.
But I'm asking a more human question.
The more heart-centered question,
Not about how they arrive at the feelings,
but the longing that drives them. .
Look at a Trump rally. It's not a policy briefing. It's a revival meeting. People wearing the same hats, chanting the same chants, feeling like they're part of something bigger than their own loneliness. They've built a culture where showing up angry feels like coming home.
The podcast bro zones work the same way. They don't argue you into misogyny so much as they make misogyny feel like a good memory. Like you've found your people.
They gave angry people a home. Isolated people a tribe. Powerless people a target.
And it work. Because building a culture that says you belong always wins.
Scot Nakagawa at the 22nd Century Institute describe it like this (paraphrasing): When factories closed and jobs disappeared, it wasn't just paychecks that vanished. Whole communities fell apart. The places where people used to gather, the shared rituals that made them feel like they mattered—gone.
Into that emptiness stepped authoritarians. But they didn't lead with policy papers or five-point plans. They led with something much more powerful: "You belong here. These are your people. This is your tribe." They turned politics into family reunion, complete with inside jokes, shared enemies, and the warm feeling that you've finally found your way home.
I am I’m just going to say this, and only take this personally if it’s helpful,
Sometimes, we progressive, and religious liberals, we forget that people don’t join a cause.
People join people. Not ideas.
People join people. Not institutions.
People join people. Not issues.
People, join people.
What the spectacle of authoritarians do well, is they create the cultural practices of belonging, for their people.
They don’t make it a test, they don’t expect you to go along with everything,
share all the same language, they know that the feeling of being together is enough.
We as progressive, rightly criticize the version of belonging that is being offered. This promise of belonging, that is and forever will be, balanced on the edge of a knife held to someone else’s throat.
Our universalist faith, that says that all of us belong, that all parts of you belong. that we all belong together, is the wider, more real embrace.
Because the the truth about belonging is you can’t belong in theory.
You can’t belong in the abstract.
That wider embrace doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t made real through being infused in the very cultural or day to day experience.
Lofty proclamation or performative actions that try to proclaims how much you and everyone belongs needs to be backed up into a collective ‘we’ that is real, in the ways that are felt, in ways you learn and practice.
And sometimes we forget,
That all the right ideas,
And all the right plans,
And all the right research,
Won’t make you feel held at night,
Won’t make you feel less alone.
So we need to build a culture and an experience that can, and does.
People don’t want to be convinced, they want to feel claimed,
By a we that doesn’t dissolve who they are but magnifies it in a shared power.
And that can only be made real through how our culture weaves stories, and rituals, and practices, and symbols, and songs, and ways of being,
That says over and over again:
Come beloved.
Or maybe
Yass queen.
And our culture, needs,
To create a way in,
That allows our first steps to be clumsy,
That teaches us the dance steps,
And the lingo,
And gives us a song for the moments
Where grief overtakes us.
Because being human takes practice.
What is a Unitarian Universalist Theology of Organizing?
I’m not totally sure.
But I’m pretty sure it begins and ends in attempting an embrace of belonging,
That is bigger and more powerful than fear.
Krisa’s number ends. The crowd erupts.
Fans crack.
I whip out my phone and text her:
That was phenomenal.
A few minutes later she texts back: Thank you. And then: are you able to come to my drag brunch on Sunday to raise some more money for the fund.
And I just chuckle.
We’re not strangers anymore,
So she just organizes me.
I say yes. If it’s after church.
Putting my faith in the small acts of showing up,
Born of meandering and risking,
Building a culture that tries to make belonging real, not just proclaimed.
Because the pain of the this needs us to fight like family,
So "My name's Sean. What's yours?"
Adapted from It’s Personal by Reggie Joiner, Kristen Ivy and Virginia' Ward
Taken from the work of Henri Nouwen