Historical Text - #1
written by Gertude Goward, Church Historian
first published in 1969 on our 150th anniversary
(reprinted here without updates or alterations)
A first recorded triumph of people-supported religious liberalism over ecclesiastical intolerance occurred in 1756 in the Connecticut Valley, when the Rev. Robert Breck, chosen as candidate for installation at the First (and only) Church of Springfield, was being examined by the Hampden County Ministers’ Council on his qualifications. Because of an earlier expression of belief that "a loving God would find some way to save all mankind, even from Purgatory," the Council charged Mr. Breck with "heresy," but the Commonwealth Congressional Council, seeing the entire membership of First Parish in support of their choice, acquitted Mr. Breck and authorized his installation.
From this time on, although no outward signs appeared, desire grew for change to a religion "doing less violence to the mind and according more with human sentiments." Mr. Breck' s successor, the Rev. Bezaleed Howard, furthered this development until loss of voice forced his retirement. The Rev. Samuel Osgood, chosen to take over, had been credited with a "leaning toward liberalism but when he discovered the progress toward change already taking place, he retreated after ordination to strict orthodox Calvinism.
"Great was the excitement, extended and bitter the debates," says history, "when agitation over Mr. Osgood's policies neared an open break which was to divide families, friends and even business associates." In May l8l8 fifty-five members of First Church "seceded," declaring that they "did not receive from Mr. Osgood's instruction that edification which they most sincerely and ardently wished," words which they incorporated into their petition to the Commonwealth General Council (i.e. the Legislature) to grant them, as required by law, an Act of Incorporation as the Second Society in the First Parish of Springfield. Receipt of this Act of February 15, 1819 was luckily followed by a duly warranted first meeting on March 2, 1969, mark a 150th Anniversary.
It would be wonderful if changes today could generate what then blessed the new society. The leader of the movement to withdraw, Mr. Jonathan Dwight, Springfield's most respected businessman, offered to build for the group "a meeting house of such dimensions and elegance as they should direct and present the same as a free gift," provided the members themselves would raise and establish adequate funds for permanent support of a minister. The autumn of l819, when this first non-creedal church, at the corner of present day Willow and State Streets, lifted its weather vane topped spire high above "Springfield's most historic spot," the "Dwight corner" of home, business, bank and church, wags of the day quipped that the letters on the vane stood for the
"New Society of Edified Wits."
Aided by the retired Mr. Howard, also opposed to Mr. Osgood’s policies, and gradually "converted" to a Unitarianism recognized but not then stated as such, members of the new society, both before and after the ordination on October 12, 1820 of its first Minister, the Rev. William Bourne Oliver Peabody, withstood the incriminations, controversy and social ostracism of those early years of change.
Fifteen ministers, including Dr. Peabody and present day Dr. George J. W. Pennington, have "labored" here since 1820, some gentle, some aggressive; some strong organizers, some preoccupied with personal or outside concerns' but all affected, at one time or another, by expected manifestations of the liberal urge for change. It re-appeared
incredibly soon, when some sought alterations and others a new structure to replace the colonial type meeting house by a less conventional edifice. In 1865, after the strong organizer, Rev. Charles A. Humphreys arrived from his "strange apprenticeship for an urban ministry, contact with naked souls in agony" and personal imprisonment during a Civil War chaplaincy. This desire was activated inside of three months. The impressive, much desired "church of stone," designed by the rising young architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, was erected 1867-1869, and dedicated as the "Church of the Unity." Some person or persons at the time must have strongly objected to a Gothic chancel in the church auditorium and insisted upon a colonial type center pulpit, indicating a certain resistance to change greater than the daring to experiment in change. It was to be discovered later that Mr. Richardson anticipated that at some time desire would arise to bring the pulpit area into harmony with the Gothic architecture by construction of a chancel. When that did occur in 1935 contractors found a soft break-through simplifying the reconstruction.
Famed not alone as a Richardson architectural masterpiece, the Tiffany crafted stained glass windows of the Church of the Unity constitute a history themselves. Installation of such windows as memorials began in 1890, continuing into the 1900's when all twelve apertures on the side aisles had been filled, and extension even into the vestibule took place. Still to be installed in the 1935 reconstruction was the high window above the chancel altar, and reinstallation, from St. Paul's Universalist Church of its Resurrection window in place of the original Gothic rose window on the northern wall. Fortunately, with the windows, divided and packed away, and some sold, since the 1961 razing of the Church of the Unity, there remains a beautiful history of their composition and symbolization, prepared by the late Guy Kirkham.
Accounts of the many organizations which have enhanced and supported the extension of Liberal religion into all aspects of day to day living afford still another story. Still existing -- on paper -- the Afternoon Alliance, founded in 1894, was. the first branch Alliance in Western Massachusetts, and it was not until 1920 that its Sister, the still active, Evening Alliance was formed. On April 11, l9l5 the Laymen's League, continental in scope was founded here, with a local Unity chapter organized immediately. One unfortunate aspect of the forming of a League chapter was in changing a flourishing Men's Club, with membership open to any interested man of the city, it was overlooked that these non-Unitarian members, disinterested in a denominational program, could no longer be associated in what had been a truly ecumenical venture extending the liberal position on civic and social issues.
Religious Education has always been a major concern, first evidenced in the building of a chapel at the First Meeting House to accommodate a Sunday School. Records across the years give information about changing methods by which ministers and laymen sought to cooperate in advance of basic goals in this field leading at length to adult study and discussion groups as well as a full program of youth education and recreation. Such compulsions accorded in large measure for the 1919 conversion of an 1886 parsonage to a parish house and ultimately to the 1957 decision to vacate the Church of the Unity and to relocate elsewhere in order to assure facilities for such efforts.
The first Boy and Girl Scout Troops in Spring field were sponsored by and organized from 1911 on at the Church of the Unity, and continued as long as volunteer leadership could be obtained. One of the best of these leaders, George Marshall, was drawn into the church and went on to study for the ministry in which he continues to serve the denomination.
A truncated Universalist chronology at the end of these pages attempts to indicate briefly early organizational progress of the first independent Universalist Society in Springfield up to the time of Unitarian-Universalist mergers in 1928 and 1946.
The liberal outreach of the Church of the Unity broadened in merging, in 1928, with St. Paul's Universalist Society, enriched the Unitarian group by its disciplined spirit of working for its faith, as well as contributing funds. The Universalist women, long unrestricted in participation in Parish affairs, seemed to have progressed further in some ways than had the Unitarian women who were first allowed, in 1871, the legal rights of voting and holding office.
A free pew system did not go into effect until 1919, and the dual system of a distinction between Parish and Society membership was not changed until 1922. A still more complicated treble system at St. Paul's ended of course at the time of merger with the Church of the Unity. It was not until l947 that the Second Universalist Society, on Bay and Princeton Streets, also merged with the Church of the Unity.
Many projects have busied the membership across the years, often reflecting civic and denominational change. Radio broadcasting was effectively in use, periodically from 1924 until prohibitive costs forced discontinuance. Cooperation with denominational groups both regional and national appears in an immediate affiliation with the Connecticut Valley Conference (now the G.V. "District"), founded in December 1868 "to extend understanding and cooperation in their common purposes" to all Unitarian and interested Universalist churches. In 1922, learning of the struggle after World War I of the Unitarian Churches in Transylvania (now a part of Romania) to keep unbroken maintenance of the continuity there of the historic beginning of 1568 of declared Unitarianism, the Church of the Unity "adopted" a sister church in Kalouk. Until well into the 1930's, when the depression forced discontinuance, annual contributions were made of $100 or more toward its support.
Multiplying steadily since that time, so much has happened in adjustments to the increasing tempo of living, to civic and social progress, to all the advances that might be enumerated in page after page, provide a conclusion about liberal adjustment to change: that church members "be of that loyalty which takes a human being out of himself, into the altruism of group life," together with realization that no year is an isolated year, wholly separated from previous events and conditions.
Exhibits on this March 2, 1969 will tell more of matters too near in perspective for assessment of radical changes still in motion ever since a Social Action pulpit, initiated in the 1930's progressed into the 1950's when a church-initiated investigation into slum conditions aroused the entire city, and front-line action as well as study and discussion have become at once an incentive and a goal. Participation" has become the actual, not a dream, but "never complete."
On March 4, 1919, Dr. Augustus Reccord, then minister, offered at the close of the 100th Anniversary observances this "watchword" for the next 100 years: "Stay together, work together, worship together, in faithful service to the community."
Today asks, what community, the world --- or beyond?
"Never complete." Who would have it otherwise?
