The 2025 Annual Bellows Lecture

"Reconstructing Our Unitarian History: Perils and Possibilities"

given by Rev. Wayne Arnason on Friday, May 16th at All Souls

Click below for video:

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Click here for the full text as a PDF

 

Summary by Lois Coleman:

 

Rev. Arnason told us the fascinating story of Rev. Egbert Ethelred Brown, a Jamaican immigrant who was the first Black minister to start a Unitarian church in North America, and his efforts to make it into a racially integrated congregation. His church, which never had the funds to build its own building, was the Harlem Unitarian Church. Rev. Arnason also discussed the complicated but meaningful relationship between Rev. Brown and Rev. Laurance Neale, the minister of this church, in the 1940s and 50s.

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This history was based on hours of research in the All Souls Archives and the Ethelred Brown papers at the Schaumberg Library of the NYPL. Rev. Arnason told us how Rev. Brown faced much skepticism—from white Unitarian leaders and even from Harlem’s Black elite—but his drive and spirit enabled him to keep his church going for 35 years, from 1920 until his death in 1955. He became a respected leader in his community, where he was the President of the Jamaican Progressive League, and was also very involved in the Jamaican independence movement.

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Rev. Neale tried to support the Harlem Unitarian Church by inviting Rev. Brown to preach at All Souls often, starting in the early 1940s, and encouraging their congregation members to attend each other’s services, joining both churches if they wished. However, even though the two ministers developed a warm friendship, led services together and wrote numerous letters back and forth, Rev. Neale never really put his weight behind the funding needed to keep Rev. Brown’s church going. Rev. Arnason outlined some of the reasons for this, which included the fact that All Souls was also struggling financially, but also that there was plenty of unacknowledged racism and lack of understanding of Black church culture among the All Souls congregation.

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Although the Harlem Unitarian Church ultimately did not thrive as a multiracial community, the story told by Rev. Arnason was inspiring. It provides valuable lessons for the ongoing work of racial justice in Unitarian Universalism. As Rev. Arnason reminded us, it involves confronting three big challenges: building real, honest interracial relationships, dealing with the power gaps tied to wealth and status, and truly understanding different cultural communities.​​​