One Hundred and Five years ago, this church, was founded.
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Here\u2019s how the event is described on our church\u2019s website:
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On the last Sunday in April, 1913, Dr. Franklin Baker, previously Unitarian minister in Sacramento, preached the first sermon to what would become the First Unitarian Church of Long Beach. In the following week at the law offices of Louis N. Whealton, later mayor of Long Beach, the church was organized. At that meeting the following bond of union was adopted:
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The religion of this church is free, not creed-bound; scientific, not dogmatic; spiritual, not traditional; universal, not sectarian. It stands for the realization of the highest moral and humanitarian ideals of the world\u2019s noblest teachers; and to the cultivation and dissemination of the spiritual qualities of reverence, peace and love as exemplified in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
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We\u2019ve been talking for the last several weeks about the history of Unitarianism, and Universalism. It\u2019s time today, to bring that history up to date, and to make it local, in the history of this congregation.
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The Rev. Dr. Franklin Baker, who preached our inauguration sermon \u201con the last Sunday in April, 1913\u201d had been the minister of the congregational church in Eureka, California, until 1911. At that point he declared himself a liberal minister and broke away from his more evangelical church to start a new, Unitarian church, taking the more liberal members of his congregation with him. A year later he was splitting his time between two churches in northern California, Sacramento, and a church in Woodland about 15 miles north of Sacramento and was also involved in starting the Stockton church, also in 1911.
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And then in 1913 he was down here in Long Beach. He preached the inaugural sermon in 1913, but was not called to be our first minister. In October of 1913 he was arrested in Long Beach for vagrancy. A brief article in the November 29, 1913 edition of the Los Angeles Herald says this:
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\u201cThe trial of Rev. Franklin Baker, a Long Beach pastor arrested last month on a vagrancy charge, has been continued indefinitely because of illness of the defendant.\u201d
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It would be nice to know more of that story.
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Our first minister was the Rev. Francis Watry, who served here from 1913 to 1917.
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Here\u2019s another article from the Los Angeles Herald, from June 15, 1917 near the end of Rev. Watry\u2019s service and just two months after the US entered the First World War. It\u2019s titled, \u201cAct to Enforce Patriotism at Beach: Vigilance Committee Being Formed as Miss Bixby Refuses to Salute Flag.\u201d
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\u201cI believe in an attitude of non-resistance.
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\u201cI am against fighting Germany because I believe in non-resistance.
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\u201cI am a universal patriot.\u201d
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These explanations were made in Long Beach today by Miss Fannie Bixby, daughter of the late Jotham Bixby, \u201cFather of Long Beach.\u201d
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Miss Bixby refused to salute the flag at a recent church meeting when the trustees of the First Unitarian church gathered to consider charges that the pastor, Rev. Francis Watry, was unpatriotic in his sermons.
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At the same meeting George M. Moyle, a bookbinder, refused to salute the flag.
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\u201cI hope they will not put Mr. Moyle in jail because he is a busy man. But I nave no fear of jail myself,\u201d said Miss Bixby. In adding to her statement in which she said she believed in a policy of \u201cnon-resistance.\u201d
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Following Rev. Watry, our church had three brief ministries: H.P. Feiffer, the Rev. Oliver Fairfield, the Rev. Edson Riesnider.
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In 1927, the Rev Thomas Byrnes came to us and served until his death in 1933. Rev. Brynes had earlier served the Unitarian church in Erie, Pennslyvania, then resigned that church to help found a church in Birmingham, Alabama, and then another in Oklahoma City. While in Oklahoma he was also involved, in 1921, in getting a Unitarian church founded in Tulsa, which is now the largest Unitarian church in the country.
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Our next minister was a woman, Rev. Cora Lambert. She served from 1933 \u2013 1937. Although the Unitarians and the Universalists had both ordained women since the late 19th century, women ministers were not common at that time. I\u2019d love to know how the congregation and the Long Beach community responded to her.
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One more minister served before World War II, Rev. Albert Hamilton. And then the church seems to have closed for a few years. After the war the church was again served by several short pastorates: Rev. Paul Hennes; Rev. Dr. Robert Murray Pratt; Rev. Jack Kent, who served seven years from 1953 \u2013 1960.
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Again from the short history published on our website:
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In 1953, with a surge in church growth because of the postwar boom, the buildings and parking at 9th and Lime became inadequate. Under Rev. Jack Kent\u2019s guidance, the congregation in 1955 voted to sell the property and to build a new church at 5450 Atherton. The Southern Baptists bought the original church property and the two congregations co-existed gingerly for two years.
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On September 8, 1957, the first services were held in the new building on Atherton, which had been painted and landscaped by members. The church school grew so fast in that period that the church soon had to have two services on Sunday mornings.
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Rev. Jack Kent was followed by Rev. Russell Lincoln. Rev. Lincoln was followed by Rev. John Nicholls Booth. Yes, Lincoln was followed by Booth.
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Rev. Booth\u2019s first avocation was to be a magician. He was also a world adventurer, a journalist, and a documentary filmmaker.
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In the year 2000, he wrote this about himself:
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Retired now at the age of 88, I can look back upon four basic careers that produced 17 published books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, and I tried as a magician, cinematographer, lecturer, and Unitarian clergyman to bring people together in a more just, enjoyable, and harmonious society.
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John Nicholls Booth was born in 1912. He died in 2009. He was a graduate of the Unitarian seminary in Meadville, the same seminary his father attended. He served a church in Evanston, IL. And then a church in Belmont, MA and then Boston\u2019s Second church. Here is what he said, in 2000 about his time in Long Beach.
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My fourth and last full-time settled ministry\u2014seven years\u2014was in Long Beach, California, just off the campus of a state university. A zebra cannot change its stripes. Within a short time I was defending the city librarian before the city council against a group determined to eliminate classic or liberal books it did not like from the library system. I led and addressed the largest civil rights march in Long Beach history. A sermon advocating the right of women, not the state, to determine if they could or should terminate an unwanted pregnancy, was quoted in extensive detail in the powerful Los Angeles Times. During some periods of my Long Beach ministry, I was drawing the largest congregations of my career, necessitating double services. The Mental Health Association of which I was president thrived.
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Booth was followed by Rev. Rexford Styzens. \u201cRex,\u201d as he was called. He served from 1972 to 1985, 13 years, the first minister we had that served longer than 7 years. Ours was the last church he served, although he didn\u2019t officially retire until 2000. He is still living, lives nearby the church, and is still sometimes active in our community, especially in the Atheist group.
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Another incident of note happened during Rev. Styzen\u2019s ministry, recorded on our website. It picks up the theme of calling a woman minister back in the 1930s:
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Continuing this trend of expecting leadership and ministry from women, the church recognized and ordained Junella Hanson, one of the first Ministers of Religious Education in the UUA. In the 1970s, this extraordinary religious educator created opportunities for study and experiences that excited and stimulated the congregation and fed a passion for curiosity and learning. With encouragement from Rev. Styzens, the members of the church chose to identify her as a minister. Thus, in 1974, Rev. Hanson was ordained by our church, exercising the right of congregational polity. Rev. Hanson went on to serve a celebrated ministry in subsequent churches and, in 1992, was awarded the Angus Maclean Award for outstanding contributions to religious education by the UUA.
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Rev. Styzen was followed by an interim pastorate: Revs. Billie & Sam Wright. Sam Wright died two years ago at the age of 97. Then Rev. Michael O\u2019Kelly. Like Rev. Styzens our church was his last, although he didn\u2019t officially retire until 2012, according to the UUA. He is currently living in West Virginia. 84 years old.
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Another interim Rev. Dr. Robert Kaufman.
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And then this church\u2019s longest settled minister, Rev. Marguerite D. Lovett came to us in 1991, after serving as an associate minister and then an interim minister at a church outside Philadelphia. She retired in 2009 and was named, Minister Emeritus. She is also still alive.
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Two one-year interims followed Rev. Lovett\u2019s retirement: Rev. Alicia D. Forsey in 2009 \u2013 2010. After her interim year here she did interims in Eugene, San Mateo and Oregon City and retired in 2014. Then, Rev. Stephen Furrer. After us he served interims in San Francisco, Redwood City, Fullerton, Palos Verdes, Livermore, and now he\u2019s in Bellevue, (not the hospital, the city in) Washington.
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Your most recent settled minister was Rev. Mitra Rahnema, who was called in 2011 and resigned in September 2017. She is living in Iowa now, and not currently serving a church.
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Rev. Judy Tomlinson, served briefly from November 2017 \u2013 January 2018. And then I started this current Interim Ministry in January.
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Of course that\u2019s just the history of our ministers. That\u2019s not this history of the hundreds and hundreds of lay people and congregational leaders who have served the church over our 105 years. That\u2019s not the history of our professional musicians and religious educators and church administrators. It\u2019s not the history of our choir members, and Sunday school teachers, and activists. Or the history of our parties, the history of the quiet meetings as one church member comforted another at a time of grief. It\u2019s not the history of our garden, or our buildings, or our hopes, or our failures, or our conflicts, or our successes.
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The history of ministers is easy to tell, because we have better records. But a history of ministers can only provide a glimpse into the accomplishments and struggles and personalities and dreams of a congregation. So I offer this timeline of the ministry of the church as a framework on which to hang the other, fuller, more personal, history of this church. Those stories still need to be told.
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Part of our work, as we traverse these interim years between Rev. Rahnema\u2019s resignation and the calling of your next settled minister, is to say outloud to each other the stories of who we have been. What did we do? What were the places of hardship and controversy? What were the places where the ship nearly foundered on the rocks? And what were the places of clear-sailing that still set the course for us today?
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I\u2019ve not been around long enough yet to tell those stories to you. I hope you\u2019ll tell them to me. And I hope you\u2019ll tell them to each other. But let me close with a few significant themes that I think I\u2019m starting to identify lifted up from our past.
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A long history of short ministries. Until Rex Styzens the longest ministry in the church had only been 7 years, which would be on the shorter end of average in most churches. Then Rex was here 13 years, and then Margueritte 18 years. Mitra was here only 6 years.
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You also had a large number of ministers who finished their ministries here, or who left under troubled circumstances. Don\u2019t make too much of that observation, but don\u2019t dismiss that observation, either. Other partings from the church, such as Tamara Casanova Suzuki, a former DRE, have been difficult as well.
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Significant female leadership here. Starting with Cora Lambert, and Junella Hanson, then your longest ministry with Margueritte Lovett and your latest ministry with Mitra Rahnema. The Unitarian Universalist ministry is majority female now, so there\u2019s a good chance that your next minister will be a woman, also.
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Some other themes that I know are a proud part of the story you tell about yourself.
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You see yourselves as a social justice church. Political action and work in the larger community are often points of pride as a congregation tells their story. Those accomplishments create meaning, and help us justify the worth of a church. We might ask ourselves over the next two years, \u201cWhat does it mean to be a social justice church?\u201d And also, \u201cHow can we create meaning and pride in the other ministries that are a part of every healthy church community: fellowship, pastoral care, spiritual growth?\u201d
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You are a church engaged in the larger Unitarian Universalist world. A truly remarkable number of the members of this congregation have offered leadership at the District, Regional and National level. That is an awesome contribution to our larger faith. I wonder whether that level of service is something unique to the current members or whether that\u2019s a trend that\u2019s an expression of something deeper in the DNA of this congregation that also, then, might be a characteristic of your future?
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And a final story I hear you tell about yourself, is your pride in being a teaching congregation. Our website lifts up two intern ministers, Colin Bossen, and Denis Letourneau Paul, both of whom have gone on to successful careers. Colin Bossen is now doing an Interim in Houston. Denis Letourneau Paul is now a Developmental minister in Kirtland, Ohio. Besides those two interns this church also helped launch the ministries of Katy Kroll Swanson, Matthew McHale, and Rica Kaufel. We might ask ourselves, if we want to continue this ministry of being a teaching congregation how we can prepare ourselves in terms of budget and office space to host a future intern?
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A final takeaway from this review of our last one hundred and five years is that we are not the same as we have been, and yet we ever continue. Ministers have come and gone, and the church goes on. Cherished members have come and gone, as represented by the Memorial Candle that burns today, or the service for Dia de Los Muertos we will celebrate next week \u2013 and the church goes on. The church is larger than any one of us. The church is resilient. The church moves through time, carried by each of us for a time, until the burden is transferred to the next generation \u2013 and the church goes on.
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Something essential is never ending in the life of a church, not dependent on individual people, or buildings, budgets, bylaws, or even a bond of union.
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The specific reference to the life of Jesus of Nazareth in this church\u2019s original bond of union no longer carries the significance, perhaps, for most of us, that it did for the founders of the church. But I like to think that much of that bond of union does carry through to us today:
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\u201cThe religion of this church is free, not creed-bound; scientific, not dogmatic; spiritual, not traditional; universal, not sectarian. It stands for the realization of the highest moral and humanitarian ideals of the world\u2019s noblest teachers; and to the cultivation and dissemination of the spiritual qualities of reverence, peace and love\u2026.\u201d
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May it be so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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