Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg

09/13/2026

May We Be Free of Suffering
09.13.2026

Rev. Scott NeelyMusic led by Max Parks & Cindy FreemanChoir Ensem...

09/11/2026

"May We Be Free of Suffering"
Rev. Scott Neely
September 13, 2026 - 11:00 am
Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, SC (210 Henry Place, 29306)
In person and via livestream: https://www.youtube.com/

Music led by Max Parks & Cindy Freeman
Choir Ensemble
Water Communion
Engagement Fair following the service in Wilde Hall

This Sunday we celebrate our beloved annual ingathering of waters. Bring water from your home or travels this summer. We will pour our many waters together in a confluence of our journeys and our lives. We flow into one another, the original blessing of being alive together in this beautiful world.

Image: When Light Breaks

09/06/2026

09/06/2026

The Hardest Thing To Do
09.06.2026

Music led by Max Parks and TJ TurnerTime for All AgesNot out of ...

09/03/2026

"The Hardest Thing To Do"
Rev. Scott Neely
September 6, 2026 - 11:00AM
Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, SC (210 Henry Place, 29306)
In person and via livestream: https://www.youtube.com/

Music led by Max Parks & TJ Turner
Time For All Ages

Not out of piety or obligation,
not from self-righteousness or a hidden desire to win,
not hastily or with moralizing fakeness,

but because it works,

__________.

Image: When Light Breaks

08/31/2026

The Power of You
08.30.2026

Guest Speaker: Kathryn HarveyMusic led by Erin GallowayThe buck ...

08/23/2026

What We Ask of the Water
08.23.2026

Guest Speaker: Sam HarrelsonMusic led by TJ TurnerA single data ...

08/22/2026

"What We Ask of the Water"
Guest Speaker – Sam Harrelson
August 23, 2026 - 11:00AM
Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, SC (210 Henry Place, 29306)
In person and via livestream: https://www.youtube.com/
Music led by TJ Turner

A single data center of the kind now proposed in Spartanburg County can draw hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day, and a good deal of what it takes leaves as v***r. That water does not come back down the creek. The permits are public. The comment periods are open. Most of us have never read one.

Following the water outward from the creek into the wider watershed, Sam Harrelson considers the grids, buildings, and infrastructure that seem placeless and are always somewhere in particular. What do these systems ask of our rivers, our power, and our neighbors? Who is in the room when a place is remade, and who is informed afterward? In the country's 250th year, this reflection asks what it means to seek the welfare of a home we hold in common with people whose experience of it differs from our own.

Sam Harrelson is an ordained minister and doctoral student in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where his work on "ecological intentionality" begins with a black walnut in his Spartanburg backyard. He is also an ordained minister and writes Carolina Ecology (carolinaecology.com), a public theology newsletter rooted in the water and ground of the Carolinas. He and his life partner, Merianna Harrelson, who leads the progressive Christian service at UUCS, live in Duncan Park.

Image: Fairforest Creek at Croft

08/16/2026

The First Home Is a Watershed
08.16.2026

Guest Speaker: Sam HarrelsonMusic led by Erin GallowayRain falls...

08/15/2026

"The First Home Is A Watershed"
Guest Speaker – Sam Harrelson
August 16, 2026 - 11:00AM
Music led by Erin Galloway
In-person and via livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux2pfFGhpQk

Rain falls on a roof in Spartanburg, runs off the eave, crosses a yard where a black walnut is already dropping fruit in July, and makes its way to Lawson's Fork, then the Pacolet, then the Broad, then the sea. Every house in this county sits on a slope, and the slope decides where the water goes. Before a home is a house, a deed, or a country, it is a slope down which the rain runs.

In the first of two reflections, Sam Harrelson begins with the ordinary facts of this ground. Red clay, one creek, one tree. Drawing on philosophy, theology, poetry, and the practice of close attention, he asks how a place works on us before we learn to put a name on it, and what it would mean to say that the ground has been keeping us all along.

Sam Harrelson is an ordained minister and doctoral student in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where his work on "ecological intentionality" begins with a black walnut in his Spartanburg backyard. He is also an ordained minister and writes Carolina Ecology (carolinaecology.com), a public theology newsletter rooted in the water and ground of the Carolinas. He and his life partner, Merianna Harrelson, who leads the progressive Christian service at UUCS, live in Duncan Park.

Image: The Harrelsons' Black Walnut Tree