First Unitarian Church of Dallas

Inspiration - Summer Series Kick-Off | Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter
2026-06-14 09:30 - 12:00 (America/Chicago) | First Unitarian Church of Dallas, 4015 Normandy Ave., Dallas, TX, 75205, United States
What sparks the human spirit? What lifts us beyond routine and awakens possibility within us? As we begin our summer worship series, we’ll explore the many sources of inspiration that shape our lives and communities.
Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter is preaching, music provided by David Grogan, baritone.
Worship at 9:30am and 11am CST in-person or online • 7:00pm ONLINE ONLY
Inspiration – Summer Sermon Series, Sundays, June 14 – July 26
Our spiritual lives are shaped by what captures our hearts and calls us toward deeper meaning. Inspiration can challenge us, comfort us, unsettle us, or invite us into new possibilities. Throughout this summer series, we’ll explore the many forces that help form us—resilience, creativity, beauty, forgiveness, and more—as we seek wisdom for living with greater purpose, compassion, and joy.

Screening of Wall-E
2026-06-18 18:00 - 20:00
As part of our Inspiration Sermon Series, we will screen Wall-E*, a film that explores resilience: our ability to survive hardship, reclaim what matters most, and imagine a better future. The film will be followed by a brief discussion.

Rev. T. J. will preach on these themes the following Sunday, June 21.

Register in Realm.

Inspired by Resilience | Rev. T. J. FitzGerald
2026-06-21 09:30 - 12:00
One root of our existence is the resilience of our ancestors. How do we use resilience today for our next generations?
(On Thursday, June 18 at 6 pm in Channing Social Hall, we will screen Wall-E*, a film that explores resilience: our ability to survive hardship, reclaim what matters most, and imagine a better future.)
Rev. T. J. FitzGerald is preaching, music provided by Drew Lang, marimba.
Worship at 9:30am and 11am CST in-person or online • 7:00pm ONLINE ONLY
Inspiration – Summer Sermon Series, Sundays, June 14 – July 26
Our spiritual lives are shaped by what captures our hearts and calls us toward deeper meaning. Inspiration can challenge us, comfort us, unsettle us, or invite us into new possibilities. Throughout this summer series, we’ll explore the many forces that help form us—resilience, creativity, beauty, forgiveness, and more—as we seek wisdom for living with greater purpose, compassion, and joy.

The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Dallas - Book Discussion & Signing
2026-06-21 12:30 - 14:00
First Unitarian Church of Dallas welcomes Michael Phillips and Betsy Friauf for a discussion with Rev. T. J. FitzGerald about their new book The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Dallas.
Sunday, June 21 in the Sanctuary
12:30 – 1:15: Discussion
1:15 – 1:30: Q&A Session
1:30 – 2:00: Book Signing
Click to register in Realm.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, 32 states passed laws allowing involuntary sterilization on those deemed biologically “unfit”: convicted criminals, the disabled, the poor, and people of color. Texas, despite a history of violent racism, was not one of them. In The Purifying Knife, Michael Phillips and Betsy Friauf explore this curious instance of the Lone Star State’s exceptionalism. The first history of the eugenics movement in Texas, it is a narrative that intersects with debates over race, immigration, abortion, the role of women in society, homosexuality, medical ethics, and the politics of disability in the state—debates resonating today in Texas and beyond.
From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Americans embraced eugenics. Yet the Texas legislature ultimately rejected nine of ten laws advocated by the state’s eugenicists and their predecessors. Phillips and Friauf trace this unlikely resistance to a variety of influences: wealthy cotton growers concerned that the anti-immigrant politics of the eugenics movement would deprive them of a source of easily exploitable labor; a populist distrust of higher education and the academic elites who enthusiastically supported the eugenics movement; and the forces of anti-Darwinist fundamentalism and pre-millennial dispensationalism in the 1920s, among others. The Purifying Knife also details how eugenical ideas survived long past their decline in the 1940s and have entered a disturbing afterlife in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
A thoroughgoing look into a rare case where the eugenics movement “failed” in spite of its power in the United States and around the world—while still wielding a toxic influence—Phillips and Friauf’s work offers insight into the history of the LGBTQ community, abortion, and immigration policies in Texas, and persuasively argues that the long arc of eugenics history has helped shaped contemporary politics in the Lone Star State.

About Michael Phillips:
Michael Phillips is a scholar of American racism, right-wing extremism, and apocalyptic religious beliefs. He covered crime as a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram before earning his Ph.D.in history from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002.
He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. Based on his award-winning dissertation, his first book, White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, won the 2007 Texas Historical Commission’s prize for best book on Texas history. He recently retired from teaching American history after a 20-year career as a professor.
Since then, he won a one-year senior research fellowship at Southern Methodist University. He has served as an historical consultant for and appeared in the award-winning documentary about the Kennedy assassination and its long-term impact on Dallas, City of Hate. He was also an adviser and appears in a series of short films about Dallas history, Recovering the Stories, periodically broadcast on Channel 13 and available on the KERA website.
In 2019, he won a Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Community College research fellowship to examine the history of eugenics in Texas. As a result of that research, he most recently co-authored, with Betsy Friauf, The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas History, published by the University of Oklahoma Press on June 3.

About Betsy Friauf:
Betsy Friauf is a Fort Worth native and a UNT grad. She spent 30 years as a journalist, for the Denton Record-Chronicle and then the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She then served as deputy chief communications officer for the Fort Worth city manager, senior communications specialist at the UNT Health Science Center and finally Children’s Hospital, Dallas and Plano.
In all these jobs as well as periods of freelancing, she was primarily a writer and editor on a variety of topics from breaking news to emergency instructions during tornadoes to the covid vaccine. Working with Michael Phillips she has won numerous awards as an independent scholar, including for the essay ““Those Boys Didn’t Learn to Hate Here”: Racial Violence in Texas, 1965-2020” which appeared in the book Steeped in a Culture of Violence: Murder, Racial Injustice, and Other Violent Crimes in Texas, 1965–2020, which won the Texas State Historical Association’s 2025 Gail and Chuck Swanlund Award for Best Texas History Anthology.
Now retired, Friauf is active in immigrant rights and resistance to fascism.

Inspired by Improvisation | Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter
2026-06-28 09:30 - 12:00
Life rarely follows the script we expect. Improvisation invites us to listen deeply, trust ourselves and one another, and create something meaningful in the moment. Drawing inspiration from the joyful spontaneity and musical genius of Bobby McFerrin, we’ll explore what it means to embrace uncertainty with curiosity and discover unexpected possibilities along the way.
Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter is preaching, music provided by Gary Eckert.
Worship at 9:30am and 11am CST in-person or online • 7:00pm ONLINE ONLY
Inspiration – Summer Sermon Series, Sundays, June 14 – July 26
Our spiritual lives are shaped by what captures our hearts and calls us toward deeper meaning. Inspiration can challenge us, comfort us, unsettle us, or invite us into new possibilities. Throughout this summer series, we’ll explore the many forces that help form us—resilience, creativity, beauty, forgiveness, and more—as we seek wisdom for living with greater purpose, compassion, and joy.

Inspired by America | Rev. T. J. FitzGerald
2026-07-05 09:30 - 12:00
What does our country inspire in us on this 250th anniversary? Let’s look to musicians who have spoken directly to the heart of America.
Rev. T. J. FitzGerald is preaching, music provided by Alan Dyer.
Worship at 9:30am and 11am CST in-person or online • 7:00pm ONLINE ONLY
Inspiration – Summer Sermon Series, Sundays, June 14 – July 26
Our spiritual lives are shaped by what captures our hearts and calls us toward deeper meaning. Inspiration can challenge us, comfort us, unsettle us, or invite us into new possibilities. Throughout this summer series, we’ll explore the many forces that help form us—resilience, creativity, beauty, forgiveness, and more—as we seek wisdom for living with greater purpose, compassion, and joy.

Inspired by Builders | Rev. Beth Dana
2026-07-12 09:30 - 12:00
Building is an act of creativity and courage. How do you know when is the time to tear down and when is the time to build, and what moves you to be a builder?
Rev. Beth Dana is preaching, music provided by Alan Dyer.
Worship at 9:30am and 11am CST in-person or online • 7:00pm ONLINE ONLY
Inspiration – Summer Sermon Series, Sundays, June 14 – July 26
Our spiritual lives are shaped by what captures our hearts and calls us toward deeper meaning. Inspiration can challenge us, comfort us, unsettle us, or invite us into new possibilities. Throughout this summer series, we’ll explore the many forces that help form us—resilience, creativity, beauty, forgiveness, and more—as we seek wisdom for living with greater purpose, compassion, and joy.

Inspired by Beauty | Rev. Beth Dana
2026-07-19 09:30 - 12:00
It is said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” If that’s so, beauty is all around us! Let’s explore how our spiritual lives are nurtured and inspired by beauty.
Rev. Beth Dana is preaching, music provided by the Summer Choir.
Worship at 9:30am and 11am CST in-person or online • 7:00pm ONLINE ONLY
Inspiration – Summer Sermon Series, Sundays, June 14 – July 26
Our spiritual lives are shaped by what captures our hearts and calls us toward deeper meaning. Inspiration can challenge us, comfort us, unsettle us, or invite us into new possibilities. Throughout this summer series, we’ll explore the many forces that help form us—resilience, creativity, beauty, forgiveness, and more—as we seek wisdom for living with greater purpose, compassion, and joy.

Inspired by Forgiveness | Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter
2026-07-26 09:30 - 12:00
Forgiveness is often asked of us when it seems least possible. What gives us the strength to forgive, and what can healing look like after deep hurt? Drawing on the story of Eric Lomax in the film The Railway Man, we’ll explore the power of forgiveness to transform individuals and communities.
Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter is preaching, music provided by Natalie Arduino, Patsy Brooks, and Julia Rose Arduino.
Worship at 9:30am and 11am CST in-person or online • 7:00pm ONLINE ONLY
Inspiration – Summer Sermon Series, Sundays, June 14 – July 26
Our spiritual lives are shaped by what captures our hearts and calls us toward deeper meaning. Inspiration can challenge us, comfort us, unsettle us, or invite us into new possibilities. Throughout this summer series, we’ll explore the many forces that help form us—resilience, creativity, beauty, forgiveness, and more—as we seek wisdom for living with greater purpose, compassion, and joy.
