The First Unitarian Church of Rochester is a congregation located at 220 Winton Road South in Rochester, New York, U.S. The congregation is one of the largest in its denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association. The non-creedal church conducts programs in the areas of spirituality, social concerns, music, and arts. This church is one of two Unitarian Universalist congregations in Monroe County, the other being First Universalist Church of Rochester.
The church was organized in 1829. Associated with social reform movements from its earliest days, it began attracting a group of reform activists from Quaker backgrounds in the 1840s, one of whom, Susan B. Anthony, became a national leader of the women's suffrage movement. After the first women's rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, a follow-up convention, the Rochester Women's Rights Convention, was organized two weeks later at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester. Abigail Bush was elected to preside at this convention even though the idea of a woman chairing a public meeting was considered too daring even for some of the leaders of the emerging women's movement who were present.
Concern with social issues has been a recurring theme in the church's history. In the late 1800s the church provided evening classes and other activities for children in the church's low-income neighborhood. At the turn of the century, church members played leading roles in the campaign to open the University of Rochester to women and in the local, state, and national campaigns for women's suffrage. In the 1930s the church provided office space for Planned Parenthood when other accommodations were difficult to find. In 1988 the church began providing classroom support to Rochester city schools. In 2006 the church initiated a program to improve the quality of life in a small township in Honduras. In 2009 it established a talk line to offer non-judgmental support to women who have had abortions.
First Unitarian's building was designed by Louis Kahn and completed in 1962. It was described as one of "the most significant works of religious architecture of this century" in 1982 by Paul Goldberger, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning architectural critic.
Congregation, beliefs, and programs
The First Unitarian Church of Rochester in Rochester, New York, U.S., is one of the largest in its denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association. Its senior minister is Rev. Shari Halliday-Quan, and its assistant minister is Rev. AJ van Tine. The church conducts two weekly worship services on Sundays and an occasional Saturday service.
The church is non-creedal, having, in the words of its web site, "No single religious text. No ten commandments. No creed to which you must agree ... This respect for individual particularity and openness to diverse sources of wisdom means our community is packed with a wide array of perspectives and beliefs." The church's mission statement is: "Through spiritual connection in community, we listen deeply to others and ourselves, open to wonder and transformation, and serve together with love and humility." The church school has a stated goal of encouraging children "to seek their own truths, to clarify their values, and to live lives of meaning inspired by those values."
The church operates on a Policy Governance system by which the board of trustees focuses on the long-term goals of the church while the parish minister oversees its operation. The board specifies the results expected from the parish minister and sets limits for his or her activities. The board does not specify how those expectations should be achieved, but it does evaluate the results. Officers of the church are elected by annual congregational meetings.
In the 1970s the church developed a task force system to coordinate its activities in the area of social concerns. Members interested in a specific activity gather signatures to qualify as one of the church's task forces, which, if approved by the congregation, will be eligible to receive funds from the church budget. Oversight is provided by the Social Justice Council, which is composed largely of representatives from the task forces. Through this system, the church sponsors projects that provide classroom support for Rochester schools, temporary shelter within the church for homeless families, free Sunday suppers at a Catholic Worker program, improvements to the quality of life in a small township in Honduras, and other projects that focus on such issues as peace, reproductive rights, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender concerns. The Council also oversees grant programs that provide financial support to community organizations.
The church's music and arts programs include a choir, a house band, a handbell choir, a drama group, a chamber music series, a coffee house, and an art gallery. Interest groups sponsored by the church include Soul Matters groups that focus on monthly worship themes, several types of meditation groups, Wellspring groups with programs of daily spiritual practice, Buddhist groups, qi gong, tai chi, book discussion groups, and several types of support groups.
History
Early years The First Unitarian Church of Rochester was organized in 1829.
The city of Rochester, located in western New York, was a young frontier boom town at the time, having been incorporated in 1817 and boosted by the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. The American Unitarian Association, the Unitarian national body, was also young, having been formed in 1825 by Christians who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.
Rochester Unitarians operated in the early years without a settled minister and, except for a brief period, without a church building. Informal leadership was provided by Myron Holley, a former Commissioner of the Erie Canal and one of the founders of the Liberty Party, which advocated the abolition of slavery. An early church history gave Holley primary credit for the church's establishment.
In 1842 Rufus Ellis, at the age of twenty-two, agreed to come to Rochester to be the congregation's minister for a one-year period. Ellis lodged at the home of Dr. Matthew Brown, president of the congregation. Brown, who earlier was a member of the First Presbyterian Church, was one of Rochester's founders. Along with his brother, he had developed Brown's Race, the canal that delivered water power to Rochester's factory district. He also served as the first chairman of the board of supervisors of Monroe County, in which Rochester is located. Brown was an opponent of slavery; on the day in 1827 when slaves in New York State were emancipated, a delegation of African Americans visited Brown to thank him for his work to secure that legislation.
Funds were raised under Ellis' leadership for a new church building that was dedicated in 1843. In a letter to his brother, Ellis noted that "Forty-five of the pews are already sold or rented, and are occupied by 'correct' people." During Ellis' ministry the church approved a seal that contained an image of the Bible and the words "our Creed". Membership grew partly as a result of the Finney revival movement, which generated a wave of religious enthusiasm so strong in western New York that the area was sometimes called the "burned-over district." Not all churchgoers were comfortable with the new atmosphere in their congregations, however, and some transferred to the less doctrinaire Unitarian Church.
Frederick Holland, who became minister of First Unitarian in 1843, helped to stabilize the new congregation and increase its membership. He resigned in 1848 to assume leadership of the American Unitarian Association.
Dissention within the Quaker community eventually led some of its members to First Unitarian. When objections were raised to abolitionist activities, about 200 people withdrew from the regional Hicksite Quaker body in 1848 and formed an organization called the Congregational Friends. This article is reprinted from Judith Wellman's "The Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention: A Study of Social Networks" in Journal of Women's History 3/1 (Spring 1991), Indiana University Press This group soon changed its name to the Friends of Human Progress and ceased to operate as a religious body, focusing instead on organizing annual meetings in Waterloo, New York that welcomed anyone interested in social reform, including "Christians, Jews, Mahammedans, and Pagans". In July 1848, a month after the split, four women associated with the Quaker dissidents met in Waterloo with anti-slavery activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and issued a call for a Women's Rights Convention to be held a short distance away in Seneca Falls, thereby launching the modern women's rights movement. Organized on short notice, it nonetheless drew about 300 people, largely from the immediate area.
Momentum from this event led to the organization of another women's rights convention two weeks later at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, about west. The Rochester Convention took the significant step of electing a woman to preside, an idea that seemed so radical at the time that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, two organizers of the Seneca Falls convention, opposed it and left the platform when Abigail Bush took the chair. She performed her duties without incident, and a precedent was established.
The convention at First Unitarian was organized mainly by a circle of activists in Rochester led by Amy and Isaac Post, who had resigned from their Hicksite Quaker congregation in the mid-1840s when opposition to the Post's abolitionist activities was raised in the Quaker congregation. Several members of this circle had participated in the Seneca Falls convention, including Mary Hallowell, Catherine Fish Stebbins, and Amy Post, who convened the meeting at First Unitarian. Some of the organizers of the Rochester convention were also associated with First Unitarian, including Hallowell, Stebbins and Post.
A church history written in 1929 said, "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, etc."
Of these families, the Anthonys were particularly significant for First Unitarian. Daniel Anthony was born a Quaker but married Lucy Reid, a Baptist, a violation of Quaker rules for which he was required to apologize to his congregation in central New York. The congregation later disowned him for allowing a dance school to operate in his house. Despite this patchy relationship, the Anthony children were raised as Quakers. After the Anthonys moved to Rochester in 1845, their homestead became the Sunday afternoon gathering place for progressive Quakers and other social reformers in the area. Both Daniel and Lucy Anthony attended the Women's Rights Convention at First Unitarian along with Mary, one of their daughters. Sarah Anthony Burtis, a relative, served as its acting secretary.
Susan B. Anthony, another Anthony daughter, was teaching school in central New York at the time and had little involvement with any of these activities. When she returned to Rochester in 1849, she found her family attending worship services at First Unitarian. Harper was chosen by Anthony to write her biography. She joined her family there, making it her church home and her most significant source of local connections until her death more than 50 years later. Susan B. Anthony was listed as a member of First Unitarian in a church history written in 1881. Although she no longer attended Quaker meetings in Rochester after the 1848 split, she never relinquished her membership there.