A Sermon by Rev. Henley in a joint service with Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring, Maryland, founded by members of Universalist National Memorial Church in 1952.
From the New Testament, the book of Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14-19, an unknown author writes in the name of Paul the Apostle. I have adapted the reading to be inclusive.
When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth, I pray that from these glorious, unlimited resources [you] will be empowered with inner strength through the Spirit. Then the Christ will make his home in your hearts through faith… Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. … and may you have the power to comprehend … how wide, how long, how high, and how deep God’s love. May you experience the love of the Christ … Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Universalists have always focused on God’s “wide, long, high, and deep” love. We say often, “God is love.” Our roots, just as Unitarian roots, are planted in the first century stories about Yeshua. For over two thousand years, humankind has watered and fertilized and tended to these plants of faith and our roots are deep.
Universalists have been gathering, worshipping, and studying the Bible in Washington, D.C. since the early 1800s. After the Civil War, they created the Murray Universalist Society, named after John Murray, who is said to be the “Father of Universalism” in our country. The Murray Universalist Society grew and established the Church of Our Father, which became the Universalist National Memorial Church when the congregation moved to this beautiful, historic building on Palm Sunday 1930. [April 13, 1930]
I can see them now, three hundred or so people, lined up outside, each one holding a branch from a palm tree, representing Yeshua’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem the week before Passover. I can hear the organ play and the Washington National Choir sing, as the people processed into this sanctuary for the first time as a congregation.
There were many Universalist churches in this country around the turn of the century. They were rooted in the stories of Jesus. They came from the Congregational churches and had taken to heart the preaching of John Murray, the Ballou family of preachers, Olympia Brown, and the many widely-traveled ministers who preached, “hope, not hell,” “reason,” not “dogma.”
The Washington Universalists were led by great ministers one was John van Schaick from 1900 to 1922, our parlor is name after him. Then by Fred Perkins from 1927 to 1939; our community hall downstairs where we will have hospitality today is named Perkins Hall. It was during Rev. Perkins time that the Universalist General Convention conducted the country-wide campaign to build a “national church” which, as we see, was successful!
In our archives we have over seven thousand index cards of people from all over the country who gave their money for “a brick” or “a pew” or even “a stained glass window.” This church was supposed to be a block long, but during construction the Great Depression hit, and they had to shorten the church by half a block.
Dr. Seth R. Brooks was the settled minister here for forty years, from 1939 to 1979. It was during his ministry that Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring was organized.
In the twentieth century there were some wonderful ministers here. One was William Fox, Jr., recently name President of St. Lawrence University, a historically Universalist college. He grew up in this church and served as settled minister for fifteen years after Dr. Brooks left.
Recently I talked to Dr. Fox about the church and I asked him if a certain tale about the church was true. It has been said, that after Dr. Brooks retired, he would come to services and would take notes on Dr. Fox’s sermons and give Dr. Fox his notes after the service. Dr. Fox said, “No, that is absolutely NOT true.” So, we now have the truth of one tale.
There is another story that our oldest living member Mary Simmons told me about Dr. Brooks, she said, “He was very bright, but not necessarily the bravest of men.” Once, he was told that someone thought there were mice up in the back room, up here, which is now full of our old music. So Dr. Brooks asked Mary and another long-time member Dorothy Chapman to go up with him to the room up there to put out some mice traps. Dr. Brooks picked up a fire place poker from the fireplace in the parlor down at the other end. Mary looked at him like there was something wrong with him. But he took the poker anyway. They got half-way up these creepy stairs and there was noise from the room up there. And everybody jumped, and Dr. Brooks said, “The things we do for Jesus.”
He was the first White minister in Washington, D.C. to invite the neighborhood’s Black preachers’ association to meet in this church. He was not the social activist that Rev. A. Powell Davis was down the street at All-Souls, but in the fifties, before the riots, he pursued, what he told his congregation was, “incremental integration.” He believed that over time, the neighborhoods would be integrated.
In the book Recollections and Reflection of Seth R. Brooks and Corinne H. Brooks, Dr. Brooks talked candidly about the Unitarians and the Universalists, from him we can see the broader picture:
We were never in competition and I will tell you why. The Unitarians were mostly, and I want this understood in the right way, the educated people. They had a Harvard background, for example … They settled mostly in cities. They were mostly urban and college community churches. They attracted the intellectuals and people of wealth. Universalism was always, I think, basically agrarian. By that I mean most of the people who became Universalists came from the small towns… they were mostly people who had not arrived at their conviction through education or through training. They had arrived through sense, thought processes, reasoning, which brought them to their belief … They were thinking people… with fine minds and this was the reasonable thing when they heard about the Universalist faith… [it] made sense to them. I think we have to say… Unitarianism … had the most highly educated, intellectual ministers in the history of this country. … Universalist preachers… were not scholastic minds; they were more theological and sociological. We had [women] and men who led us in sociological movements. It was amazing what this little denomination did in terms of prison reform, temperance, and all kinds of things…
It used to be said, the Universalists are the poor cousins and this isn’t a bad figure of speech because there was a great deal in that.
Dr. Brooks drove around in the Maryland with several members of this church looking for a place to buy land for all the members in Maryland who wanted a Universalist church there. He wasn’t the one who selected the property on which the Silver Spring church resides; I believe Mr. Miller and others actually found the land.
Another dynamic minister in the most recent years was Vanessa R. Southern, who participated in Rev. Lerner’s installation; Rev. Southern saw this church grow between 1995 and 2000.
I don’t want to end without talking about Clara Barton. She represents the kind of social activists that Dr. Brooks was talking about. She represents the many Universalists who have contributed to making this country what it is today.
We have her portrait in our parlor and a hand-written letter by her. Part of it reads, and we will have it on display …
It was written in 1905, after she moved to Glen Echo, Maryland. In her lifetime she attended the Church of Our Father, the congregation that became this congregation.
Your belief that I am a Universalist is as correct as your greater belief in being one yourself. A belief in which all who are privileged to possess it, rejoice. In my case, it was a great gift, for like St. Paul, I was “born free”…
I look forward to a time in the near future when the busy world will let me once more become a living part of its people, praising God for the advance in the liberal faith of the Religious world of today, so largely due to the teachings of this belief [Universalism]…
We share the same roots with Clara Barton, as well as the people and the ministers who have been a part of Universalist worship since the nineteenth century.
Our roots are deep; we are connected by our shared heritage.
We all share the Infinite Love that is wide, and long, and high and deep. Whatever we call that love, it is our shared heritage.
Posted by UNMC Office at May 31, 2009 09:22 PM