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Unitarian Universalist Sankofa Project. UU Sankofa Mission. To advance an Archive collection that records and showcases the lives and works of Unitarian Universalist ministers and laity of Color and Latino ancestries. Don Speed Smith Goodloe. Don Goodloe.
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UU Sankofa Mission • To advance an Archive collection that records and showcases the lives and works of Unitarian Universalist ministers and laity of Color and Latino ancestries.
Don Goodloe By the early 1920s Don Speed Smith Goodloe had accomplished many of his life’s professional goals. During his eleven-year tenure in Bowie, he established a faculty of ten members, student enrollment of 80, an admission requirement of completion of seventh grade, the model elementary school for student teachers at Horsepen Hill School– the first school for black children in Bowie–a summer session, a new dormitory for women, and renovation of living quarters for men. He added one additional year to the course, which led to a second grade certificate and permitted students to do two years additional work to earn a first grade certificate. Goodloe made many pleas for additional funding before the legislature in Annapolis–money that might have brought more rapid development to the school–but the state’s appropriations favored the white normal schools. Life after Bowie Little is known about why Goodloe resigned his post in 1921 at the age of 43. He told a friend that he stepped down because he was simply tired of being principal. It is possible that he was weary of the struggle to find sufficient funding that would enable him to upgrade the curriculum to the standards used at Maryland’s white normal schools in Towson and Frostburg. It was also quite likely that he was tired of dealing with racism and segregation and the inequality of the times and wished to immerse himself in the black community. The Ku Klux Klan was reviving in the South and across Middle America. There were 64 lynching's in 1918 and an astounding 83 the following year. There were at least fourteen blacks hanged by mobs in Maryland in the 20 years before Goodloe arrived and two during his tenure at Bowie. Perhaps Goodloe simply gave up on Booker T. Washington’s dream of gaining equality with whites through hard work, patience, and acceptance of the prevailing social order. It is possible that he had come to accept the call of the more militant W.E.B. Dubois to reject a legal, political, and economic system that thrived on the exploitation of poor African Americans.
Don Goodloe After leaving the school, Goodloe moved to Baltimore, where in 1923 he became president of an insurance company, the Standard Benefit Society. He grew prosperous enough to purchase rental housing in the city. Later, he moved to Washington, and it is reported that he owned extensive property in the District. Meanwhile, Fannie and the children continued to live in the house in Bowie. Wallis and Donald both graduated from Howard University, became teachers in Baltimore, and later in Washington. Donald B. Goodloe taught at Washington’s Dunbar High School; one of his former students, William C. Byers, is currently a member of the Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation. Although there is no record of Goodloe’s religious affiliation after Meadville, his religious leanings did have an effect on his children. One of his sons, Donald B. Goodloe, was an active member at All-Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington. Don Speed Smith Goodloe died in Washington, D.C. in 1959 at the age of 81. His legacy lives on in Bowie. Goodloe’s enormous contributions to the building of Bowie State University will not be forgotten, and members of Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation will remember him as one of the early Bowie pioneers. Goodloe’s life as an educator remains forever consistent with the Unitarian Universalist principles that espouse a belief inthe inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; and respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. -- Dick and Barbara Morris, January 2005
The Reverend Lewis McGee • Class of 1948 Meadville Lombard • Ordained in AME Church, 1917 • U.S. Army Chaplain 1918,1943-45 (captain) • First African-American to serve as senior minister of a white Unitarian Church.
The Rev. Dr. Amal Kumar Siddhanta • Class of 1925, Meadville Lombard • Ordained 1926; • Professor, Dyal Singh College, Lahore, India.
Satyananada Roy • Class of 1918, Meadville Lombard. • Lay worker, Brahmo Somaj, India.
Dr. Nubuo Nishiwaki • Class of 1919, Meadville Lombard. • Professor, Okura Higher Commercial School Tokyo.
Totsuan Nomura • Class of 1924, Meadville Lombard
Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley Marjorie Rebekah Bowens was born on August 6, 1949, the fourth of 10 children born to the former Bernice Loretta Wheatley and Daniel Lee Bowens. She spent most of her childhood in Philadelphia, the place of her birth; butwas acculturated in the ways of the south and the Caribbean through the heritage of her parents. She graduated from Dobbins Vocational-Technical School in 967, having majored in Business Education. For the next few years, she worked as a legal and medical secretary. In 1969, she married Alfred Edmonds and from this union, Tonya was born. The couple divorced in 1973. A bit of a late bloomer, Marjorie began her college career at Temple University at the age of 25, double majoring in Radio, Television & Film and Pan-African Studies. She continued graduate studies at the American University where she earned a Master of Arts degree in International Development and Visual Media. Marjorie's career in public television began with a production internship with a weekly program, "Black Perspective on the News," and continued with a nightly news and issue analysis program, "Evening Exchange." In addition to being nominated for an Emmy Award for a program she produced with writer Maya Angelou, Marjorie received the World Hunger Media Award for her hour-long documentary, "After the Rains," which explored drought andenvironmental decay across the Sahara desert. After seven years in the media, and after joining All Souls Church in Washington, D.C., Marjorie felt a calling to work full time in a way that expressed her religious values. She moved to Boston to work as Director of Public Affairs for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. A year later she accepted a position as program officer for the Veatch Program at what is now the Unitarian Universalist Society in Shelter Rock in Manhasset, Long Island. During her three-year tenure there, she was responsible for recommending approximately one million dollars per year to fund organizations working for progressive social change.
Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley Her work at the Service Committee and at the Veatch Program, accompanied by independent study on the theology and ministry of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Howard Thurman, ultimately led Marjorie to understand her own calling to ministry. In the fall of 1991, she entered Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC and in 1994, she was awarded a Master of Divinity degree (cum laude), and was ordained in Washington, DC, in December 1994 at her home congregation, All Souls Church Unitarian. Marjorie became Affiliate, then Associate, Minister at the Community Church of New York City in 1994 and also served as District Extension Minister for the Metro New York District and Field Consultant for the UUA Department of Faith in Action. These assignments continued until she accepted a position as Co-Interim Minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin Texas in 1999, which she served along with her husband, the Reverend Clyde Grubbs. In 2000, Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley joined the UUA staff as Adult Programs Director in the Religious Education department. In 2003, she accepted the call to the UU Church of Tampa, Florida, which she served through 2006. She had accepted a call to serve as Associate Minister of First Unitarian Church of San Diego, California, but withdrew because of illness. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley's imprint on Unitarian Universalism is significant and has helped shape contemporary Unitarian Universalist Association programs and practices in major ways. Please see the fuller and more detailed story of Marjorie's life and contributions on the forthcoming story to be posted on the UUA website. Following a short struggle with gallbladder cancer, Marjorie died quietly at her sister's home in Vineland, NJ, on Dec. 10, 2006, with her daughter, husband and close friends by her side. She is survived by her daughter, Tonya/Talibah Edmonds; her husband, the Rev. Clyde Grubbs; her mother, Bernice; nine siblings, a host of nieces, nephews, cousins, friends and colleagues.
The Reverend Dr. William Sinkford • I found Unitarian Universalist at the age of 14 in Cincinnati, Ohio when My mother dragged me to First Unitarian church. The year was 1961. We had attended the Episcopal church in Detroit and the Black Baptist Church in rural North Carolina. I decided that neither fit my humanist (and arrogant) soul. I’d given up on organized religion. • But I found at First Church a religious home where I could bring all of my questions and my arrogance, my need to rebel and my need to be accepted without having to check any part of myself at the door. I was welcomed by Pauline Warfield Lewis, perhaps the first African American religious educator in our faith. And because that congregations, like so many, had been active in the Civil Rights struggle, there was enough dark faces that I knew it was all right to be black in that sanctuary. • The youth group became my home. Ultimately, I served as President of Liberal Reogious Youth. I imagined become a UU minister. But when Unitarian Universalist withdrew its commitments to racial justice in the early 1970’s, I, too, withdrew, feeling betrayed by my church. It was not until 1985, at the death of my mother, when my home church reached out to me, that k was able to return.
President Wm. Sinkford • Becoming and being President of the Association has been both deeply gratifying and deeply frustrating. That story is not yet fully told. But the experience has reinforced the adage that one of the most valuable skills of leadership the ability to tolerate repetition. My election and service are not a testimony to how far our faith has come. Rather, my presence bears witness to how far Unitarian Universalist has to go. • No other faith could be my religious home. That makes it essential for me to help shape this fiath into a community which is hospitable to me, and my children.
Betty Bobo Seiden • Betty Bobo Seiden was born during the Great Depression (December 22, 1929) the fifth child of Fred Douglas Bobo and Cecelia Phillips in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her father was just finishing Dental School at Marquette University and telegraphed his mother in St. Paul, Minnesota to come help with the new infant. Delighted to find a daughter she had always wanted, Grandma Lillie took the baby back to St. Paul where she remained for the next 14 years. Lillie Harrison Bridges had recently converted to the Pentecostal Church. By the time Betty completed the 10th grade her rejection of her Grandmother's faith resulted in her return to her family in Milwaukee. • There were now 8 children in the Bobo family, all active members of St. Benedict Catholic Church where her mother was organist. Her parents' church fared no better than her grandmother's church at convincing Betty that the Holy Bible was the Word of God. That God was weighed and found wanting.
Betty Bobo Seiden • It was 1955 in New York City that Betty discovered the Unitarian Universalist Church on Lexington Avenue. An advertisement on the bulletin board at Columbia University for a Sunday School teacher attracted her attention. After receiving a Bachelor of Science in English Education and a Master's in English from the University of Wisconsin in Madison Betty had taught one year at A and T College in Greensboro, N.C., another year at A and M University in Tallahassee, Florida and in public schools in Chicago, Betty was taking a few classes at Columbia. The idea of teaching religion was an intriguing one. When she studied the religious education program at All Souls Church she felt that she had found a faith that was meaningful. However, it was not until she had married Richard Seiden and had begun a family in Berkeley, California that she sought a congregation in which to educate her children. At the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley Betty assumed several responsibilities beginning with teaching in the Church School, joining the religious education committee, the denominational affairs committee, the social concerns committee, the pulpit selection committee, and becoming a delegate to PCD meetings and the General Assembly.
Ms. Betty Bobo Seiden • At the Cleveland General Assembly in 1968 Betty was elected Secretary of the newly formed Unitarian Universalists’ for Black and White Action, BAWA. For the next several years she edited the Newsletter, wrote Project Papers, and was especially inspired by composing two television public affairs announcements for BAWA. One pointed out how the history of the USA was the history of all the people who came from other lands and contributed to American culture, the other defined who is an "American". Meanwhile, the Seiden family had moved to Oakland, and for several years Betty sang in the choir of both the First Church of Berkeley and the First Church of Oakland. In Oakland she also became secretary and then President of the Board of Trustees. • At the denominational level, Betty's involvement included attendance at the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) meeting in Japan, service on the Meadville Lombard Board of Trustees, the Independent Study Committee as it made the transition to the Modified Residency Program at Meadville Lombard, the UU Funding Panel and the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. • Betty's professional life was as busy as her religious life. In 1984 she was awarded the Marcus A. Foster Educational Institute's Distinguished Educator Award for her outstanding teaching in a program for pregnant high school students in Oakland, California. She retired in January 1990, but continues to be active as a docent at the Oakland Museum of California.
I lift my eyes up to the hills – • from where will my help come? • my help comes from Love abundant • my help comes from the hills • my help – my help it comes from • ancient mothers – whose hearts beat • in mine • It comes from the trees that sway & the breeze that • sways them…my help comes from • all that was and is and will ever be… • I lift my eyes…hushed by the soothing touch of waves • caressing wounded shores • wounded souls • I lift my eyes…to the horizon bathed by • the hum of mothers & mother’s mothers • cradling – gently rocking • I lift my voice – call of sea hum trees sister moon mother earth • my soul weeping – a symphony of life overflowing • I give myself • I too hum through every pore… • with every breath… • I give myself… • an extension of • all that is was and will ever be. • - Alicia Forde Rev. Alicia Forde
Rev. Alicia Forde At thirteen I sat on the beach watching the sun set. Do you know that moment…the moment when the sun first meets the horizon? The kiss lightly “hello” – then the embrace begins? That moment when sun and sea seem to melt seamlessly into one effortless creation…new every evening and at the same time birthing dusk – if you are observant, careful – you will see the moon and maybe, just maybe a brave star. Depending on your angle, it will seem as though the coconut trees are offering a blessing – and the waves are humming a prayer. At thirteen – just for one evening, one private moment, I had the right angle and there was an instant in all of this that I could not tell where I began/ended – it was not the sun, but I who melted seamlessly…and it was I who nodded my lean body offering a blessing…my tears were waves praying for World. In that one moment, god was everywhere in all things and beyond all; transcendent and immanent – in that one moment, I heard the sea calling…. Calling. And without knowing why, I gave myself. …At the cornerstone of that calling and my own theological outlook is “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” as well as a deep appreciation for the “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder…which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” Coming to this ecclesial body has been a blessing…in many ways, it had to be this one “free church movement” and no other. While the U.U. movement remains a work in progress, what is significant at this time for me is that we remain so – willing to engage and live into what it means to be wholly alive, struggling with race/class/gender/sexism/religious pluralism/political conflict and so on – all of which shapes us as we seek to shape and influence them. As challenging as it often is, what draws me and keeps me here is the opportunity to wrestle in community – as well as opportunities to live out my authentic theological praxis. As bell hooks posits: Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. The empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks. The same can be said of our Unitarian Universalist community. The calling, my calling is not to be a pastoral presence or spiritual guide in the absence of a communal context, but to do and be in a community committed to a holistic way of being, of teaching/learning…a community that cares deeply enough to risk vulnerability as a way of being empowered and empowering. A community wise enough to pay attention to the World’s ever-present, polyphonic hum.
Rev. Addae Watson I am Addae L. Watson. I was born an only child to Willie E. Watson and Marion A. Skinner. Raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi, I grew up in an extended family of parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Baptist by denomination, my family’s Christian centered values seemed similar to those reflected in most African American’s lives of the day, however, in retrospect; I recognize that their approach to community action was very liberal. My great grandparents had an open door policy that was extended to anyone in need, regardless of race, creed, or color. My great grandmother embodied the practice of the “Good Samaritan” that she read about in her daily scriptures, as she clothed the naked, and feed the hungry. It was through her modeling that I learned how to give unselfishly. I truly believe that giving and receiving are linked together in the flow of the universe. I entered St. Mary’s Catholic School in Vicksburg, Mississippi, when I was five years old, and it was at this tender age, that I discovered a connection to the Holy. In those days, it was common practice to keep the doors of Catholic churches unlocked around the clock. I loved slipping inside whenever I could, and while kneeling in the cavernous sanctuary, surrounded by silence, I felt a mystical presence that spoke to my young spirit. It was through those experiences that led to my converting to Catholicism as a teenager. My conversion began a relationship with the church that lasted through a marriage, the rearing of five children, and a divorce. After the disintegration of my twenty-eight year marriage, I experienced what I considered a crisis of faith. I severed my ties to the church, and withdrew from any form of organized religion for two years. As I went from church to church seeking solace to filling the spiritual void that I felt, I continued to come up empty. After an introduction to publications on metaphysics, I became intently engrossed in the subject, and I began to read every book that I could find on the subject. So rather than continue to church shop, Sunday mornings became a time to curl up with a good book for the edification of my soul.
Rev. Addae Watson During my two year hiatus, I left the mainland, and moved to Maui, Hawaii, where nature became my church without walls. This was a major turning point in they way I began to view my connection to every living thing on the planet. I began to feel less like a child that needed to be protected by the divine, and more like an en extension of a divine universal presence that I believe is accessible to each of us. After moving to San Francisco in 1996, I began to seek again, only this time the seeking was in the form of a request to God for direction to a higher purpose for my life. The response to that request came in the form of an experience that I can only describe as mystical. I believe that any call to serve is a response to some void that is felt by those who ultimately serve. So that whatever forms my ministry takes, I am ultimately filling answering a call to my higher self in connection to the Holy. Knowing that I was headed toward ministry, once again I began to search for a spiritual/church home. I found it in the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco. I became a member in the spring of 1999, and entered seminary at Starr King School for the Ministry in the fall of 2000. I was finally home, and excited at the possibility of finding a community of nonjudgmental, free thinkers. I consider myself a liberal Christian, inasmuch that my theology is rooted in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as a master teacher. However, I draw on the wisdom found in the major world religions, believing that each small truth that we all gather together with, adds to the larger Truth that we can all learn from
Rev. Jennifer Ryu When I was 6 years old, I emigrated from South Korea and grew up in a small town in Ohio. My parents were, and still are, members of the Korean Presbyterian church. I never felt comfortable in that religious tradition and stopped going to church as soon as I left the house. As a young adult, living and working in Baltimore, I would walk to work, often taking a path next to the Parish House of the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore. Hanging on the exterior brick wall a poster called the Wayside Pulpit displayed a different quote every month. They were sometimes funny, sometimes irreverent, but always thought-provoking. I wanted to know who these people were, with their eclectic spirituality. But the solid wooden doors looked formidable, and it took some time before I walked through them. Once inside, I found a loving and welcoming community. The congregation was elderly and their numbers were small, but there was great hope in the air. They were in search for a new minister, and the congregation soon voted to call a husband-wife co-ministry team. I was invited to join a visioning task force to help the new ministers plan their first year. I soon took on the leadership of the Social Action committee. We cooked meals for the soup kitchen next door, we repaired homes in low-income neighborhoods, and we started tutoring neighborhood children. I was also their newsletter editor for several years.
Rev. Jennifer Ryu Over years, I learned about the Unitarian Universalist faith, social justice, and my own spirituality. I started questioning every part of my life and even considered entering the ministry. One significant event during those years was meeting the Rev. Cheng Imm Tan, the first UU of Asian decent I had ever met, and a minister too! Though we were strangers, we plunged into an intensely personal conversation about our shared experiences of being a racial minority in this religious movement. A few months after that meeting, I sent away for brochures from Starr King School and Meadville Lombard. I immediately filed them away, rejecting the idea that I could ever be wise enough to be a minister. Instead, I completed an MBA program in Human Resources Management. I worked in that field until the year 2000, when I finally found the courage to leave the well-worn path of corporate life to experience life on the edges of that path. I spent the next year in Seoul, studying Korean Zen, re-connecting with family, and re-learning my native tongue. While there, I decided to apply to Starr King, and I entered seminary in 2002. I met my husband there, and we now serve the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists as co-ministers.
Rev. Jackie Clement I was born in Newark, New Jersey, the youngest of two daughters born to Harry L. Clement and Daisy Caban Clement. At my birth, my parents decided to move from the city to the New Jersey suburbs where I was raised and attended school until I went away to college. In my early years my maternal grandmother, Margarita Maria Soto Rodriguez Caban, lived with us. Born in Aricebo, Puerto Rico, my grandmother was, and remains, one of my greatest heroes. A devout Roman Catholic, she was also a strong influence on my early theology teaching me that one did not have to be in a church building to pray and that our actions spoke more strongly of our character than did our espoused beliefs. Both very Unitarian Universalist concepts in my view! My paternal grandmother, Blanche Bouchet Clement Shorr, was a frequent visitor and also a strong influence in my life. From Enzac, France, she had, like my maternal grandmother, brought a young family to build a new life in a land where she did not speak the language. From my grandmothers I received a sense of possibility, a sense of the strength of women and an appreciation of the cultures from which I come. Food figured prominently in their lessons of home!
Rev. Jackie Clement Although our family attended the Presbyterian Church until I was ten or eleven years old, my father had a strong interest in all religions, a trait I think I picked up from him. I remember him attending services with Catholic, Baha’i and Jewish congregations and speaking to me about different beliefs. This, in my teen years, turned into my own religious questing, but it was not until I moved to Massachusetts and married my husband, John Ford, that I found the Unitarian Universalist movement. Both trained as engineers, my husband and I worked in what we found to be a somewhat isolating high tech industry. While we had good friends at work, few were fully part of our lives, and at home our neighborhood had little social interaction. We found ourselves wanting a stronger community bond, and began attending the First Church Unitarian in Littleton, MA, in 1990. We quickly became engaged in the life of the church my husband joining the choir while I baked several thousand brownies for the Neighborhood Supper. Then committee work, committee work! And we were home. Over time and through involvement in the church my commitment to the Unitarian Universalist movement grew, as did my need for a work environment that both embraced and expressed my values and spiritual life. I attended Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, MA graduating in 2004. I was ordained by my home congregation of First Church Unitarian in Littleton in October of that same year. I was also the very luckiest of ministers to serve my first congregation in Rockland, Maine as interim minister. The following year I served as Interim Minister in Saco, ME, and then on to Saugus, MA. As I slowly float my way down the east coast of the US I continue to deepen in love and appreciation from this amazing opportunity to minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, where my full being and my heritage are embraced.
Rev. John Crestwell Rev. John Thomas Crestwell, Jr. is a native Washingtonian. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Mass Media Arts from Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, and earned his Master's Degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. Rev. John serves as the Senior Minister at Davies Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Camp Springs, Maryland, where he is active in a diversity growth plan that has assisted Davies into becoming one of the most diverse churches in the UUA. On June 24th, 2005, at the UUA's annual General Assembly, John received his certificate of Preliminary Parish Fellowship at the Service of the Living Tradition in Fort Worth, Texas. He was ordained and installed in September, 2005 of that year as the first African American minister of Davies, in a ceremony that included a visit from the UUA's first African American President, Bill Sinkford. John has authored two publications: "Charge of the Chalice", due out in 2007, which tells the story of how Davies church went from 8% diversity to nearly 40% diversity, in three years; and he also wrote "Conversations: The Hidden Truth That Keeps The World From Being At Peace," published in 2001, which highlighted his ever-evolving theological beliefs after graduating from a Methodist seminary to become a UU minister. John is active in the UUA, serving as co-chair of the Baltimore-Washington Diversity Committee, and he serves on two boards: The Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), and Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of Maryland (UULMM). He continues to be an adjunct professor at Potomac College, in Washington, DC, teaching Comparative Religion, Public Speaking, and Principles of Marketing & Advertising.
Sunrit Mullick Back in the early eighties, I got interested in the Brahmo Samaj, the faith of my ancestors. I wanted to become a minister of the Brahmo Samaj. I obtained a Master’s degree in Comparative Religion in 1984 from Visva-Bharati University, India. Then I met Spencer Lavan in Kolkata who arranged a grant for me to come to Meadville/Lombard Theological School where several ministers of the Brahmo Samaj had trained between 1900 and 1932. The tradition broke off at that time and I re-started it. I obtained a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) in 1988. My doctoral dissertation “Protap Chandra Majumdar in America: Missionary of a New Dispensation” documents, for the first time, Brahmo Samaj leader Protap Chandra Majumdar’s three visits to the USA in the late 19th century, the first being ten years before Swami Vivekananda’s historic visit to the USA. In 1988, just after I graduated, I was invited to Boston for a meeting with Bill Schulz, the then UUA President and Spencer Lavan, both of whom I knew very well. Melvin Hoover, whom I met for the first time and who handled international congregations at that time, was assigned to be my supervisor. The UUA agreed to fund a ministry in India through a program called Project India. I returned to India and started a ministry with the Brahmo Samaj and Unitarian groups. For the first time, the Brahmos and Unitarians saw professional ministry in practice. The youth enjoyed my reformist ways and styles of preaching. But the leadership of the Brahmo Samaj, which over the years had ossified into an orthodox community, didn’t. They killed the program. And the UUA supported them against their own employee. I learned later from a Unitarian friend in India that the Brahmo Samaj representative in the IARF, Punyabrata Roychoudhury, had successfully influenced John Beuhrens, the then President, whom I had never met, telling him that I was over-qualified for India and that I should be recalled by the UUA.
Sunrit Mullick Every summer I would return to Boston to report on my work, and attend GA. The reporting was one way, though. I never got any feedback from the UUA, though they had assigned Mel Hoover to be my supervisor. In the summer of 1994, I walked in to the office of John Beuhrens, to do my customary reporting. I was meeting him for the first time. He told me curtly that the Project was over and handed me over to Ken MacLain to discuss my separation formalities with the UUA. Ken took me to his home, not far from Beacon Street, but seemed more interested in his gin and tonic and afternoon nap than my future. I was married then with a young son of three years. No one at the UUA was interested in the sudden separation; no one called for any explanation. Except Max Gaebler, Minister Emeritus of the First Unitarian of Madison, Wisconsin. I was his intern during my student days. But his was a voice in the wilderness. In the winter of 1995 I came to Harvard Divinity School as a Merrill Fellow. My family accompanied me. I read a lot on Islam and wrote several articles that were published in the Statesman of Kolkata. In August we returned home, and Project India was over. I struggled for five years doing this and that, including weddings, funerals and christenings. In 1999 I joined the United States Educational Foundation in India as the Regional Officer of its Eastern Regional Office at Kolkata. My office is a Fulbright Commission, administering the Indo-US Fulbright Fellowship Program. It is also a US Department of State affiliated Educational Advising Center, advising students on the procedures for pursuing higher education in the United States. I love my job. I have lectured widely on the subject of Comparative Religion in India, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. I have published around ten scholarly articles, around forty human interest articles and seven short stories. I have been learning the sitar under a guru for over ten years now. My wife Jyoti and I have a son who is fifteen and a daughter who is nine. Abhi Prakash Janamanchi, minister of a UU church in Florida, came under my influence during my ministry years in India. I returned to India to practice ministry, as was my intention when I went to Meadville, but Abhi stayed on in the US. Who was the wiser?
Mary Knight I am a Latina minister whose specialty is Community Ministry. I am a chaplain and have served as a hospice bereavement counselor. I also lead workshops, retreats, and Sunday worship. My path to Unitarian Universalist ministry began when I was born the seventh child and only daughter to a large working class, Catholic family. It was my maternal grandmother who contributed our Latina heritage. Clotilde Viela emigrated as a young woman from Mazatlan. She sought economic opportunity as she, too, was the youngest in a large family. Her father had died when she was a young child, and her mother died after Clotilde nursed her through her final illness. Clotilde worked in the cotton fields in New Mexico until the field supervisor insisted she “belonged” in the house because of her beauty and light complexion. She and the supervisor were married and had two daughters. The younger of the two was Sara, my mother. When I arrived, the Knight family lived in a small town in Eastern Oregon. My parents had very little means. They married at age 18 in 1940 before my father joined the Navy during World War II. All their lives, they worked hard and resourcefully to support their family. It was understood that each child would also “pull their weight” to contribute to the running of the home. The town’s Catholic Church and parochial school formed the heart of our community. There was very little cultural diversity there. But in the mid-1960s we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. I was immersed in diversity at the impressionable age of 10; my peers as well as my teachers were of many colors and ethnicities. A child of the sixties, I grew up surrounded by the struggles of minorities. Thus, when I discovered Unitarian Universalists in Hawaii during my twenties, I knew I had found a faith that honored diversity. It could grow as a community where people of any identity might be an integral part of the whole. As a woman and as a Latina, I hold dear this faith that honors and supports a truly inclusive community.
Rev. John Gilmore Dr. John W. Gilmore entered the ministry with the promise that he would receive funds to do a church startup in a disempowered, African-American community. He waited for this to happen throughout his ministry and it never did. He began his ministry as 3/4 time Associate minister at First Church of Chicago and 1/4 Diversity Outreach Consultant for the Central Midwest district for one year. He was called as Senior minister at UU Church of Manchester for five years, 1/2 time Interim minister at UU Church of Gardner, MA for one year, and 1/2 time Social-Justice minister at First Parish Framingham for one year. He was the Co-Director and then the Director of UUJEC. Dr. Gilmore was a volunteer for the UUA Journey Toward Wholeness program in various forms from 1993 to 2005 and is presently a JUUST UU consultant. He served on local and UUA boards during his ministry. Dr. Gilmore decided to become a community minister in 2001, when he discovered that the association would not permit outreach to disempowered African-American communities. He worked with the disempowered part time, and received no UUA financial support. His Speaking the truth in leadership circles, led to a slow, but consistent withdraw of support from UUA officials leaving him, like many African American ministers, in limbo. Dr. Gilmore is presently writing, and working with individuals in Costa Rica, providing teaching and alternative health practices to reduce stress and improve health, and doing his ministry through The Circle, on the internet.
Rev. Rebekah Montgomery I have been a Unitarian Universalist all my life. I am a person of color, from a rich diversity of family traditions - including African-American, Greek and Jewish. As an interracial couple in the late 1960's, my parents were drawn to the open and welcoming message of our UU movement. I was raised in a congregation that loved me and my family and gave me a safe place to blossom as a young woman. The seeds of my present calling directly relate to my UU youth group experience as a junior and senior high school student. I felt drawn to positions of leadership and deepened my love for my faith group. As a college student, I studied religious traditions from all over the world, emphasing non-Western traditions, as well as Women's Studies. It was by accident I landed at seminary - my college advisor steered me away from a master's degree program in Religious Studies and I had the sense to listen. At seminary, in all the beauty and urban cacophany that is New York City, I bounced back and forth between the answering the call to ministry. Over the three years, my calling swelled and grew in my consciousness. A few years later, I completed my ordination requirements and found my final true calling as an Army chaplain. This too was quite a surprise to me...actually, a shock. In the depths of professional uncertainty and feeling a profound need to serve our country after September 11th, I turned towards the military and by accident, I found that I not only thrive, but love my ministry. After less than a year in, I was called to serve in Afghanistan - and along with my husband, a fellow officer - we served 18 months in this war torn country, wobbling on new found legs of stability.
Rev. Rebekah Montgomery As an Army chaplain, I feel that being a UU is invaluable to serving the maximum number of soldiers and service members. My daily duty is to provide a calming pastoral presence, counseling and religious support to my troops - or as I call it...I get to love all over them. No matter who they are when they walk through the door, it is my responsibility to care for them and help them. No judgment. No prerequisite of being a person of faith. Just love and acceptance. I have walked with men and women through intense pain and loneliness - and countless suicidal crisis. I have held my troops racked with guilt for surviving when a buddy didn't. I have honored fallen heroes who have paid the ultimate price for freedom. I have laughed, danced and celebrated what makes the human spirit so great - our love and sacrifice for one another and our collective hope for a better and more peaceful world. My picture is from a wedding I attended last summer in Kabul, Afghanistan. The groom is the nephew of an American woman who married an Afghan decades ago and has lived in Kabul ever since. Six American female soldiers were invited to attend the wedding - this is a picture from the women's side of the event.
Barbara Avent I applied to Iliff School of Theology January 2004, and was accepted in the Summer Quarter. I left Religious Science February that same year. I knew that I had to go church shopping, that's not an easy task. On my spiritual path I have been Baptist, Methodists, Buddhists, and Religious Science. I had several meetings with Rev. Joan Van Becelare, Iliff Vice-president of Student Affairs, and told her about my spiritual journey. Joan suggested that I visit UU churches or fellowships because of its intellectual flavor. UU people who covenant together are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Earth Religions, or humanists, atheists and agnostics. On UUA’s web site, I read about UU’s active stance for social justice from the time of the abolitionists, woman's rights, civil rights, gay rights, and now civil marriage and civil liberties. I signed the book at First Universalist September 2004, and became a member of the congregation. As a member I feel that becoming a UU continues to allow me to explore and experience more spiritual guidance. I do know that community ministry and social justice will shape a lot of my ministry. In the mean time I continue to work with the MDD Social Justice people under the leadership of Rev. Deborah Holden. I have served on the worship committee at First Universalist, and am a Beyond Categorical Thinking trainer. I am in the candidate status on track to become an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. Barbara is working in the Mountain Desert District doing a community ministry internship. As a seminarian student at Iliff School of Theology, I am obtaining a Masters of Divinity degree with an emphasis in Peace and Justice. I have two married adult daughters. My oldest daughters family is composed of Billy, Tracey, Mustafa and Marquis Tilmon. My other daughters family consists of Neo and Nicole Avent-Henry and son, Gerald Avent and baby Natalia Patrice born in December 2006. When I have free time I like to paint contemporary watercolors, and abstract acrylic paintings, as well as, collect various dolphin artifacts.
Rev. Don Robinson Often, life with all its detours and tribulations leads us to where we are supposed to be I was born in West Virginia in 1938. My father was a coal miner, and my mother was a housewife. My father struck out on his own at age 10 and became a coal miner at age 16. My mother struck out on her own at age 16. I was the 12th of fourteen children. My family was a member of a coal mining company town. The company town provided your housing and other life sustaining needs. My father would later be laid off and providing for his family became a day-to-day struggle. At times, he bent under the enormous pressure. Life was hard in the hills of West Virginia for every one and for every family. Poverty was high and even today, the economy of the state is considered one of the most fragile of any U.S. state. To survive, White and Black worked together, played together, borrowed from each other, and lived next door to each other. Poverty, the threat of death, and death were the great equalizers. However, church and school were strictly segregated. Growing up in the mountains of West Virginia, revivals were my biggest exposure to institutional religion. But for the most part, I learned religion in my home and in the coal mining community where I was reared. I learned that religion was how we related to one another and how we treated one another, including the people outside our home. When I was twelve years old, my family moved to Rand, West Virginia near Charleston. Most of the children in Rand attended Sunday school. I also decided to attend. I went a few times, but I did not or could not connect the teachings to my life. After becoming an adult, I made an effort to connect to the Fundamentalist Churches, but the messages were not relative to my life condition. I stopped attending any church at all. In 1970 while attending graduate school, another student asked me if I would come to her church (All Souls Unitarian Universalist) and help her organize and facilitate a youth group for grades 9 through 12. I did. During the summer months, we visited the children’s homes to talk and meet with the parents (and the youth). This project went very well and at the same time, a connection came alive inside me. At the time, David Eaton was the minister. He was the church’s first Black-American minister. One Sunday, I heard David speak. He talked about the here and now and not just the hereafter. I was won over. I found a religion that wanted to deal with the problems of the world TODAY. In I and Thy, Martin Buber says, you have to engage people and if you don’t, you cannot connect with God. I learned that Unitarian Universalists are encouraged to keep open minds, to do something about the ills of society, and to affirm and promote, among other things, justice, equity, and the worth of every person.
Rev. Don Robinson I was an elementary school teacher in the Washington, D.C. Public Schools. I saw children and families in trouble and children without sufficient food and guidance. I knew I had to do something. My growing Unitarian Universalist (UU) involvement and the connections with my life in West Virginia interconnected. If there was an intersection, it was my need to make the world a better place for children and families, and my growing UU involvement had directions and encouragements on how to make the world a better place. At the Unitarian Universalist church, people would identify a problem and automatically get together to organize to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT PROBLEM. I took a detour and decided to become a counselor working with troubled children and their families. The more I worked directly in the communities, I decided even more was needed. I also decided to formally study to become a UU minister. I went to divinity school and at the same time, I started to identify a community to help in any way I could. I started with one run-down room. I graduated from Howard University Divinity School, became ordained, and more committed and connected to the UU principles. Little by little and with the assistance of many people and many UU churches, Beacon House came to life. Beacon House is today a viable organization serving children and their families in order to provide children a way to make it in life through educational attainment. Many supportive activities are in place to make this happen. Beacon House provides food, homework assistance, a warm and safe environment, college information and assistance, and a place where all races and ages interact – just like we did in West Virginia. I started this search for a religion with the statement about every road and detour eventually leading us to where we are supposed to be. Every life experience I have ever had has led me to the Unitarian Universalist church and to dedicate myself to helping children, their families, and to helping communities. In the hills of West Virginia, we had to help each other in order to survive. In our urban and suburban communities of today, we must help each other in order to survive. In the World community, we must help and understand each other in order to survive. I took detours and life, at times, has been difficult ─ but I am where I was meant to be. It all started in the hills of West Virginia with a coal miner father with a third grade education and a housewife mother.
