Speak Up. Stand Up. TAKE ACTION
We are justice-seeking people of faith and we believe that
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice"
Organizing Justice-Seekers
to Make Change
Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) is an intersectional social justice nonprofit that mobilizes Justice-Seeking People of Faith to take action on issues of peace, poverty and people’s rights within the church and the world.
Anti-Racism Begins at Home
In 2017, Methodist Federation for Social Action made a commitment to focus special energy on dismantling racism within our church and society. Seeking to do this work, we realized, “How can we call out racism and prejudice in others, if we haven’t done our own work within our own organization?”
We have completed an Organizational Racial Audit to help us move toward becoming a more anti-racist and anti-oppression organization. We invite you to join us in this transformational work. We can’t do this alone.
MFSA Bookstore
MFSA’s bookstore provides curated book recommendations organized in lists based on justice issues including racial justice, LGBTQ+ justice, disability justice, theology of justice, interfaith, justice in the Holy Land, peacebuilding, and more! The bookstore is still developing and lists will be regularly updated with recommendations from webinars, partner organizations, and the community.
Be Counted as a Justice-Seeker
Are you a person of faith who cares about progressive social issues that center the voices that are most often pushed to the margins? Signing up as a Justice-Seeking Person of Faith will subscribe you to our National Newsletter MFSA Voices, which features the latest news of the progressive movement towards justice within the United Methodist Church and beyond.
Connect with a Regional Community
Connect with your local chapter, which includes Justice-Seeking individuals, congregations, and communities working together to make change in your local area.
Justice-Seeking Congregations and Communities
In a world where faith is used as a weapon to do harm toward others and exclude others, Justice-Seeking Congregations and Communities work toward justice, inclusion, and loving our neighbors.
I joined MFSA leadership in the summer of 2022 after a particularly hard annual conference for the Florida Conference. Our entire commissioning class was voted down for the inclusion of openly-queer candidates for provisional membership, and the conference was unprepared for the trauma, the trust erosion, and bridge building that would need to ensue over the next months and years. I found myself at a stand-still place, weighing the difficulties of continuing in pursuit of ordination as a queer person in the Southeastern Jurisdiction and the need for intersectional justice and radical inclusion in our United Methodist communities. I stepped into MFSA with hope for a countercultural movement that could lay the foundation for the conversations necessary for our Florida Conference to engage with in pursuit of the beloved community.
As an immigrant female clergy, I have always felt drawn to spaces that advocate for people from the margins and causes of justice. I was drawn to MFSA because of its fearless, intersectional approach to advocacy. Seeing the organization actively stand on the right side of history—whether through LGBTQIA+ inclusion, care for the earth and its resources or reproductive justice—spoke directly to my faith. What cemented my involvement was our witnessing at General Conference, advocating for a eco-justice, and speaking out for racial justice. I believe the work of MFSA is desperately needed today, to counter oppressive ideologies in the church and world.
The Methodist Federation for Social Action provides a home for those of us who care deeply about the most marginalized members of the world. My belief is that Jesus calls me to love, include and empower the most marginalized in the kin-dom of God, and my commitment as a UMC Deaconess calls me to love, justice and service.
As United Methodists prepare to gather for Annual Conference, many of us at MFSA are asking what it means to rebuild—our churches, our witness, and our shared life together—in a time of change.
In the Book of Amos, the prophet describes a vision of a plumb line—a simple tool used to test whether a wall is straight and true. It’s a striking image, a clear measure of what is aligned and what is not.
As I conclude my time with the Methodist Federation for Social Action, I find myself filled with gratitude for the journey I’ve shared with this incredible community of Justice-Seeking People. From the very beginning, MFSA has been a collaborative space for learning, reflection, and encouragement. I have seen the outcomes of faith and justice meet in action.
As I continued my internship with the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) this Spring semester, I can truly say that I have grown in ways I did not expect. Looking back at where I started, I was unsure of myself and still adjusting to the challenges of an online internship. But now, I feel more confident not only in what I can do, but also in who I am becoming.
This semester, I became more comfortable and open with my supervisor. I wholeheartedly participated in my weekly supervision meetings, sharing things about my studies, and I was also able to understand more deeply the importance of the work of MFSA and how it continues to stand for justice, human rights, and the dignity of all people through our open conversations. I found myself not just listening, but also reflecting and connecting with new learnings to my own faith and experiences. It made me realize that social action is not just something we study, but something we live out.
The United Methodist Social Principles affirm the inherent dignity of every person, the right to seek asylum, and the fundamental humanity of migrants and refugees. They call us to support immigration policies that are humane, just, and rooted in the recognition that every person bears the image of God. Current enforcement practices violate these principles at every turn.
In June 2023, the Methodist Federation for Social Action Board of Directors took a clear step forward by creating the Racial Audit Implementation Team. This team was formed in response to the findings of MFSA’s racial audit, with a shared goal: to help reshape the organization so that equity and justice are not just values we name, but practices we live out—within MFSA, across the church, and in the world around us.
Since then, this team has been doing the steady, often behind-the-scenes work of implementing the Racial Audit's recommendations. Originally composed of seven members, the team has been guiding how these recommendations take root in real structures, relationships, and decisions. Now, that work is growing.
My internship with the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) was a meaningful experience even though it was done online. At first, I was unsure if I would really learn much since everything was done through Zoom meetings, but I later realized that learning and service can still happen in an online setting.
During my internship, I attended Zoom meetings that focused on what MFSA does with their local chapters or the churches they work with. Through these meetings, I learned how MFSA partners with churches in addressing social issues such as human rights, poverty, and justice. These discussions helped me understand how the church can stand with communities who are facing different struggles.
God who hears our cries,
Today we sit with the weight of the cross.
We remember what happens when truth is silenced,
when power protects itself,
when the vulnerable are cast aside.
We remember that Jesus was executed by a system that feared what love could change.
God of shared tables and open doors,
On this night, we remember a meal—
simple, ordinary, and full of meaning.
Jesus gathered with friends,
knowing what was coming,
and chose love anyway.
He washed feet.
He broke bread.
He said, "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
Holy Monday brings us into one of the most unsettling moments of Holy Week.
Jesus enters the Temple and overturns the tables of the money changers, crying out, “My house shall be called a house of prayer—but you are making it a den of robbers.”
Many of us hear that phrase and imagine the Temple as a place where wrongdoing was actively happening. But biblical scholar Dr. Amy-Jill Levine reminds us that a den is not where robbers rob people. A den is where they go afterward. It is the place where they feel safe, protected, sheltered from consequences. A den is a hideout.
Which makes Jesus’ words even more unsettling.
He is not simply accusing people of wrongdoing in the Temple. He is accusing the religious system of becoming a safe place for people who do harm.
This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, and on Palm Sunday, Jesus doesn’t enter Jerusalem alone.
Yes, he’s riding on a donkey, humble and unarmed. But he is surrounded. A crowd gathers. People spread cloaks on the road. Branches are cut and waved. Voices rise together, crying out, “Hosanna! Save us!” And when Jesus enters the city, the whole place is stirred up. Folks keep asking, “Who is this?”
Palm Sunday isn’t a solo act of courage by Jesus. It’s a collective moment in the movement of ordinary folks who decide, together, to show up, to take a risk, to make a way for love, and to demand a new and just way.
The crowd matters.
Rev. Rachel Cornwell invites us into the trial of Jesus before Pilate, asking hard questions about truth, power, and where real authority comes from. Filmed in a public space shaped by our own justice system, her reflection connects the gospel story to the courage required to speak truth in the face of unjust power—and to live that truth together.
Methodist Federation for Social Action grieves the devastating loss of life following the recent military strikes carried out by the United States and Israel in Iran, as well as the retaliatory violence that has followed. Civilians—children, families, workers, and elders—are again paying the highest price for decisions made by governments and militaries. Every life lost is sacred, and every act of war deepens the suffering of people who did not choose this conflict.
As a movement rooted in the Gospel’s call to justice, MFSA rejects the logic that violence will create peace. The teachings of Jesus point us in another direction—toward courage, mercy, and the hard work of peacemaking. War does not liberate people from oppression, nor does it bring lasting security. It multiplies trauma, destabilizes communities, and endangers countless lives across the region and beyond.
When I was in seminary and doing a pastoral internship at the Hollywood United Methodist Church, I was invited by one of the church members to spend a night on the streets with her. She was chronically unhoused, and she was willing to be my teacher and guide.
I was not brave enough to take her up on her offer.
It terrified me.
It wasn’t even that I was scared for my safety, I had confidence in her knowledge and care. It was that I couldn’t get past the fear that if I left the secure bubble of my life for one single night, it might burst and I’d never be able to get back to it. It was irrational, ridiculous, and unfounded. I couldn’t move past it.
Witness a sacred meeting
under the cover of darkness.
Honest conversation flows.
Murmurs of curiosity and confusion rise up,
punctuated by inflections
of questions answered by questions.
Do you hear the breeze
that stirs up the familiar scent
of punitive earthly laws?
Is there another way?
Possibilities emerge
during divine encounters.
The atmosphere shifts.
Winds of change refresh creation with
showers of restorative justice.
Will you resist transformation
like a wailing newborn
yearning for comfort of the womb?
Or will you taste the sweet fruit
of God’s liberating love for the whole world
to be born again through saving grace?
Clergy are being arrested outside detention facilities. Denominations are filing First Amendment lawsuits against federal immigration enforcement. Congregations from Manhattan to Los Angeles are posting "ICE-free zone" signs and training rapid response teams. This surge of coordinated response to the dangerous and harmful actions of the Trump administration is part of a mobilization of Christians at a scale unseen since the civil rights movement.
For United Methodists, the call to faithful nonviolent resistance emerges from our deepest theological convictions. John Wesley refused to separate personal piety from social transformation, writing that "the gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.”[1] The 2024 General Conference codified this heritage when delegates adopted Social Principles explicitly supporting civil disobedience against unjust laws, provided such witness remains nonviolent and respects human dignity.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at a community vigil that had been organized after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. My congregation was hosting the gathering, but we were by no means running the show - it was a team, gathered with only a days notice, that was gathering people for this brave and healing moment. This team was made up of local advocates for LGBTQ rights, Black Lives Matter organizers, queer theologians, the head of a mostly Spanish-speaking immigrant queer and trans community, and others. The team, and their children, brought boxes and boxes of candles and made a beautiful candle-lit altar, and the queer migrant community built an ofrenda to remember not only Renee Good but also all of the lives taken by ICE in the past year, many of whom had gone unnoticed by the national press, even as their families and communities grieved the shock and tragedy of what was unfolding.
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
On Ash Wednesday, these words confront us with what Empire works hardest to deny: our
shared fragility, our interdependence, and the lie that some lives matter more than others.
Shaped by years of shared ministry as an Elder and a Deaconess serving Arch Street UMC in
Philadelphia, we receive the ashes as both confession and commission. We come to these
ashes formed by unequal authority—one bearing institutional power, one carrying the weight of
systems that rarely recognize her call. Empire taught us these arrangements, and the Church
has too often baptized them. But the ashes we receive together refuse the hierarchy. They
expose the lie that proximity to power makes one more necessary, more holy, or more secure.
In receiving them together, we confess our complicity and accept a shared commission: to resist
every system that declares some lives, some callings, some bodies disposable. In a city shaped
by resistance and resilience, we are reminded that none of us is disposable—no matter what
the systems of this world declare.