Adam and Eve are walking in the Garden of Eden. He says, "My dear, we live in an age of transition." She says, "So what else is new?"
So what else is new? History - the history of a congregation - does not stand still. History is transition. Caught up as we are in the present, it is hard to realize that we are part of that history - what we do today shapes tomorrow - makes history.
In 1963 I heard a sermon by the late Robert Shaw, Minister of Music at the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland during my ministry there. Taking a verse from Proverbs - "they who trouble their household will inherit the wind," his theme was "meriting the wind we inherit."
We who sit in this sanctuary are the fortunate recipients of a tradition that dates back to 1829 - March 16 will be the 173rd birthday of this congregation. As historian Daniel Boorstin said, "Trying to plan for the future without knowing the past is like trying to plant cut flowers."[1]
At our Church Council Retreat last fall we engaged in an exercise to re-create that history in our minds. Our knowledge of dates and personalities was tested. I won't divulge any grades, but it served to send me back to the books. Mainly, however, we experienced an incredible pride in who we have been, who we are and who we can yet become. Former City Historian Blake McKelvey, at our 125th anniversary celebration in 1954, called us "Rochester's Alert Conscience and Hospitable Roof." Today, then, we come to celebrate our past, but more, to express confidence in our future. On this Canvass Sunday we say with pride, "This is our home."
The year was 1829, just four years after the founding of the American Unitarian Association in Boston. Rochester was on the frontier. William Ware from far-off Boston preached here in December 1828. In January of 1829 James Green preached, and the congregation wanted to call him as their minister, but he refused. However, this minister-less fellowship had a strong lay leader: Myron Holley welcomed poor day laborers and even "drunkards" into membership; he was active in the anti-slavery movement and was a founder of the Liberty Party, one of the first entries of the northern abolitionists into politics. But it was Rufus Ellis in 1842 who is regarded as the real founder of the church, and we've had continuous services since then.
In the 19th century, there was a series of ministers, each of whom served only for a year or two - we might call them unintended interim ministers. James Hyer, for example, had to leave in 1856 - his one year of service - since the society could not raise money for his salary. Our church home, built on North Fitzhugh Street, burned to the ground in 1859 - probably the work of arsonists - as the congregation was involved in various social reform movements. Those were not easy times. But the congregation hung in there.
On July 19, 1848, the first women's rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, reconvening at the First Unitarian Church on July 30, where Susan B. Anthony's father, mother and sister Mary signed the Declaration of Sentiments for Women's Rights. She was teaching school in Canajoharie at the time. When Miss Anthony returned to Rochester, she began her long and fabled career as a social reformer in the warm and enthusiastic embrace of this congregation, which she attended for over 40 years, though she joined formally on January 1, 1893.
Susan B. Anthony's diary entry for one day in 1862 is indicative: "Last load of hay is in the barn and all in capital order - washed every window in the house - quilted all day, but sewing no longer my calling - fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with help of Harriet Tubman."
Susan B. Anthony's record needs no detailing. She was a temperance worker, abolitionist and suffragist. Her dramatic, illegal act of voting in 1873 characterized her indomitable spirit. She was arrested and brought to court in Canandaigua. After a perfunctory trial, in which the judge instructed the jury to find her guilty, he asked her if she had anything to say - a serious blunder on his part, as her speech became a tool for reform.
She never went to prison; she never paid her fine. She printed 3000 copies of the court proceedings so the world could read of the injustice done. She would never live to see women's suffrage become law. She died in 1906.
In a letter to her mother, she wrote: "Ah, when my 'wild heresies' become 'fashionable orthodoxies', won't my acquaintance be a pleasure to other Rochester people."[2]
One tangible tribute to Susan B. Anthony was presented by her good friend Hester C. Jeffrey, an African-American leader who was also a member of this church. It was a stained glass window likeness of Miss Anthony inscribed with her words, "Failure is impossible," now gracing the A.M.E. Zion Church. Hester Jeffrey paid tribute to her fellow Unitarian, Susan B. Anthony, at the latter's funeral.
A number of distinguished ministers have served us. Newton Mann - poet, preacher, scholar, scientist. the first American preacher to proclaim the doctrine of evolution - served from 1870-1888.
Susan B. Anthony's minister and our minister from 1889-1908, William Channing Gannett, wrote: "Our church was probably by strong majority abolitionist, an earnest group of Hicksite Quakers having attached themselves to the church as their own meeting grew inactive and faded out - the Anthonys, Hallowells, Willises, Posts, Fishes, and others. Two or three of our homes had Underground Railway connections, I think - Post and Alcott. On the other hand, Judge Warner, much respected and personally kind to black (people), was Southern in sentiment and I think by birth; and Joseph Curtis, a prominent and loved citizen, was proprietor of the Democratic Union and Advertiser, while he would read aloud to his wife her Garrison's Liberator. So the church was divided, and there are traditions of slamming pew doors as indignant listeners bolted."[3]
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Gannett and his wife Mary, a reformer in her own right, had come to Rochester with an idea about the institutional church. He wrote to friends:
"This Unitarian Church was a very respectable looking people, many gray heads among them, and the church school was small and sleepy and not in good condition. The church was located in a not very good section of the city. So I told the congregation, have we not used this corner too much as our Sunday Club-House, feeling no responsibility whatever for its week-day betterment? That is not being a Church. Let us this next year try to be more a Church - a church right here.[4] This should be a working church, or rather, a church that works to better this life for people instead of merely the other life. It means a seven-day instead of a one-day church. . . . It even means a street-cleaning church - a church doing duty as a citizen of this world."[5]
The Gannetts were here during the heyday of the Social Gospel, which was preached from the pulpit and practiced in the community. In what came to be called Gannett House, the church sponsored the Boy's Evening Home, full of new immigrants from Polish and Russian Jewish families. They were often called "Jew-natarians" or "Gannett-arians" Four of the boys became rabbis - one became a U. S. congressman.
Dr. Gannett had the rare distinction - and challenge - of being Susan B. Anthony's minister. Preaching was not his greatest gift, and from time to time Miss Anthony would utter a word of criticism about some perceived slight to women's rights. His growing deafness helped insulate him from her critical word. Yet they were comrades in arms.
Gannett's successor, Edwin Rumball, helped launch a housing survey, construct a playground and inaugurate a visiting nurse service, while being instrumental in publishing a monthly social action journal, "The Common Good of Civil and Social Rochester" - a controversial organ.
The pattern of community involvement continued during the ministry of David Rhys Williams, whose thunderous voice addressed every topic. Early on he told the Board of Trustees, "If there is anything you don't want me to talk about in the pulpit, let me know about it now, so I can decline the call of this church."
He brought with him a controversial personal history. The President of the American Unitarian Association, Louis Cornish, had said of him: "I remember him distinctly and with pleasure as a wholesome, earnest, high-spirited young man, but at the time he was inclined to wear red neckties and sign himself 'Yours for the Social Revolution.' I believe this was a phase in his thinking which was entirely to his credit, but from which he has somewhat emerged."
In 1923 he had run for Cleveland City Council. A friend refused to publicly endorse him because he thought a councilman had to be businesslike and a man of "poised judgment." Williams had instead, he wrote, a ". . . spontaneous loyalty to what others might call hopeless enterprise, and unusual human sympathy with the underdog and the unpopular cause." Politics' loss was religion's gain.
Dr. Williams was minister of this congregation from 1928 to 1958. Despite strong community opposition, in 1934 Gannett house, the Parish Hall, became the temporary home for the Mother's Consultation Center, later Planned Parenthood. So controversial was the topic, that at his insistence, the congregation voted on this usage - in the affirmative. He protested the arrest of women distributing pacifist literature. He attacked city council for cutting back money for schools, libraries and museums. He did battle with the House Un-American Activities Committee over its attack on his brother. One of the most formative books in my early decision to become a minister was reading his pioneering book World Religions and the Hope for Peace.
In 1957 several of our members helped create the Rochester Memorial Society. The congregation was active in the fight to desegregate schools. It supported of Saul Alinsky's FIGHT Organization in the late 1960's. It declared symbolic sanctuary for draft resistors to the Vietnam war, and passed a resolution supporting the nuclear freeze. Our current social justice program simply continues our tradition as "Rochester's Alert Conscience and Hospitable Roof."
One of the most poignant moments in the history of this congregation was David Rhys Williams' October 1, 1959, "prayer strike," as he called it. On the eve of the demolition of the old church, he prayed on the Galilee Porch and protested this destruction was "a Crime Against Culture" because it was, ". . . one of the finest specimens of early English Parish Gothic architecture in the US . . . a place where Frederick Douglas spoke. . . . one of the few remaining early shrines of the women's suffrage movement . . . Here Susan B. Anthony worshipped, lectured, conducted classes and went forth to preach the gospel of women's suffrage. It should be preserved as a potential inspiration for future Susan B. Anthonys and Frederick Douglasses."
So said David Williams. On the eve of its transfer to the city to make way for Midtown Plaza, he was escorted from the church by his successor, William Jenkins. The Gallery of this church building was named in Williams' honor.
Dr. Williams sums up our history: "To me, this church is no dead pile of stone and timber - but a living thing filled with the voices and the faces of those who have worshipped here over the years."
The church had to seek a new home. The minister during this difficult time was Bill Jenkins. The congregation, evicted from the center city, chose its present location and began to build a new and architecturally worthy structure. Out of the weeds on a vacant lot in the Southeast corner of the city, architect Louis Kahn's design gradually took form, fashioned out of the deliberations of the people, some I understand quite heated. If you think sanctuary décor is controversial, try building a whole new church! Yet, the congregation transcended its differences, built the church and thrived.
In speaking of this building Kahn said, "From what I have heard the minister speak about . . . Unitarian activity was found around that which is "question." . . . (The) eternal why of anything . . . I made a square center in which I placed a question mark. Let us say I meant it to be the sanctuary. This I encircled with an ambulatory for those who did not want to go into the sanctuary. Around the ambulatory I drew . . . an outer circle enclosing a space, the school. This was the form . . . of the church, not the design."
Our building, winner of a New York State Religious Architecture award, is known the world around and is frequently visited by students of architecture. And this unique and worthy building is our home. We celebrate its 40th anniversary this year.
The building complete, Robert N. West was called in 1963. He served with distinction until 1969 when he was elected President of the Unitarian Universalist Association. In 1969 a new educational wing was added.
And then a young red-head with a Princeton haircut appeared on the scene. He had served congregations in Cleveland, Ohio, and Ithaca, New York. Review of that 32-year chapter in this history will have to await analysis by someone more objective than your gray-haired Parish Minister.
And so, as we begin our 2002-2003 canvass it is good to remember that we pledge not just to pay the bills, not just to meet a budget, not just to balance the books. We pledge ourselves to a vision - the future history of this congregation. As I researched our church's story, I was struck by one persistent truth. Through all the trials and tribulations, and they were many, the congregation hung in there and witnessed to the liberal religious faith.
And something else, while history is often a narrative of great social events, during all this time the church continued to be a "hospitable roof" for those who chose to be here: to provide worship, to care for its members in need and to create a fine program of religious education. It is impossible to write the everyday history of this congregation - the laughter that resounds in these halls as friends meet, the tears shed at memorial services, the joy that rises from weddings and dedications and commitment ceremonies, the unforgettable glow of candlelight on Christmas Eve, our annual Flower Communion in the Memorial Garden. These are the parts of our history, not written in the pages of a book, but inscribed in our hearts.
The message is clear. This congregation is more than a particular building, more than a specific minister, more even than a single group of people. In Biblical language, it is a "great cloud of witnesses" committed to the liberal way in religion. It has maintained a laser-like view of the importance of its presence in the lives of its people and in the life of the wider community.
Theologically speaking, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This church is a living organism that transcends any particular time and any particular people. We are privileged to be part of its "great cloud of witnesses."
When you make your pledge this month, it is to more than a building, a minister, a congregation - it is an affirmation of values you hold dear and wish to see perpetuated. You have the challenge and the opportunity to continue this tradition by "hanging in there" with as generous a pledge as your circumstances allow. This is, of course, a time of transition, but one thing must not change - the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York, must continue to be "Rochester's Alert Conscience and Hospitable Roof."
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