36th IARF Congress, Day 3: The Dangers Without, The Dangers Within, Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt

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Speaking in 2023, Unitarian Universalist minister and seminary president Rosemary Bray McNatt asks when calls for reconciliation become premature in the face of continuing injustice. Beginning with her identities as an African American woman, former Roman Catholic and Unitarian Universalist, she argues that liberal religion’s historic commitment to freedom must include bodily and political freedom for people marginalized by racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. She contrasts traditions of forgiveness in Black Christianity with the cry “no justice, no peace,” asking whether reconciliation can become a demand that victims forgive before harm has ended.

McNatt then examines threats she perceived to US democracy in 2023, focusing on white Christian nationalism and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 / Mandate for Leadership, alongside voter suppression, attacks on reproductive and LGBTQ rights, racial inequality and climate crisis. Her conclusion is that resistance, truth-telling and communities of memory must precede reconciliation where basic rights remain under attack. She presents religious communities as places where people can recognize injustice, sustain one another through grief, and organize for democratic, racial, gender and environmental justice - laying the groundwork for a future reconciliation that does not require surrendering fundamental dignity.