Unitarian Church of Evanston

03/26/2026

WE ARE SO GLAD YOU ARE HERE!

We are a community of people of all genders, ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, identities, backgrounds, and sexual orientations, practicing Beloved Community.

All are welcome! Our mission is to nurture the human spirit for a world made whole. Together we create a community of joy and hope, cultivate minds, sustain spirits, and work toward a more just and peaceful world.

11/05/2025

"The antidote to our despair is to build communities of care and mutual aid, drawing on our ancestor’s wisdom, to feed our spirits as best as we are able so that we can live and thrive another day, and leave something of value for our descendants... We rise on the shoulders of those who have given us tremendous gifts and it is our responsibility to care for and protect those gifts, to carry them forward for future generations."

––Reverend Eileen Wiviott, UCE

10/14/2025

"In the face of hatred, only love can transform the world. May we, together, be agents of love.
In the face of violence, only peaceful resistance can disarm aggressors. May we, collectively, be conduits of such disarmament and restorative healing.
In the face of injustice, only solidarity can liberate us all. May we be steadfast in our commitment to see the human being in our neighbors, friends, and enemies alike.
And may our anger, fueled by love, be our sacred, life-affirming and saving power."
––Reverend Eileen Wiviott, UCE

09/24/2025

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins at sunset on Monday, Sept. 22 and ends at nightfall on Wednesday, Sept. 24. It is a time of serious introspection, repentance and prayer, focusing on self-examination for the year ahead.

09/05/2025

UCE member and storyteller Wendy Herman shared her spiritual journey of discovering love without limits, and how to live a life of compassion and kindness, connected with nature and all living beings. Growing up, she was always driven by a pursuit of justice and making the world a better place, but when she made the connection that the meat on her plate was once a thinking, feeling living being who was capable of experiencing love, joy, fear, and pain, she knew she had to make a change.

From Wendy:

My connection with God and the natural world continued to guide me. I could no longer try to make the world a more peaceful and just place while consciously supporting the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals––from cows, to chickens, to fish––who are killed for human consumption every single day. From that point on, I was no longer a human separate from the natural world. I was part of it (and of course, I always had been). As PETA’s founder has famously said, “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,” which echoes the beliefs of Jeremy Bentham, a moral philosopher, who argued that it isn’t easier to justify the suffering of non-human animals than it is to justify the suffering of humans. Bentham said, “The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?”

08/28/2025

Women’s Equality Day is observed annually on August 26 in the U.S. to commemorate the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, which granted women the right to vote. Today, let's celebrate the achievements of the women’s suffrage movement and highlights ongoing efforts toward gender equality.

08/26/2025

Our Ministerial Intern Emma K. Farrell recently led our congregation on a journey to explore humanity’s relationship with AI. It’s a thought-provoking and deeply important reflection on our modern times. Click the link in our bio to hear the full sermon and let us know what you think in the comments.

Here is an excerpt from Emma’s sermon:

As many of you know, generative AI doesn’t create from scratch. It’s trained on our data—scraped from the internet. Billions of words, images, and patterns, all created by humans. And not always with consent. Ask any artist - they have feelings about their material being used in this way.

And, like a baby learning about the world, AI doesn’t know what’s helpful or harmful, beautiful or biased. It takes it all in.

When it “generates,” it reflects us back to ourselves—brilliant and broken, wise and shallow, biased and beautiful. All at once. If there’s a soul in the machine, that’s it…it’s us.

AI is a mirror. And like all mirrors, it can show us things we’d rather not see. It can reflect our creativity—poetry, art, music—but it also reflects our prejudices, our pain, and our maladaptive coping strategies.

It reflects our human-ness. But it is not human.

And as with any mirror, it matters who built it, how it was polished, how it reflects, and what it leaves out.

08/14/2025

08/07/2025

Today is Gaia Consciousness Day. This observance honors the concept of Gaia, the personification of Mother Earth in ancient Greek mythology, symbolizing the planet as a living, interconnected system. This is a good time to reflect on humanity’s relationship with the Earth, promoting environmental awareness and actions to protect and restore the planet’s ecosystems.

07/31/2025

International Day of Friendship is celebrated annually on July 30. It was proclaimed in 2011 by the UN General Assembly with the idea that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can build bridges between communities. So today, smile and reach out to others.