Ana Levy-Lyons

Ana Levy-Lyons is a writer and preacher serving as senior minister of First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, a quickly growing urban congregation. She holds a BA from Brown University and an M.Div. from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Ana’s work revolves around building a religious counterculture – a multi-faith movement that redeploys traditional religious practices to address the urgent needs of our time. She comes to this work as a child of postmodernity, raised in a secular household and fully aware of religion’s limitations and dangers. She also brings the insights from her own spiritual journey – a journey that connected her with her Jewish heritage, inspired years of study and practice in the Jewish Renewal movement, and led to her career as a religious leader.

She has a foot in two worlds: a foot in the world of secular humanism (with its critique of religion) and a foot in the world of religion (with its critique of spiritually impoverished modernity). This dual vision forms the basis of her work. It allows her to translate religious insights and disciplines in a way that inspires secular and not-yet-observant audiences. She makes the case for keeping commandments in our postmodern, post-religious era.

Ana’s sermons and articles are published in Quest for Meaning, Criterion (a University of Chicago publication), UU World, and regularly in Tikkun magazine where she is a contributing editor. She also writes her own blog exploring the concept of the religious counterculture. Her sermons have won numerous awards, including the Borden Sermon Award. She serves as co-chair of the Brooklyn Heights Interfaith Clergy Association and completed an 18-month Fellowship with Greenfaith in religious environmental leadership.

She lives in Manhattan with her husband and young children.