‘With Liberty and Justice for All’

Sara Kelley, UUCSV Director of Religious Growth and Learning 

First published in the Sunbury Daily Item June 20, 2026

Happy Juneteenth! Happy 4^th of July! Happy 250^th Birthday to the United States! Throw in Pride this month, and it’s a wonderful celebration of who we aspire to be as a nation.  It may not be exactly who we are as a nation, but who we want to be if we are our best  selves. 

It may seem odd for a religion columnist to be writing about federal and societal  holidays. But the founders of the United States of America lived out their own values  when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, and later the Constitution, the very  events we are celebrating. 

For some of those founders, the values were Christian. For others, like Thomas Jefferson who actually wrote the Declaration, the values were Deist. 

Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. That means he believed in a God, a Supreme Being, but  not necessarily in the divinity of Jesus and the Christian Trinity. He grew up Anglican,  but as an adult did not regularly attend any particular denominational church. The  website for Monticello, Jefferson’s home, states that he was closest to Unitarianism even though he never joined a church. 

One of Unitarian Universalism’s Shared Values is Justice. The values are all defined in  our national association’s bylaws The bylaws were updated in 2024 with new wording  that took several years and thousands of UUs to craft. The Justice value reads: “We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all thrive. We covenant to  dismantle racism and all forms of systemic oppression. We support the use of inclusive  democratic processes to make decisions within our congregations, our Association, and  society at large.” 

How do summer celebrations and the UU Justice value go together? 

I see Juneteenth in the reminder that we want to create and live in a multicultural  Beloved Community. 

I see the 4^th of July in inclusive democratic processes. 

I see Pride in “dismantling systemic oppression”, which really means working toward  full inclusion that gives everyone the same American rights.

And this country’s 250^th Birthday? I see the whole paragraph in our founding as a nation  and all 250 full years since. 

Certainly Jefferson would not recognize today’s Unitarian Universalism, as we have  evolved as much as the nation has evolved in 250 years. But I can see our current UU  Value of Justice in the words Jefferson wrote to justify the revolution against the British  monarch: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that  they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that  among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure  these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just  powers from the consent of the governed, 

Scholars and pundits have argued the details of those words for all 250 of our country’s  years, but the value of Justice, including Beloved Community, dismantling oppression,  and democratic processes, is clear. 

Living out the value of Justice means recognizing that we still have a long way to go to  be a perfect union. I believe that as an American, and I believe that as a Unitarian  Universalist. It is a spiritual practice to work toward that more perfect union. This  summer, we can do that by honoring and celebrating both Juneteenth and Pride  alongside the 4^th of July. Add some work for Justice to your fireworks and parades. You  will be living out our founders’ values, and yours, too.