A Sermon for New Member and Stewardship Sunday
“Forward Through the Ages ”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
March 5, 2006
This morning our theme is, “Forward through the Ages.” In our induction of new members earlier in the service, we mentioned that we are a part of a religious tradition that began in the earliest days of human awareness. In those early times, our ancestors gathered around their communal fires to tell stories in order to make and find meaning in their lives. Our own Unitarian Church of Montclair came on the scene a few years later, but from the beginning its purpose has also been to find and make meaning in the lives of its members and in the community and the world around it…around us.
The birth of Unity Church, which was the original name of this congregation, began at a meeting held in February of 1897. The women who gathered at that meeting called themselves the Unitarian Women’s Alliance. Their intention was to begin a new and liberal church community, but far more important to them was the creation of a liberal religious Sunday school. Some of the family names that were included at that meeting were: Angel, Brown, Hemphill, Graham, Dix, Stone, Butler, and Voute. I wonder if our history were written today what family names might be included in the story.
In October of that same year, the 28 Charter Members signed the Constitution of Unity Church. Together, they agreed as a religious community to move forward through the ages. Their first minister, Reverend Arthur Hastings Grant, lead them to the point where they were ready to begin building a church home. When he departed Montclair, he left them with the words, “You and I have built a good foundation, strong and broad enough to sustain whatever building may come in the future.”
Would we want to say anything less than that as we move forward through the ages?
In June of 1902, under the leadership of Rev. Leslie Sprague, who had successfully led several Unitarian congregations in church building projects across the country, the congregation purchased the lot for this sanctuary for the price of $4,000. That left $8,000 budgeted for construction costs. $12,000 in 1902 is the equivalent of over a quarter of a million dollars today. The chairs you are sitting in now, by the way, were purchased at a price of $1.65 per pair. By the time the construction was completed in 1905, the actual cost of building was $19,050, which has the equivalent price today of $390,974. This small group of religious pioneers invested greatly in the future of this congregation, a future which so fortunately includes all of us.
It was at that time that Reverend Dr. Edgar Swan Wiers began his 25 year ministry with Unity Church. Because the need for a church home had been met, the focus of the minister and the congregation turned towards redefining the function of religion in the Montclair community. The purpose of Unity Church would be to become a force for good in its peoples lives, in the community, and even in the world. During the next several years, the congregation spawned a number of important community institutions.
First, was a summer playground for the children of Montclair. One day Dr. Wiers, looking out his office window, noticed dozens of town children playing in the churchyard. Soon, he and members of the congregation financed and created a playground with a supervised program that was open to the children of Montclair. The church ran the program for three years before it was taken over by the Board of Education.
Unity Forum, a Sunday evening program, brought prominent national figures and speakers to Montclair to speak on important social matters. W.E.B. Dubois, Suffragist Reverend Anna Howard Shaw, Booker T. Washington and Bertrand Russell were among the many notables to address the townspeople from our pulpit.
Unity Church was the home of the first movie theater in Montclair. Dr. Wiers and the congregation were concerned that there was no fitting entertainment for young people in town. And then in 1919, there was a fire that burned the roof off of our building. You can still see considerable charring on the floor where the burning embers fell during that fire. The congregation took little time in providing the funds for rebuilding. The Unity Concert Series was begun during this time. And only a year after the fire, during the 1920 – 21 concert series, church members and the town were treated to the performances of the likes of Fritz Kreisler, Sergi Rachmaninoff, Pablo Casals, Marie Rappold and others!
The Collegiate Pulpit, a Sunday morning program, began during this time and continued for decades. Speakers from this pulpit included Rheinhold Niebuhr, John Haynes Holmes, Langston Hughes, Margaret Halsey, Lloyd C. Douglas, Louis Adamic, Robert G. Millikan, Nobel Lauriate and a whole host of others. I know that I saw the name Thurgood Marshall as a speaker at one of these events.
During the Wiers years, the congregation incubated dozens of other civic movements and organizations that went on to become a part of the Montclair culture. During this time the parish hall was added on the back of our building. Later, that hall would come to be named, as we know it today, Fletcher Hall. Dr. Wiers died unexpectedly in 1931.
He was followed by Dr. Norman Fletcher, whose ministry would span some 40 years. According to lifetime member Nancy Knoerzer, it took about five years for Norman Fletcher to be accepted as the senior pastor. Clearly he went on to have a most notable and productive ministry with the congregation. Together they maintained and revitalized many of the programs begun during Dr. Weir’s tenure, and many more were begun under Dr. Fletcher’s leadership. While he was appreciated greatly in the town of Montclair and often quoted in the town paper, he was cited as being an un-American minister in many New York papers. This was the result, no doubt, of much of his work and his preaching regarding labor relations, the need for civil rights, and his positions on World War II. Dr. Fletcher and members of the congregation played a key role in the desegregation of movie theaters, lunch counters and other institutions in Montclair.
Our congregation from its very inception has always enjoyed an exceptional music program. Besides the music that the church provided the community through its Unity Concerts, music has always played a vital part in the congregation’s worship experience. In 1938, Emilie Stehli wrote a reflection reminiscent of that quality. For those of you who might not be familiar with the name Emilie Stehli, she was the mother of our Nancy Knoerzer, the grandmother of our Chrissie Glickson, and the great-grandmother of our Katie Schaub. Mrs. Stehli wrote:
“It was our custom to engage promising young musicians to sing or play for our Sunday morning services. While I was chairman of the Music Committee, I received a letter from a lady in Wichita, Kansas, saying that a young woman from her town was coming to New York to study at The Juilliard School. Would we audition her to sing at one of our services? We arranged an audition and as a result, she sang for us several times each of the four years she spent at Juilliard. We paid her $25 each Sunday. This was Leontyne Price!
“Years later my husband and I were in Hollywood when we heard that she was to sing with the Los Angeles Orchestra in the Hollywood Bowl. Of course we went to hear her. After the concert I went backstage ...[and]...asked if she remembered singing at our church. She said, "Indeed I do! You were the ones who gave me my first chance to sing professionally. "
The congregation purchased the former Montclair Public Library in 1957, adding the annex building to our facilities. Physically, spiritually and in every other way imaginable, this congregation was moving forward through the ages with determination, with courage, and with action.
The next 10 years following Dr. Fletcher’s retirement were under the leadership of Dr. George Pennington. This decade was considered by many to be one of the more contentious periods in our congregation’s life. When you think about how far and how fast the church’s rise had continued, from my perspective as a former student of sociology and statistics, we might call this a period of statistical regression. One of the more important elements of the day, which was hardly insignificant was the creation of the Thrift Shop by our Women’s Alliance, the current manifestation of those original matrons who had begun the congregation so many decades before. The Thrift Shop was an important outreach program of recycling and reuse that provided the rich and the poor of Montclair alike with many thrifty treasures. Of the Pennington years we might say that our history has not always been upwards, but it has indeed always moved onward and forward through the ages.
Reverend Lee Barker was the next minister to arrive, beginning what would be an 11 year ministry. I must apologize for using the ministers of the congregation as the headings of these eras, but it is the way that our history has been written and it is the way that I understand it. I also understand though, that it was always in partnership – congregation and minister together – in which this community has done all its moving.
Dr. Barker’s ministry was one of rebuilding in so many ways. The congregation resumed its spiritual growth as well as its physical construction. It was during that time that the annex was renovated and the corridor was added connecting our sanctuary with the annex building. Far more important was the inception, the development and the creation of the Montclair Inn. The Montclair Inn, located just up the street, is a grand enterprise, as it is an affordable housing opportunity for senior residents of the Montclair community. A number of our members continue to be residents at the Montclair Inn. It was during this time that the congregation hired its first full-time Director of Religious Education, Dr. John Tolley.
During this time, the church began the process to become a Welcoming Congregation, a rigorous program designed by the Unitarian Universalist Association to enable congregations to become truly welcoming, especially to the gay, lesbian and transgender communities. It was during this time as well that the congregation began its Undoing Racism Committee, and began to see the work of antiracism as going far beyond the challenges of desegregation. Once again, the congregation was moving healthfully, forward through the ages.
My history with you here is now in its 11th year. You tell me how we’ve moved together forward through the ages together. You are the ones who have done the bulk of the work. My own recollections include calling and ordaining our first Minister of Religious Education, when we called Reverend Judy Tomlinson to be a part of our ministerial staff six years ago. Together we have continued and intensified the work of antiracism, taking it beyond work within the congregation out into the community and even the State of New Jersey. Our “After School” program, begun by Frank Rennie and Bill Brach, has been at the heart of our outreach work as we have served the educational needs of children from our neighboring Hillside School. Education, which was at the core of this congregations beginning, has continued to be one of our major objectives in the community. The congregation has also intensified its efforts to affirm and promote the gay, lesbian and transgender communities and has been especially involved in efforts to promote equal marriage rights. During this era of meaningless war, we have continued to provide a voice for peace and an antiwar presence. We have endeavored, but so far have not done so well, in the area of environmentalism and much of that work awaits us.
We have good reason to feel that we have taken our place in this history that moves forward through the ages. We also have good reason to feel that there is much yet to be done. We look around us and we see that things here at the church need to be cared for. That’s a no brainer. Phase I of our capital campaign will help us to care responsibly for these valuable physical assets that have been left to us. We will easily have the resources to take care of these demands.
But when we look into our history, we see far greater things. We see the honor and the intentions of good men and women. We see inspired leadership and an incredible agency of transformation here and out in our community. We see the legacy that we’ve been left, an investment of people’s time, energy and resources – an investment in the possibilities of goodness.
Today, we come to stake our claim on this congregation’s continued movement forward through the ages. Today, we come in no small measure to ratify our vision of the future and offer our generosity in preparing the way toward that future. Today, we have come to express our faith in the ongoing mission of this institution: the transformation of our hearts, our homes, our community and our world. We have not come so much to reinvent the wheel, as we have to take our turn at the wheel.
Today, we have come to commit ourselves in membership or to recommit ourselves to it. Today, we have come to commit ourselves to rebuilding the house that was so generously built for us so long ago. Today, we have come together to say that as Unitarian Universalists who affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all persons, who affirm and promote the interdependent web of existence, we will create, as a part of Phase II of the capital campaign, a new Unity Hall – a place that can hold us together within our history and within our core values, a place to invite those of the greater Montclair area – and the world – to come and be a part of a religious community that celebrates the unity of all-things, a place that reminds us, and that inspires us to reach out, to embrace and to support that unity in our daily lives and in the world around us.
Our vision is based, as Nancy Brach once suggested to me, in the act of breathing in and out.
First, breathing in, by supporting the religious community that holds each of us within the context of our sacred life journey. Providing light where there has been darkness, hope where there has been despair. By building faith in the capacity of humanity to do good, replacing our doubts and fears. By promoting love where there has been hate, or even worse where there has been indifference. By promoting the possibility of joy where there has been heartache. By providing forgiveness and promise… by providing sacred shelter amidst a tumultuous storm.
And second, breathing out, by holding one another to a set of ideals that hold all of life as being a sacred journey. You know the work I’m talking about: the work of raising a community of children in our religious education program, and not just our own children but the children of the larger community as well; education, education, education. By promoting the worth and dignity of all: the work of women’s rights, the work of antiracism, the work of equal marriage rights – embracing a vision of marriage that includes loving couples without regard to gender specificity. And I trust that our vision will always include the work of promoting peace and putting an end to war. Perhaps another phase of our outreach will also include prison reform, and as a result of my recent appointment to Governor Corzine’s commission to study the death penalty, working to end that barbaric and inhumane institution. I also trust that the work before us will include issues that we have talked about together, but that we have not yet begun to take seriously as a congregation, engaging in meaningful efforts to be effective agents for the environment, for healthcare and against consumerism.
The vision of our work to come is based in our commitment to continue to be a voice of reason amidst a sea of superstition, fable and self-delusion. It is in doing our part to right the wrongs of social injustice. We have such an incredible opportunity, such a privilege, to be the recipients of the great heritage here. And we have the opportunity, the privilege, today to see the future of that heritage, the legacy we will leave to others – those who will follow us – and to stake our claim in that future.
We began 109 years ago as Unity Church. Let our vision today be nothing less than the promotion of unity and the meaningful pursuit of our place within it. Let us honestly say to one another: You and I have built [upon] a good foundation, strengthening it and broadening it enough to sustain whatever building, [whatever work], may come in the future.”
Forward through the ages? Yes, forward! Always, forward! Transforming lives of individuals, of families, of the community and indeed, the world. |
