“Choose an institution you care about and take its side.” – Timothy Snyder
April 22, 2025
Rev. Ashley speaks from the pulpit
Wow, beloveds!
Last week we invited you to deepen your financial commitment to this beloved community with a “protest pledge” in honor of the Love we center no matter what our political leaders do. We invited you to increase your giving for the fiscal year that starts in July by 15% and WOW did you show up! You raised almost 100K dollars this past week.
We are now just about $200K short of the giving goals required to keep staffing all our ministries of resistance and love.
In the words of our service in honor of Earth Day and Easter this past Sunday, “Rising means rejoining the work, recommitting to what matters. The Earth rises this way too—through shoots, sprouts, returnings. To plant is to trust what we cannot see. It is to rise again, rooted.”
Help us rise again, rooted together. Make your commitment here this week. Or email Jie to increase your gift with a “protest pledge.”
Or if it speaks to your heart more clearly, side with Love in the tradition of historian of tyranny, Timothy Snyder: “Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other [in times of tyranny] unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side.”
Can you increase your pledge by 15% or more, and help protect one of the few institutions not beholden to the federal government that is siding with human dignity and belonging, for environmental justice, for beloved community?
That’s us.
Thank you for liberating your resources to protect our shared future.
Rev. Ashley, staff liaison to the Stewardship Team
Submit your protest pledge today. If you have already pledged, send an email to our bookkeeper, Jie (jie@firstuniv.org) and tell them you would like to make a 15% increase to your pledge. Rev. Jen
Let’s Build The Church The World Needs
Trying to make a pledge for the current church year?
First Universalist Church is grateful for your generosity. If you would like to make a pledge for the current church year, which ends on June 30, 2025, please e-mail our bookkeeper, Jie (jie [at] firstuniv.org). You can set up automatic giving to start right away—any time!