We Are Family
Everybody Get Up and Dance
“We don’t all look the same, speak the same, or pray the same—but out here, we’re family.”
— Amina, 25, med student
“It’s the only song that gets my teenage son to dance with me in public. That’s a miracle.”
— Carmen, 41, teacher
“Every time we dance to this song, I feel like the world’s not such a lonely place.”
— Devon, 19, college freshman
“When we’re dancing to We Are Family, I feel like there’s hope for the world.”
— Marisol, 44, librarian and mother of two
“Not everyone can dance—not in the way we’re dancing here. Some carry too much pain in their bodies, or their hearts. When we dance, we’re dancing a ‘yes’ on their behalf, too. We're saying yes to life, even with the sadness.”
— Ravi, 52, hospice nurse
— Amina, 25, med student
“It’s the only song that gets my teenage son to dance with me in public. That’s a miracle.”
— Carmen, 41, teacher
“Every time we dance to this song, I feel like the world’s not such a lonely place.”
— Devon, 19, college freshman
“When we’re dancing to We Are Family, I feel like there’s hope for the world.”
— Marisol, 44, librarian and mother of two
“Not everyone can dance—not in the way we’re dancing here. Some carry too much pain in their bodies, or their hearts. When we dance, we’re dancing a ‘yes’ on their behalf, too. We're saying yes to life, even with the sadness.”
— Ravi, 52, hospice nurse
"We Are Family"
BBC Interviews
We Are Family written by Nile Rodgers and performed by the Sledge Sisters Kathy, Kim, Debbie and Joni was released in 1978 at the height of disco's popularity.
Kim Sledge says it has become the anthem for diverse groups of people around the world who come together on the dance floor to form a family.
Professor Tim Lawrence says disco at its best was an inclusive music movement that welcomed people of all races and genders, unlike rock music which in the early 1970s appealed to a predominantly white male audience.
We Are Family epitomised dance music's appeal to traditionally marginalised groups in the USA - African Americans, Latinos, women and gay men.
Listen to the stories of some of the people for whom the song is linked with some of the most significant experiences of their lives.
Produced by Maggie Ayre.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2019.
Kim Sledge says it has become the anthem for diverse groups of people around the world who come together on the dance floor to form a family.
Professor Tim Lawrence says disco at its best was an inclusive music movement that welcomed people of all races and genders, unlike rock music which in the early 1970s appealed to a predominantly white male audience.
We Are Family epitomised dance music's appeal to traditionally marginalised groups in the USA - African Americans, Latinos, women and gay men.
Listen to the stories of some of the people for whom the song is linked with some of the most significant experiences of their lives.
Produced by Maggie Ayre.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2019.
A Metaphysics and a Hope
Process Theology You Can Dance To
“Do you have a favorite hymn?” I ask Janice, a philosophical theologian who lives in my imagination. Without hesitation, she says, “We Are Family — by Sister Sledge.”
She doesn’t mean it as a joke.
“I love it,” she says, “especially when people who don’t even know each other start dancing to it — their arms waving, grinning like they’ve always belonged.”
I know exactly what she means. I was dancing to it just the other week at a delightfully raucous wedding reception, also in my imagination. For Janice and for me, We Are Family is more than a disco anthem. It’s a metaphysics and a hope:
Kind of like process philosophy. Or Buddhism. Where nothing exists in isolation, and every being is shaped by its relationships — constantly becoming through its connectedness to all others, lured by an indwelling Spirit who invites each and all to approach one another as sisters...and brothers. We are family.
It’s not surprising then, as you’ll hear in the BBC podcast featured on this page, that We Are Family is now performed around the world in just this spirit. It’s sung and danced in prisons, recreation halls, recovery centers, churches, and even international conferences. It becomes a kind of musical communion, where people move together not in uniformity but in joy. Not by blood, but by rhythm, laughter, memory, and shared hope. Strangers sway in harmony. Barriers soften. The dance floor becomes sacred space.
This vision of togetherness echoes through sacred scripture. In the Bible, we read of a great banquet where all are welcome (Isaiah 25:6–8), of a multitude from every nation gathered in celebration (Revelation 7:9), and of a new heaven and a new earth where God dwells intimately with humanity and wipes away every tear (Revelation 21:1–4). Jesus himself redefines family, saying: “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).
So yes — We Are Family can and does function as a hymn — no less sacred, in its way, than the poetry of the Psalms or the parables of Jesus. And if heard with open ears, its joyous spirit reveals a metaphysical truth as well: that the “we” who is family includes not only other people, but all living beings on this planet, the planet itself, and indeed — in the broadest view — all beings everywhere. Rocks and rivers. Hills and rivers, Trees and stars - Family.
In this light, We Are Family instantiates what Alfred North Whitehead calls the principle of universal relativity — the idea that no entity exists in isolation, and that each being is present, in varying degrees, in every other being. As Whitehead puts it:
“The principle of universal relativity directly traverses Aristotle's dictum, ‘A substance is not present in a subject.’ On the contrary, according to this principle an actual entity is present in other actual entities. In fact, if we allow for degrees of relevance, and for negligible relevance, we must say that every actual entity is present in every other actual entity.”
— Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 50
To say “We Are Family” is, then, not only to sing a social vision — but to proclaim a cosmic reality; the absolute interconnectedness of all things.
But the mere enunciation of such a truth — even if we sing it, even if we dance to it — comes to little unless the hope is realized in daily and corporate life. The real test of We Are Family is not only on the dance floor, but in the neighborhood, the voting booth, the workplace, the sanctuary, and the street. Its promise must take shape in the building of beloved communities — communities that are:
And in this vision, non-human life matters too. A true family includes the animals with whom we share the earth, and the earth itself — the rivers and forests, the soil and sky, the oceans and winds that sustain us. To live as if we are family is to recognize that our kinship transcends species, and that our flourishing depends on harmony with the more-than-human world. As indigenous traditions make clear, all our relatives include the sea creatures, the crawling ones, the flying ones, and the spirits, too.
This is the ethical unfolding of a metaphysical vision — the practice of a cosmic truth.
And yet, much as we might long for a dramatic transformation in which, all at once, the entire planet awakens to the truth of we are family, we know that’s not how the world works. The change we seek will not arrive as a single moment of collective enlightenment.
There are — and will continue to be — forces afoot that proclaim just the contrary: We are not family. We are enemies. We are competitors. We are strangers to fear, divide, or exploit.
This makes the work even more urgent — and more local. We need to let go of fantasies of instant global unity, and instead commit ourselves to creating small, resilient communities of love and resistance: communities that practice diversity, equity, and inclusion not as slogans but as countervailing forces against fear, hatred, and exclusion.
These communities — be they faith circles, classrooms, households, artist collectives, neighborhood alliances, or recovery groups — become living parables, small enactments of a larger hope.
They are the seeds of the world the song proclaims. A world where we are family — not as a slogan, but as a lived, daily act of love.
She doesn’t mean it as a joke.
“I love it,” she says, “especially when people who don’t even know each other start dancing to it — their arms waving, grinning like they’ve always belonged.”
I know exactly what she means. I was dancing to it just the other week at a delightfully raucous wedding reception, also in my imagination. For Janice and for me, We Are Family is more than a disco anthem. It’s a metaphysics and a hope:
- A metaphysics that, deep down, we are already bound to one another — interwoven in ways we don’t fully understand.
- And a hope that one day, love will be expanded so completely that all people will feel, and act, like family.
Kind of like process philosophy. Or Buddhism. Where nothing exists in isolation, and every being is shaped by its relationships — constantly becoming through its connectedness to all others, lured by an indwelling Spirit who invites each and all to approach one another as sisters...and brothers. We are family.
It’s not surprising then, as you’ll hear in the BBC podcast featured on this page, that We Are Family is now performed around the world in just this spirit. It’s sung and danced in prisons, recreation halls, recovery centers, churches, and even international conferences. It becomes a kind of musical communion, where people move together not in uniformity but in joy. Not by blood, but by rhythm, laughter, memory, and shared hope. Strangers sway in harmony. Barriers soften. The dance floor becomes sacred space.
This vision of togetherness echoes through sacred scripture. In the Bible, we read of a great banquet where all are welcome (Isaiah 25:6–8), of a multitude from every nation gathered in celebration (Revelation 7:9), and of a new heaven and a new earth where God dwells intimately with humanity and wipes away every tear (Revelation 21:1–4). Jesus himself redefines family, saying: “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).
So yes — We Are Family can and does function as a hymn — no less sacred, in its way, than the poetry of the Psalms or the parables of Jesus. And if heard with open ears, its joyous spirit reveals a metaphysical truth as well: that the “we” who is family includes not only other people, but all living beings on this planet, the planet itself, and indeed — in the broadest view — all beings everywhere. Rocks and rivers. Hills and rivers, Trees and stars - Family.
In this light, We Are Family instantiates what Alfred North Whitehead calls the principle of universal relativity — the idea that no entity exists in isolation, and that each being is present, in varying degrees, in every other being. As Whitehead puts it:
“The principle of universal relativity directly traverses Aristotle's dictum, ‘A substance is not present in a subject.’ On the contrary, according to this principle an actual entity is present in other actual entities. In fact, if we allow for degrees of relevance, and for negligible relevance, we must say that every actual entity is present in every other actual entity.”
— Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 50
To say “We Are Family” is, then, not only to sing a social vision — but to proclaim a cosmic reality; the absolute interconnectedness of all things.
But the mere enunciation of such a truth — even if we sing it, even if we dance to it — comes to little unless the hope is realized in daily and corporate life. The real test of We Are Family is not only on the dance floor, but in the neighborhood, the voting booth, the workplace, the sanctuary, and the street. Its promise must take shape in the building of beloved communities — communities that are:
- Creative, making space for new ways of being and belonging
- Compassionate, responsive to suffering and sensitive to need
- Participatory, where each voice matters and decisions are shared
- Diverse, where differences are honored rather than erased
- Equitable and inclusive, with no one — no one — left behind
And in this vision, non-human life matters too. A true family includes the animals with whom we share the earth, and the earth itself — the rivers and forests, the soil and sky, the oceans and winds that sustain us. To live as if we are family is to recognize that our kinship transcends species, and that our flourishing depends on harmony with the more-than-human world. As indigenous traditions make clear, all our relatives include the sea creatures, the crawling ones, the flying ones, and the spirits, too.
This is the ethical unfolding of a metaphysical vision — the practice of a cosmic truth.
And yet, much as we might long for a dramatic transformation in which, all at once, the entire planet awakens to the truth of we are family, we know that’s not how the world works. The change we seek will not arrive as a single moment of collective enlightenment.
There are — and will continue to be — forces afoot that proclaim just the contrary: We are not family. We are enemies. We are competitors. We are strangers to fear, divide, or exploit.
This makes the work even more urgent — and more local. We need to let go of fantasies of instant global unity, and instead commit ourselves to creating small, resilient communities of love and resistance: communities that practice diversity, equity, and inclusion not as slogans but as countervailing forces against fear, hatred, and exclusion.
These communities — be they faith circles, classrooms, households, artist collectives, neighborhood alliances, or recovery groups — become living parables, small enactments of a larger hope.
They are the seeds of the world the song proclaims. A world where we are family — not as a slogan, but as a lived, daily act of love.
A Note on Dancing
Dancing comes in many forms. Some of us dance with our bodies—feet tapping, arms flying. Others dance with our minds—opening to the rhythm of a new idea. Still others dance with our emotions—swaying with sorrow, spinning with joy. At its heart, dancing is a way of saying: “I’m alive, and I want to share it.” Whether physical, mental, or emotional, every kind of dancing is welcome here.