The 2022-2023 UUA Common Read
The May 2023 Justice and Spirit: Unitarian Universalist Book Club selection.
For more information about the UUA's Common Read, click here.
The introductory section of the Discussion Guide, Using This Guide is available.
The full Discussion Guide is now available.
To learn more about why this year's Common Read is important for congregations to experience right now, watch a panel discussion with the authors, Rev. Michael Crumpler, and Rev. Maria Cristina Vlassidis. You can also watch the panel discussion with Spanish captions.
What calls Unitarian Universalists to create multicultural, antiracist Beloved Community? What do congregations need when they embark on this journey? What common threads run through their stories? Nancy Palmer Jones and Karin Lin—a white minister and a lay person of color—share how five diverse congregations encounter frustrations and disappointments, as well as hope and wonder, once they commit to the journey. Mistakes abound. Miracles of transformation and joy emerge too. Extensively researched and thoughtfully written—with reflection questions at the end of each chapter—Mistakes and Miracles: Congregations on the Road to Multiculturalism will guide readers to apply these stories to their own communities, develop next steps, and renew their commitment to this hard but meaningful work.
“Karin Lin and Nancy Palmer Jones have chosen to risk being vulnerable with their respective stories and with those of others who have entrusted their stories to these courageous authors. They have taken a keen look at tumultuous challenges and difficult choices. Thankfully, they have chosen to center relationship as core to their work and ministry. They invite us to listen deeply and listen deeper still. The stories that they lift up are real, raw, and revealing. They invite us to face them without flinching and without denying the truth that we are invited to be privy to.
This volume invites us to notice when and how we lift up the voices of diverse populations of people and our partnerships with them as we, with intention, break down our congregational walls to create robust, vibrant community centers. And there’s more. We need to make room among ourselves to step back, ensuring venues for our partners to speak to us, knowing that their voices must be heard by us.
Karin Lin and Nancy Palmer Jones are helping us to develop our antiracist, antioppressive, and multicultural habits and skills in order to prepare us to do our part to collectively nurture multiculturally competent, actively antiracist congregations into being. They are memorializing the kinds of moments that form our identity, our history, and our vision for the future. For this, I give thanks.”
-—Janice Marie Johnson, Co-Director, Ministries and Faith Development, Unitarian Universalist Association
To read an excerpt of the book including the table of contents, foreword, and introduction, click here.