A Diverse Coalition of Christian and Allied Organizations Speak Out in Solidiarity with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
2025-11-25

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
The Ninth Commandment | Deuteronomy 5:20

As a diverse coalition of Christian and allied organizations spanning multiple denominational, geographic, and social backgrounds, we find ourselves compelled to speak out in support of our friends, colleagues, and neighbors at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

In a brazen act of bearing false witness, Texas governor Greg Abbott designated CAIR a “terrorist organization,” accusing it of supporting “terrorism across the globe and subvert(ing) our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment” (source | source). In reality, this is politically motivated scapegoating and bigoted harassment by the governor.

We therefore demand that the governor’s office rescind its denunciation of CAIR, an organization whose mission is “to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims” (source). CAIR has responded to Governor Abbott’s accusations with a letter rejecting the governor’s claims and by filing a lawsuit against Abbott on November 20. Contrary to Governor Abbott’s claim, CAIR works diligently and courageously through the US legal system against violence, intimidation, and harassment of American citizens.

CAIR has made explicit statements against terrorism, especially against the terrorism being committed against Palestinians, both in the US and in the Middle East. Additionally, CAIR regularly issues statements condemning attacks and bigotry against people of other faiths, including Jews and Christians. A large number of Americans who oppose genocide and the terrorism being committed against Palestinians are Muslim, and government agencies continue to persecute American Muslim communities, including the harrassment and attempted deportation of students Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk. We support our Muslim neighbors who are detained without legal charges; we support CAIR in their work for holding violators of US laws, and our core values of truth, justice, and liberty, to account.

● As Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, we proclaim the foundational theological truths that all have been created in the image of God with inherent dignity and worth (Genesis 1:26-27); that whatever we wish for ourselves, we must do for others (Matthew 7:12); and, that how we treat the vulnerable and marginalized is exactly the way we treat Jesus Christ himself (Matthew 25:40).

● As Quakers, we recognize the inner light of the divine within everyone and thus proclaim the equality and inherent dignity of all persons.

● As Unitarian Universalists, we uphold the fundamental value of love, and bear witness to the imperative of justice in society.

● Finally, as Americans, we hold it to be a self-evident truth that all are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

So, we speak out at this critical moment for the values of equality, freedom, and human rights and thereby stand in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors, to demand that the governor’s office rescind its baseless and inflammatory denunciation of CAIR.

Endorsed By

Christians for a Free Palestine (CFP)
CFP is an ecumenical, grassroots, nonviolent movement dedicated to mobilizing Christians across the U.S. to take action in solidarity with Palestinians. Collectively, CFP seeks to end the genocide in Gaza and ensure a long-lasting, just, and sustainable peace for Palestinians and
Israelis.

Episcopal Peace Fellowship—Palestine Justice Network (EPF PJN)
EPF PJN is committed to the principle of just peace in Palestine and Israel that includes full human rights, self-determination, and dignity for every Palestinian. EPF PJN is grounded in the Episcopal faith tradition and exists organizationally as a network within the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.

Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA)
As a Christian Voice for Palestine, FOSNA is an interdenominational Christian organization seeking justice and peace in the Holy Land through education, advocacy, and nonviolent action. FOSNA promotes the vision of Sabeel Jerusalem, an ecumenical liberation theology movement founded by Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land.

Indiana Center for Middle East Peace (ICMEP)
ICMEP is a voice of conscience for peace, justice, human rights, and intercultural understanding. To achieve its mission ICMEP works to: break down stereotypes, provide critical analysis, promote nonviolence, and support Palestinians.

Kairos USA
Kairos USA is a movement of U.S. Christians who believe the time is right for decisive action to end the crisis in Israel and Palestine. They work to unify and mobilize American Christians – lay, academic and clergy – to take a prophetic stance for a just peace, heeding the call of Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers to stand with them in their struggle for freedom.

Nonviolence International (NVI)
NVI seeks a world of justice, peace, and environmental sanity where the worth and dignity of all people is fully realized and conflicts are resolved without resorting to violence. NVI advocates for active nonviolence and supports creative constructive nonviolent campaigns worldwide.

Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP)
PCAP is a non-sectarian, ecumenical alliance of Palestinian American Christians seeking to provide a clear voice and presence in faith-based communities in the United States. Its
inspiration stems from the Kairos Palestine document and from all faith-based communities working for peace through justice in Palestine and Israel.

Palestine Justice Network (PJN) of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., Bay Area
PJN PCUSA covenants to engage, consolidate, nourish, and channel the energy in the Presbyterian Church (USA) toward the goal of a just peace by facilitating education, promoting
partnerships, and coordinating advocacy.

Peace & Justice Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago
The Peace and Justice Committee works on the root causes of oppression and violence
seeking systemic change. We are involved in advocacy and education with a special focus on refugee work, gun violence, economic justice, the Middle East, immigration reform, anti-racism work, support for the Standing Rock reservation, and LGBTQ issues.

Quaker Palestine Israel Network (QPIN)
QPIN consists of members and attenders of Quaker meetings throughout the US and across the world who share best practices and resources, learn from each other, and build solidarity for human rights, equality and freedom in Israel-Palestine.

Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME)
UUJME works to educate and mobilize individuals, congregations and denominational leaders to greater understanding and action for a just peace in Palestine/Israel, to recognize and counter inequality and injustice in Palestine/Israel, and to support allies in the global justice and anti-oppression movements.

United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR)
UMKR seeks, through nonviolent means and in partnership with Palestinian Christians, freedom, justice and equality for all Palestinians and Israelis. UMKR's advocacy has several areas of focus: divestment and boycott, political action, responsible tourism, and education about the history and current conditions.

United Church of Christ Movement for Palestinian Solidarity (UCC MPS)
UCC MPS is a grassroots movement within the United Church of Christ, dedicated to advocating for a just peace in Palestine and Israel. It educates churches, supports Palestinian partners, and takes action guided by the UCC's General Synod resolutions and the Kairos Palestine Document.

UUJME Statement on the Ceasefire

It has been joyous to see clips of Palestinians in Gaza dancing in the street, with relief, with at least the hope, that Israeli bombs will stop raining down. That this “ceasefire” will hold.

And, Israel has already violated the terms of the ceasefire.

We know that this agreement was not written for the freedom or self-determination of the Palestinian people. The agreement is rife with imperialism; the post-governing body includes the US and Israel, but not Palestinians, at the table. The plan does not guarantee the end of genocide, as Trump has endorsed “finishing the job” if the agreement collapses. And Israel continues its annexation of the West Bank. Thousands are still imprisoned, and much more.

Perhaps most notably, there is no clear answer for the Palestinians – how can those left rebuild after this horror? Will they receive an adequate flow of medicine and food? How can they mourn the hundreds of thousands killed? How can they go on, let alone rebuild?

We are concerned that this US-brokered “plan” is little more than intent to “develop” Gaza in capitalist splendor, to “rebuild” it as Trump’s “Mediterranean Riviera,” or something akin. This plan holds nobody accountable for the genocide, the starvation, the destruction of a people and the entirety of their infrastructure. It does not change the essential subjugation of the Palestinians, their forced removal, imprisonment and killing, back to 1948. It does not recognize their right of return to ancestral villages.

Meanwhile, our hearts pray for the Palestinian people, hoping against hope that their dignity and freedom might be restored, that even this moment of joy might fill them with enough sustenance for continued survival.

The struggle continues. We have been and will be clear: our role is solidarity with Palestinians, now and going forward. We will follow the lead of our civil-society Palestinian partners, strive to end U.S. support for the violence against Palestinians, and move forward with the continued commitment to their freedom and self-determination.

In solidarity and resistance,

UUJME

Photo: 2025 cup decorated with keffiyeh pattern and QR code to actions list;
2024 Water Ceremony with Empty Cups for Gaza, Theodore Parker Church, Roxbury, MA

In summer of 2024, our national co-organizer India Wood initiated the Empty Cups for Gaza ritual of witness. This was intended for implementation during Ingathering and Water worship and ceremonies for Unitarian Universalist congregations that take place in August and September. The ritual was honored to be included in the UUA's Worship Web. At least 50 congregations participated, and many shared photos with us. View the Instagram reel for inspiration.

Originally named Water Communion, and now more commonly known as Water Ceremony, this worship service celebrates the interconnectedness of people and the planet. Often people bring a bit of water from their favorite waterway or from home, and the ceremony consists of people commingling the water in a communal vase or pitcher near the altar. 

Because the Palestinians in Gaza have been systematically deprived of food and water, the Empty Cups for Gaza ritual bears witness to the deprivation. To participate in this national observance, bring an empty cup or glass decorated with paper bearing the words Empty Cup for Gaza, or simply for Gaza, and place it beside the communal water vessel. Provide a sign-up sheet to collect names and contact information of congregants who would like to gather to take action in community; you or your congregation can plan a Zoom meeting for this in the coming days and weeks. Contact us for more ideas at [email protected]. 

We are providing an updated printable for you to tape or glue to your empty cup. It includes a QR code to our Actions list so that people can scan, visit, and choose an action to take to stop the starvation and the bombing. Find the printables at this link.

Take a photo of your congregation's empty cups and share with us at [email protected] to be included in this year's Instagram reel. Post your photos on social media and use the tags #EmptyCupsforGaza, #uujme, #UUIngathering, #UUWaterCeremony, and #UnitarianUniversalist. You can include these words in your social media post:

UUs across the country are taking this prayerful action in sympathy with the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza who are denied potable water by Israel, a war crime that is enabled by the United States. These people are dying of starvation, thirst, preventable disease, and weapons of war.

The intention is to augment and expand the traditional water ceremony, not to replace the existing ritual. This is not to alienate us from our traditions but to start or continue a conversation about an additional ritual element.

This silent yet powerful symbolic ritual will be only the beginning of continued conversations within each congregation as the violence in Gaza continues with no sign of a ceasefire. UUJME provides materials to help you figure out what format of conversations or actions your congregation should take next based on the needs of your unique community. 

If you would like to learn more about how to get started with Empty Cups for Gaza, please check out the recorded information session video at Empty Cup for Gaza Ingathering Ritual Q&A on Vimeo. Please discuss the idea with your local minister, other staff, and congregational leadership and bring your curiosity about how this ritual can be included. Invite them to view this ritual suggestion as bringing another seat to the table for an attitude of abundant space for ritual.

Read last year's blog post about the ritual.

Other actions you can take:

Connect with our organizer to find out more about how to gather local UUs to take action: [email protected]

Check back on our Calendar and the Side with Love Action center for our next national gathering of UUs on Zoom.

The final stages of malnutrition and death.

That’s where Gazans are now. Suffering needlessly at the hands of the Israeli military and government, supported by the US as always, dying a horrible and prohibited - as starvation is not an allowable tool of war, even - death.

Dying, too, is our belief in our governments. Long gone is the belief that those in power can or even want to do the right thing. More governments, including our own, driven by racism, power-grabbing, money, anti-muslim hate, and sheer greed. 

For months, years, many have pled, bargained, protested, and barricaded, trying to get the government to change its actions. All for naught.

For this wasn’t pre-ordained, these horrors, but perhaps pre-destined. This was always the plan, those in power never saw Gazans, Palestinians, as fully human. And it is easy to kill what is not seen as human.

G-d knows, we’ve learned that lesson well. 

We vilify and we kill. More than 56,000 (far more, as this count is more than a week old), disappeared here in the US, in plain sight. Cruelly, violently, and without accountability, because those taken (so far) are almost entirely brown-skinned. Who the white men in power find, still, to be less than fully human.

We’re just beginning here in the US. One does not allocate those billions of dollars to ICE without intending to detain and kill large numbers in this country. None of us are safe. They will eventually come for us all who do not meet the white, Christian nationalist criteria of “worthiness.”

I have often quoted my colleague, Rev. Julian Jamaica Soto, that “all of us need all of us to survive.” This remains so. 

There is no excuse, no valid one, for failing to speak out, to scream, about this horror happening in Gaza, in the US, and elsewhere right now. This isn’t anti-zionism, it isn’t antisemitism, this isn’t about Hamas, or immigration, or crimes, or anything else; this is about the right for people to exist, wherever they are, without being persecuted and killed for their very existence.

What’s happening in Gaza will haunt me, will haunt us, for the rest of our lives. What’s happening here, in our own country, will ultimately do the same.

SPEAK OUT. Fight back. Risk your own safety. For even if you don’t care about Gaza — and I hope with all my heart you do – one day this will be us. And wouldn’t you want someone fighting for your very existence?

AN APPEAL TO UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS: 

Update Your Land Acknowledgement to Recognize the Forced Removal of Palestinians

The Action of Immediate Witness (AIW) “Solidarity with Palestinians” approved at the 2024 UUA General Assembly, stated, “The targeted and widespread destruction of medical, cultural, agricultural, educational, and religious sites [in Gaza] constitutes ethnic cleansing.” At the sametime, Israeli settlers have conducted violent attacks on Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, and some U.S. synagogues have hosted the selling of illegally confiscated Palestinian land in the occupied territories. Since Janu–ary 2025, even during the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank and home demolitions in East Jerusalem have sky-rocketed.
The AIW called on UUs to “witness, educate, organize, and advocate,” and so we are proposing one step: to extend our Land Acknowledgements of theft of indigenous land to recognize our own U.S. government’s enabling the forced removal of Palestinians from Palestine. Our Palestinian ally, Friends of Sabeel–North America (FOSNA), encourages us to join their ”stand against forced displacement and false doctrines.”

Revising land acknowledgements to acknowledge present reality will enliven the call of the 2020 GA AIW, “Address 400 Years of White Supremacist Colonialism,” to move beyond “simple preliminary actions” toward “the deeper, long-term process of relationship building and cultural healing from the deep harms of colonial genocide.” 

PHOTO: Forced removal in Jenin (Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Electronic Intifada, 11 March 2025)                                                   

Suggested Addendum to Land Acknowledgements

Short version:

We also bear witness that the United States is still–at this moment–providing the weapons, funding, and diplomatic cover for Israel's forced removal of the Indigenous People of Palestine.

Long version, for a reading or ritual:

We also bear witness that the United States is still–at this moment–providing the weapons, funding, and diplomatic cover for Israel's forced removal of the Indigenous People of Palestine. Like the Trail of Tears, oppression of the residents of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem is the culmination of a colonial settler-replacement project. We will work as individuals, in our congregation, and as a Unitarian Universalist religious movement to end the unjust policies and practices of our nation that abet the forced removal of any People, uphold any apartheid regime, or deny human rights to any human being.

PHOTO: Forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza (Jaber Jehad Badwan/commons. wikimedia.org, 29 January 2025)

Please contact us at [email protected] with your questions, suggestions, struggles, and outcomes when you engage with fellow congregants to bring this proposal to life.  – Karen Steele & Steven Sellers (Muskrat) Lapham, Members of the Board, UUs for Justice in the Middle East. 

Supporters of this Appeal

Rev. Dr. Clyde Grubbs and Rev. Dr. Michelle Walsh, Ministers-at-Large, Tuckerman Creative Ministries for Justice & Healing * Melissa Nuwaysir, Palestinian American; Co-Coordinator, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME)–Northern Virginia * Mac Goekler, UU Peace Ministries Network * Dana Fisher Ashrawi, President, UUJME * Curtis Bell, Member of the Board, UUJME * Dr. Samira Farwaneh, Member, UU Congregation of Tucson * Rev. DL Helfer, LCSW, Member of the Board, UUJME * David Delk, Trustee, UUs for a Just Economic Community

Link to the flyer version of this blog post.

NOTES

https://www.uujme.org/unitarian_universalists_call_for_an_end_to_the_war_on_gaza_u_s_complicity_in_that_war
https://www.fosna.org/advocacy-direct-action-database/christian-leaders-and-activists-stand-against-forced-displacement https://www.uua.org/action/statements/address-400-years-white-supremacist-colonialism
https://www.uua.org/justice/blog/beyond-land-acknowledgment