Rev. John Millspaugh

The grandson of Iowa animal and corn farmers, Rev. John Gibb Millspaugh holds an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School and an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School. His award-winning justice work has focused on modern slavery, LGBTQ+ rights, food insecurity, and climate justice. He chaired the team that organized over four hundred congregations to collectively write a Unitarian Universalist (UU) “Ethical Eating” position statement, on how food choices connect to manifold justice and environmental issues, which the denomination adopted in 2011—the first known instance of a national U.S. religious body taking such a stand. More recently, he spearheaded the effort that led the denomination to amend its bylaws in 2024 to state that to be a UU means to “covenant to protect … all beings from exploitation.”

Before serving as Better Food Foundation’s founding Executive Director, and now directing our multi-religion Faith in Food programs, John served as a congregational minister, edited the justice ministry anthology A People So Bold, directed an international food justice nonprofit, and served as President of the UU Animal Ministry (an organization he continues to serve as Executive Director). John’s thoughts and work on social ethics have been featured in The Atlantic, the Boston Globe, C-SPAN, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, NPR, the Orange County Register, and TIME magazine.