Sing Out Love

For years, Unitarian Universalists had been asking for a new hymnal. The familiar ones—Singing the Living Tradition, published by the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1993; its teal supplement, Singing the Journey; and the Spanish-language supplement, Las voces del camino—are well loved by many UUs, but as printed books, they are static and fixed at the point of time at which they were published.

What the faith needed was a new kind of hymnal, one that expresses Unitarian Universalism’s ongoing transformation as well as the yearning for songs from a broader group of composers, said Rev. Erika Hewitt, the UUA’s minister of Worship Arts. And so, the idea of a virtual hymnal was born. In August 2025, after five years of effort with a focus on relationship, the UUA launched the faith’s first virtual hymnal: Sing Out Love.

An ever-expanding compendium of music, Sing Out Love is nothing short of groundbreaking. Every month, five new songs, hymns, or chants chosen by a song selection team are added to the hymnal, along with a rich collection of resources for each, including a composer biography, contextual information, the song transposed into every musical key, and much more to help music directors and others choose songs.

“Since ours is a faith that continually changes to meet the world’s challenges, the hunger for a new hymnal reflected our collective longing to both sing our living, evolving values and to weave in emerging gifts of more composers,” said Hewitt, who leads the project. “From our first meeting in early 2023, the Virtual Hymnal Task Force delighted in meeting this challenge: to build an accessible, high-tech container robust enough to hold the abundance of music that’s been called forth by our song selection team.”