February 22, 2026: Why Truth Matters

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
In these days of deceit, truth matters. As do seekers and defenders of truth. Our UU tradition has a long commitment to seeking truth. Let’s explore this commitment and its importance to creating Beloved Community.

View the video archive of this service here:

Sermon Text

Why Truth Matters

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

February 22, 2026

READINGS

Here are two readings reflecting on the importance of truth for our personal lives and for community. The first one is from the Black feminist theologian bell hooks, from her book, All About Love: New Visions:

“...the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by...a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings.

The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught

from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.

When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other's truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”

This second reading is from the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed, a lifelong Black Unitarian Universalist, a minister in our tradition, and the pre-eminent historian of Black UU history.

He writes: “The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all. There is a connectedness, a relationship discovered among the particulars of our own lives and the lives of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice.

“It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength too limited to do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.”

SERMON Why Truth Matters

Something you may not know about me is that I am a big Star Wars fan. I have been ever since my first trip to the movie theater with my family to see the first movie, Star Wars: A New Hope. I was just two years old, but with an older brother and sister - it was a family outing. I still remember the dark theater and how larger than life Luke Skywalker was.

Since Disney bought the Star Wars franchise, they have produced several more recent movies and a number of series TV shows. My favorite of the new Star Wars content is the show “Andor.” It tells the story of how the rebel alliance was first created - the early brave people fighting the evils of the Empire and Emperor Palpatine. It does this through the back story of Cassian Andor who becomes a rebel hero by eventually stealing the plans to the Death Star (the plot of Rogue One) and getting it to the rebel alliance, leading to Luke destroying the Death Star in the original movie, A New Hope.

The second season of “Andor” was released last spring. I recently re-watched both seasons and it has so many echoes of our struggles today. Key themes of the series are the importance of truth and freedom - and the need for hope in resisting authoritarianism and trying to reclaim our humanity in the midst of violence and cruelty.

In the climatic moment near the end of the first season, Senator Mon Motha - who at the time is a Galactic Senator representing Chandrilla - but later becomes a leader of the Rebel Alliance - exits the Senate with a final speech - a warning and wake up call to her fellow Senators, of what is happening and the dangers of the Empire.

She says, “I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

The writer of Mon Motha's speech, Dan Gilroy, admits the speech was informed by the reality of American politics he was witnessing in 2023 as well as historical lessons. He said he had in mind the mass-produced propaganda machines today, and those in history, including Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis' minister of propaganda. When that level of propaganda and misinformation is happening, Gilroy says, “It's almost like mass hypnosis. They're putting you to sleep. They're lying to you with bigger and bigger and bigger lies, and you stop ...paying attention. So Mon’s [Motha] speech is trying to wake people up from that lethargy that's been created by [the] dictatorship.”1

Speaking truth in a time of deceit is a revolutionary act, as George Orwell says. And it is necessary to wake people from the lethargy and hypnosis of constant lying. Let's remember it is good to be awake! Good to be woke!

In a much more benign example - in Hans Christian Anderson's fable - The Emperor's New Clothes - it is the voice of the child speaking the plain and obvious truth that wakes everyone from their collective allusion rooted in fear that they are the only ones who can't see the Emperor's clothes - wakes them up from the silence they choose out of fear of looking foolish or being on the outside.

It is a reminder of the ways that conformity - or a desire to conform - to get along - can hide the truth - and in hiding the truth, cover up injustice. This theme came up when we looked at To Kill a Mockingbird a couple weeks back. The young Scout was curious about the injustices in her community but also felt the pull to fit in with her family and community. And last week, when we discussed the beginnings of Unitarianism in this country and the break from orthodoxy, we underscored the necessity of freedom to be able to break with things you have long been taught in order to find ever deepening and expanding understandings of truth.

While “Andor” resonates so powerfully in this moment - including this message from Mon Motha's speech that reminds us that when the distance between what is said and what we know to be true becomes an abyss - when truth dies - evil wins. Because without truth, or when power alone gets to dictate and define what is true, then fear dominates and those who wield fear dominate the people.

And so to speak truth in these times is necessary to break through the lethargy, the collective allusion, the complicity. It wakes us up to understand ourselves and our world more clearly. And this matters not just when we think about the necessity of our own resistance in this political moment - but also in our lives and how we nurture communities of truth telling, truth seeking, and integrity.

Our overarching theme of this year is “Creating Beloved Community” - and each month's theme is intended as a pillar that is needed for that Beloved Community. The phrase, “Beloved Community,” was first coined by theologian Josiah Royce, but it was popularized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

For Dr. King, the Beloved Community described a hoped-for future where racism, bigotry, poverty, and war would be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of kinship, where each person might grow into the fullness of their personality and where discrimination and poverty would not be tolerated because they inhibit the full development of human dignity.

The central pillar of the Beloved Community is love. But love also requires truth telling. We hear this in bell hooks’ words about the dangers of stifling our children's truth from a young age. Again, that pressure around conformity is present. Sometimes this stifling or rejection comes from parents desire to protect their kids, but the impact is to separate our children from knowing and trusting themselves - their own truth. We want to nurture confidence in our kids and this includes helping them learn to truth themselves, to be curious about their world. and support them in discovering what is true. This also helps them value themselves and love themselves. As individuals, parents, grandparents, and in this faith community, it matters that we develop the capacity - both the skills and the freedom to tell the truth in love and to receive the truth in love - and to learn from each other's truths.

I appreciate bell hooks' wisdom that truth-telling helps us know love. For in community or in relationships, truth-telling requires some trust and the desire to be known more fully - and the foundation of that is love. It's why we need truth and an openness to truth telling even when it is not what we expect or want. We need truth to nurture Beloved Community. Because, we are all prone to failing to see the fullness of life and reality - and even our own dynamics within our culture.

I am reminded again of To Kill a Mockingbird and how so much goes unsaid, unexplained, unexamined. And how that silence is a fundamental part of maintaining the system of racial inequity. Truth cuts through that to show where change is needed.

On Friday night, the Indigenous Studies Working Group in our congregation hosted a program, Heart Land: Reconnecting with the Indians of Indiana. The presenters, Ryan and Andrea Conway, shared some of the history of how this land was stolen from the Shawnee people. They also share about the cultural and spiritual foundations of the Shawnee people. And one of the things that struck me again, as it so often does in learning from Native leaders, is when listening and learning to the truths that are core to many Indigenous communities, it makes visible the settler colonialist frameworks that are often invisible to those of us who swim in this culture.

For example, Ryan Conway shared not just the principle of all beings being related but the Shawnee belief that nearly everything on earth is animate - meaning alive - meaning a being that has dignity and agency and is worthy of respect - not just humans and animals, but also plants and rivers and more. It is all alive, related and here to help us. This is not a framework of dominion over the earth - but one of relationship, dependence and interdependence.

This truth may not be your truth, but hearing it may help many of us understand and perhaps even question truths we have long held, and understand how we got to a place of commodifying nearly everything in our lives, and exploiting this planet to our own detriment. The journey of seeking truth, of being a community and a people committed to life long learning and growth, means being willing to be changed by truths that challenge us. For we only continue to grow as individuals and as a community when we welcome more truth and understanding, with a willingness to learn from it. Because as Morrison- Reed reminds us, “alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen.”

When we nurture a culture in the communities we are a part of - whether that is our families, our organizations, or this religious community - where truth, including difficult and challenging ones can be named, identified, and embraced as an opportunity for learning, this helps us grow in our depth and relationships. It deepens our bonds and our strength. This is why truth matters - it helps us nurture growth, compassion, and create more equity, more justice, more belonging. As Mark Morrison-Reed shares, when we each share our vision, and name our truth, it helps us “unveil the bonds that bind each to all” - to discover the “connectedness, [and] relationship... [found] among the particulars of our own lives and the lives of others.” And

once we feel that connectedness - the relationship - “it-inspires us to act for justice.”

It felt important to end this month's exploration of truth considering the multiple ways that truth is needed in our lives. Truth is necessary for resisting this effort to erode democracy and institute authoritarianism in our country. Truth is needed to keep nurturing more justice, more freedom, more equity in our world. And truth is also something we need in our personal lives and communities - to see and love ourselves more fully, to welcome and love one another more fully. To remember that truth is necessary for justice, that truth thrives in the context of freedom, and that truth is necessary for nurturing deeper bonds of compassion, connection, and a beloved community.

Let us remember the importance of truth and remain committed to speaking it as well as to keeping our hearts, minds, and practices of community always open to learning and discovering more truth about ourselves, our world, its beauty and spirituality, and what the earth and all of its beings have to teach us.

1 Interview with Dan Gilroy, LA Times, 08.19.25 Entertainment https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/ story/2025-08-19/andor-disney-mon-mothma-senate-speech-annotated-dan-gilroy#:~:text Gilroy%20points%20to%20Joseph%20Goebbels, been%20created%20by%20this%20dictatorship. %E2%80%9D