Moment of Silence: In memory of Trayvon Martin, in sympathy with his family, and in solidarity with all who work and long for justice, peace and equity.
Hymns: 51, Lady of the Seasons’ Laughter; 361, Enter, Rejoice, and Come In; 360, Here We Have Gathered. Vocal music: Across the Great Divide by Kate Wolfe, sung by Tom Hiltunen
Conversation with All Ages
I have an exercise for you. Think about how long you have been in this congregation. As you are able, please stand or raise your hand, as I ask these questions. If you’ve been at UUSS at least 50 years, please rise. Please remain standing. If you’ve been here 40 years or more, please rise. 30 years or more. 20 years or more. 10 years or more. 5 years or more. 3 or 4 years; that includes me so I should stand. If you’ve been here 2 years, 1 year or less, or if you just walked in the doors, please rise. Give yourselves a hand.
Sermon
Perhaps in the year 1959, when the members of this congregation bought this five acres, a former horse ranch, they thought they could create a haven from the world. They couldn’t. The struggles of the world entered their lives and this church. The people of the church did not hide behind these hexagonal walls. Our members gave leadership to the local community. As a church, we engaged in the ups-and-downs of the nation.
Let’s remember how we got here. The original Unitarian congregation in Sacramento was established in 1868 by 17 families. (They had been drawn together by the preaching of a minister from San Jose came up here on horse and buggy every Sunday.) Until 1915, we met in theaters and meeting halls downtown. Then we moved to a cedar-shingled house at 27th Street between N and O Streets. We constructed this building in 1960 as our fellowship hall. A sanctuary was to be built later, over in the grove of oak trees. Didn’t happen.
During this Baby Boom era, most churches were bursting at the seams. In 1962 we had 500 adult members. 1963, 600. 1964, 700 adults, with “several hundred children.” Rather than getting a second minister, our church leaders chose the idea of spinning off new congregations.
Across North America many smaller, lay-led UU fellowships sprang up in the 1950s and 60s, part of a growth strategy of the denomination. In 1962, the new Central UU Church met in our old church building on 27th Street, as we had not sold it yet. This ended in 1965. Yet in that same year, the South Area UU Fellowship started meeting, in the very same building. Our minister lent his presence and support. Forty families launched this fellowship. As listed on the Sacramento Bee’s “church page,” Sunday service topics included social and political issues and religious and moral values. It lasted three years, till the building was sold.
In 1964, several other families from our church rented the Grange Hall in Fair Oaks, and started the North Area Fellowship. Attendance that year was 46 adults and 26 children. One member recalls having to be at committee meetings every night. This routine led working parents to burnout. In spite of their vitality and their efforts, the group eventually stopped meeting. Many of them merged back into UUSS.
It was not until 1991 that a permanent second congregation was founded in Sacramento, with denominational help and much effort by local Unitarian Universalists. The UU Community Church celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, with about 100 members and a full-time minister. Members there are friends to many of us, and a few people attend both churches. So far they have been a nomadic church, renting space south of downtown.[i]
Our minister from 1960 to 1970 was Ford Lewis. He nearly declined our search committee’s invitation to be the candidate, given the painful rifts in the congregation over the forced retirement of Ted Abell, our minister of the prior 15 years. The church hadn’t known that Ted had a brain tumor, and he died five months after leaving us–right after we started using this building, which he had helped us to achieve.
Ford Lewis was born in 1914 to a Baptist family in the Ozarks–southern Illinois. In the Depression, his family lost their farm to foreclosure. At age 20, Ford stayed back to close down the farm, as the rest moved to Arkansas. He couldn’t afford state university tuition in Arkansas, but a friend lured him to Salem College, in West Virginia. The school’s president got him a job pruning apple trees in the college orchard, and Ford’s aunt lent him $50. Later, back in Arkansas, Ford earned a graduate degree, interrupted by navy service in the Second World War. He and Barbara Lewis came to us after he served as an associate minister at First Unitarian of Portland, Oregon.
Soon after his arrival, we had a capital campaign to start construction of the first rooms of the Religious Education building, to which we added more sections later. Till all the rooms were built, we had double Sunday school sessions. We used an old cottage left here by the former owners. We put kids and teachers on the stage, in the kitchen, the alcoves, and a rented trailer.
Helen Bradfield led Sunday School for the next decade or so, with 33 volunteer teachers and a committee of 10.
Highlights:
A weekly Church School newsletter—The Juniortarian.
Festivals on Easter, Christmas, and United Nations Day.
A favorite course—The Church Across the Street—with field trips to other houses of worship.
Our senior high youth group was part of Liberal Religious Youth, attending regional and national UU conferences.
Boom times! Yet “by the end of the 60s, attendance in our Church School was dropping rapidly.” Our historian wrote: “At the beginning of the decade, we thought we had many answers, but by the end we were not so sure” (108).
We had many discussion groups for adults as well as volunteer opportunities. In 1961, congregation members founded Theater One, a group which continues producing community theater to this day. Today, in fact: a matinee at 2.
The local Planned Parenthood chapter started in our church. In 1963, Helen Gardiner, the president of our Women’s Alliance, noted that poor women in Sacramento (among others) could not get information about birth control. The church allowed her space for meetings of the Planned Parenthood steering committee, which included Evelyn Watters from UUSS. Ford Lewis chaired the advisory committee.
In March of 1965, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., called on American clergy from all faiths to join a voting rights protest in Selma, Alabama. Days earlier, a state trooper shot and killed Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black man, as he tried to protect his 70-year-old mother from a police beating. On March 7,a nonviolent march from Selma to Montgomery had been turned back at a highway bridge by police with brutal force, giving the day the name of Bloody Sunday. Our minister Ford Lewis went, among thousands of other clergy.
Three white northern UUs ministers went to dinner one evening in a black-owned restaurant in Selma. After they left, they were attacked. A white mob clubbed and kicked Orloff Miller, Clark Olsen, and James Reeb. (An elder in our church told me that Ford Lewis had been invited to go to dinner but had declined in order to rest.) Two days later, James Reeb died. One of Sacramento’s short-lived UU spinoff churches was renamed in Reeb’s honor.
In 1969, the Black Power movement confronted the white privilege and power structure of our denomination as well as that of other mainline Protestant faiths. The Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly made a large funding commitment to African American organizations. A year later, the UUA canceled this promise when a new UUA president found out the previous administration had mismanaged the finances and there was no money. The wounds of this controversy have run deep and long among friends of all colors and commitments in our UU movement.[ii]
Another cause of turmoil for us in the 1960s and 70s was this country’s war in Viet Nam. Either quietly or publicly, many ministers and churches—including this one—helped young men avoid the draft by filing for status as Conscientious Objectors or by moving to Canada. Some churches gave more vocal and radical opposition to the war. Sometimes the acrimony pitted friends against one another, even split congregations. [I hope our church’s written history on this era can be filled in a bit more.]
In that era, the U. S. government spied not only on activist groups, but on churches, sending agents to infiltrate congregations. Jack Mendelsohn, then minister of Arlington Street Church, our flagship church in Boston, has told a story of when a young man admitted having attended Jack’s church. But his military service was coming to and end, he said. He liked the church very much, and wanted to join it! If there are any spies here today, please know you are as welcome to be here as anyone. Just please remember to turn in your pledge card.
During the women’s movement in this country, lots of activist energy came from religious women. Much of it took place within congregations, especially Unitarian Universalist ones and at the denominational level. In 1977, delegates to our denomination’s General Assembly approved the Women and Religion Resolution. A landmark for us. This committed our denomination to eliminate sexism in governance documents and policies, UUA hiring, ministerial credentialing, and hymnbooks and worship materials. Women’s Alliances in this and other UU congregations included many activists, and sent money to the UU Women’s Federation. Our Alliance began in 1898, hosting literary and artistic events, giving money to charities and the church. It continues, with meetings the second Thursday morning of each month.
In 1971, Ted and Marguerite Webb and their family and came from Boston to Sacramento in 1971, when our search committee named him as the ministerial candidate. Born in Maine, Ted grew up as a Universalist long before the merger with the Unitarians. He served northeastern churches and in a UUA District office. Ted served us here until 1983. When the Alliance opened membership to men, Ted was the first one to join. He attends church now at age 94, as our Minister Emeritus.
Advancements during Ted’s ministry—the start of the Religious Services Committee. It continues now, with a number of lay worship leaders. The Public Forum —led by Mark Tool, Ben Franklin, Mike Weber, and other members. Volunteer speakers came to address timely issues; admission fees helped the church budget. The Forum continued until a few years ago. The Servetus Club started then as an activity group for single adults. In 1983, it had 100 members, many of them not from the congregation. It continues now with monthly meetings.
In 1973 Anna Andrews became the director of both adult and children’s religious education, serving for five lively years. The fee was 5 dollars per student (116). These 18 banners of diverse religions and cultures of the world [around the top of our sanctuary] were created by artists and craftspersons in the congregation in 1982, near the conclusion of Ted’s ministry.
Ted shocked the church when he announced his resignation, after 12 good years. Our church historian wrote that Ted he was burned out by the demands of serving this large church with no assistant, and by a stressful controversy involving a church staff member.
In a newsletter column Ted expressed his disappointments and joys. He had wanted us to be more engaged in social action in the community and state, given that we are in the capital city. Yet years later he did express joy at the work of the UU Legislative Ministry in California. It was founded in 2001 by lay leaders at the UU Community Church. Several of us here are donors or volunteers for the Legislative Ministry.
Ted also expressed regret that our financial giving was not as strong as it could be. He said this kept us from pursuing our full potential and from paying better compensation to hardworking staff members. Yet he was gratified by the sense of adventure, humor, and friendship which he felt among us, and by the commitment of our lay leaders. The congregation celebrated Marguerite and Ted with an event at the River Mansion, a luncheon after a Sunday service and a generous monetary gift.
In the early 1970s, few women ministers were serving Unitarian Universalist congregations, and we had almost no openly gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender ministers. In thirty years, this changed. The 1980s and 1990s were a time of learning, struggle, frustration and growing openness. By 2000, over half of our ministers were women. The first woman to serve this church was Eileen Karpeles, who came here in 1989 as an interim minister. From 1992 to 94, the Reverend Richelle Russell was assistant minister. From 1997-99 the Reverend Shirley Rank served as pastoral care minister. In the position in which I serve ,the Reverend Lyn Cox was here with you for three years. Then the Reverend Connie Grant served here for two years.
In the early 1990s many UU congregations began a process of self-study and consciousness-raising in order to be more inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people and their families. This work still takes place in our denomination. It leads to certification as an official Welcoming Congregation in the UUA. This church earned that recognition in 1996.[iii]
In 1990 we called as minister the Reverend Don Beaudreault. He stayed only five years before pursuing a call to another church. [To save time I’ve skipped a number of interim ministers in this history, but they are listed on the website.]
Our next settled minister was John Young. A number of members remember his gifts of intellect, preaching and leading adult education classes. Yet many experienced the relationship as antagonistic. A mismatch, perhaps. His tenure ended in six years with a negotiated resignation and severance payment. No matter how generously such a departure is handled, nearly everyone feels bruised. Healing takes work and a long time, but some folks do drift away from church.[iv]
In that year, 1997, I began a ministry in the Bay Area. Later, at our UU district ministers’ meetings I met your interim ministers, Sidney Wilde and Dennis Daniel, a heterosexual married couple with twinkly eyes and storytellers’ enthusiasm. In 2000 they told us that the Sacramento search committee had found a candidate, some guy named Douglas Kraft.[v] Who?
One minister said, “Can he handle them? Will they eat him up?” During his week of candidating with you, Doug may have wondered that himself! In reality, as he recalls, he did see a prickliness in the congregation.
Yet he also sensed love under the surface, a deeper caring. He saw the commitment of the lay leaders to their congregation in good times and bad. “These were not fair-weather friends,” he says. Doug grew up as a UU in Houston, attended national youth conferences with many other kids who ended up as ministers, married a Quaker, and attended our seminary in Berkeley. Over four decades he has interspersed parish ministry with work as head of a program for street kids, a pscyhotherapist, and computer graphics programmer.
Doug writes books, plays the guitar and writes songs. This is too much talent, so I’ve had him abducted. He won’t be coming back tonight after all.
Doug’s 12 years here have included, most notably, his aging. Seriously, though: you and he have established Ministry Circles, the Lay Ministry team, Worship Leader trainings, the Program Council, and two services on Sunday mornings.[vi] Recent years have seen better financial transparency and balanced budgets, rather than draining bequest funds to cover deficits. A few years back, our church’s Mission statement was reaffirmed, and we adopted a long range plan.
Last month the congregation approved the Building and Grounds Master Plan by a unanimous vote. It’s on the back wall and our website if you’d like to see it. During Doug’s time you’ve had four seminary interns. The ministry position I hold has been funded continuously for the past nine years.
Doug and lay leaders remember the days of long, argumentative meetings. The Board was a lightning rod for frustration and unkindness in the church. In his 10th anniversary report a couple of years ago, Doug said that Board meetings are shorter now and more satisfying. So are congregational meetings. More people now are willing to stand for election and serve their congregation.
“The general mood is more optimistic and less prickly,” Doug writes. “We … enjoy one another more.”
Originally a church of city members, in the past half-century we’ve become a regional congregation. Thank you to all of you who drive a distance to come here!
Our wider embrace has become not only geographical, but theological.
In the1980s and 90s, Unitarian Universalists across the continent started getting spiritual… again.[vii] Rather than disavowing religion, a new generation of adults wanted to explore it. Jewish UUs looked into their culture and spiritual roots. Some of us began to visit the Bible—again or for the first time ever. Unitarian Christians found inspiration from the radical teachings of Jesus. Some of us took up Buddhist meditation, contemplative prayer, or yoga.
We turned back to Thoreau and Emerson and found nourishment in contemporary spiritual writers. Pagans ritualized the turning of the seasons. In 1995, the General Assembly added earth-based spiritual traditions to and official list of the sources of our living tradition.
None of this has been an easy transition in the UU movement. A rationalistic humanism had held sway since the 1920s. Many ministers and lay people had assumed humanism’s unending and exclusive dominance. They had thought of a UU church as a refuge. It was an alternative to religion. Now it has become a religious alternative.
Our embrace is larger now. Our welcome is wider. We are a home for seekers as well as skeptics. Many of us identify as both seekers and skeptics! Let’s remember, inclusiveness is not only a value, it is a practice. Building community takes work, in good times and bad. But it’s worth it.
Let us be grateful for this legacy, and …
Give thanks all those, named and unnamed, who have brought us to this moment…
Be joyful that we have the chance to build and pass forward a legacy of our own for this congregation.
Let us move into the future with an ever-wider embrace. Let us move into the future with joy and hope. Amen.
