On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a raid of Harper’s Ferry in an effort to incite a rebellion of enslaved people in the American South and foment a profound reordering of an unjust social order in America.

He embarked upon this path beginning with a kind of conversion to radical social enlightenment, including during an abolitionist sermon he heard at a universalist congregation in Akron, Ohio.

Brown is not a simple figure to get a grasp of. He is rightly celebrated, and his final words are so emotionally stirring that they still hold all of their power even today. He is also a figure who enacted stunning violence and provoked people to spend their lives to achieve a vision he had for what liberation could and should look like. “Wierd John Brown” is the way Ted Smith captured him in his famous study of Brown.

Violence in the service of justice is a fraught part of our efforts to imagine the world in a new and more equitable way. It is not a unambiguous part of our history as UUs, and it is not an unambiguous part of understanding how humans work on the world to make change. Even so, it is a destructive and horrific thing that, for many of us, has not place in bringing out ends that we sincerely hope for.

I think about John Brown a lot. I believe in the world that he imagined. But I cannot stomach the means he chose to get there, even as I am kind of in awe of the courage and conviction that allowed him to embark on such a task. The moral clarity of his vision is as sharp as his tactics. My vision has softer edges.

The moral questions of our time are just as fraught, just as ambiguous as they were for Brown. Since we are in the season of remembering this monumental moment in America’s history, I don’t think Brown has answers for us. But thinking about him, and about how UU’s were involved in that history may help us ask our own questions about how to achieve a more just world, and the means that we are willing to employ to achieve it.

Sometimes it is hard to tap into our spiritual selves or find time to nurture our creativity and intellectual curiosity. Here is a section that reflects on some nourishing materials from around the web and related media channels in order to get us thinking, get us feeling, and get us reflecting on the lives we are living in this big world. **Some Adult/Mature Themes May Appear in Links and Other Attached Material**

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Allan T. Georgia, MDiv, MTS, PhD

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