The light we kindle is set in the lamp of our history.
We inherit this free faith from the brave and gentle, fierce and outspoken, hearts and minds that have come before us.
Let us be worthy inheritors of this faith, and through our good works, pass it boldly to a new generation.
~ Rev. Audette Fulbright (All Souls Associate Minister 2016-2023)
The Annual Bellows Lecture
History of the Annual Bellows Lecture
The tradition of offering a yearly paid lecture by a historian, author, or other expert, on a topic of interest to the church community, was born in 1978. We named it the Bellows Lecture in honor of our esteemed second minister, Henry Whitney Bellows.
The first Bellows lecture came about because two years earlier, in 1976, Mary-Ella Holst, then Director of Religious Education, suggested creating a display of children’s books by UU authors for an upcoming New York Metro District RE meeting. The project soon turned into an annotated bibliography, Unitarian-Universalist Contributions to Literature for Children, which was published, sold, and turned a modest profit. At the same time, Jane Giles, a doctoral student, was researching Catharine Maria Sedgwick in the All Souls archives for her dissertation, and needed a research grant to continue her work. Mary-Ella and her colleagues decided to use the profits from the book to pay Giles to give a lecture to the congregation on Sedgwick in 1978. That experience also helped launch the All Souls Historical Society a few years later.
Click here for a list of (most of) the Bellows Lectures since they began.
2025
The lecture, "Reconstructing Our Unitarian History: Perils and Possibilities," was given by Rev. Wayne Arnason on Friday, May 16th.
In this lecture, Rev. Arnason told 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 discusses the complicated but meaningful relationship between Rev. Brown and Rev. Laurance Neale, the minister of All Souls, in the 1940s and 50s.
Rev. Arnason's talk was based on his 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.
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 the congregation members to attend both churches, and to join both 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.
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 racism, wealth and status, and truly understanding different cultural communities.
The Rev. Dr. Wayne Arnason retired in 2016 from a forty-year career in Unitarian Universalist ministry serving in both parish ministry and in staff and governance roles in the Unitarian Universalist Association. Since retiring, he has taken up his passion for history. A graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, Wayne Arnason was recognized by Meadville Lombard Theological School in 2014 with their honorary doctorate degree for his lifetime of service. Arnason has published an institutional history of the liberal religious youth movement entitled We Would Be One (2005) and an internally published history of the UUA’s Ministerial Fellowship Committee entitled In Fellowship (2020). He is part of a team presenting the 2025 Minns Lectures entitled "Deconstructing Mythologies of Unitarian Anti-Racism" (click for video). He currently volunteers as the Archivist of the UU Congregation in Charlottesville VA and is married to Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, who was All Souls' Bridge Senior Minister from January to June, 2025.
Rev. Dr. Wayne Arnason
2023
The lecture was given on Sunday, October 15th, by Professor April Masten on "Laborers in the Fields of the Beautiful: Professional Women Artists of 19th Century New York."
Professor Masten is Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University, where she specializes in nineteenth-century America, teaching courses on the Early Republic, antebellum, and Civil War eras, industrialization, slavery, women’s history, and popular culture.
She told us the fascinating story of how in the mid-nineteenth century hundreds of women traveled from far and wide to study at the free Cooper Union to become professional artists with the encouragement of Peter Cooper, founder of Cooper Union and member of All Souls, and Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune and member of the Fourth Universalist Society.
Professor April Masten
2022
The 2022 Bellows Lecture was given on Nov. 13th by Professor Lydia Willsky-Ciollo of Fairfield University. The title was "Strange Bedfellows? Henry David Thoreau and Unitarianism."
Henry David Thoreau left the Unitarian church in his early 20s, and famously found his church out in nature, where "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads" as he wrote in Walden. He has been viewed by scholars and popular audiences alike as anti-religious. However, his calls to a more simple life, the preservation of nature’s resources, a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and the use of reason and conscience as a guide, are now all reflected in our Unitarian Universalist Principles. The lecture explored Thoreau's relationship to his nineteenth-century Christian, specifically Unitarian, context, positing that perhaps Thoreau was not so far from those who sat in the pews on Sundays, as many imagine him to be.
Dr. Lydia Willsky-Ciollo is an historian of American religion, with a focus on Early Republic and antebellum religious movements, particularly Unitarians, Transcendentalists, and new religious movements. In her work she seeks to expand the traditionally Christian narrative of American religion to include those often excluded due to gender, race, class, ethnicity, or religious tradition.
Professor Lydia Willsky-Ciollo
2021
The 37th Annual Bellows Lecture took place on Sunday, Nov. 14th, 2:00-3:30pm, on Zoom. Professor Christopher Cameron of the University of North Carolina spoke on "Unitarianism, African Americans and Abolitionism."
Dr. Cameron is Professor of History and Chair of the Africana Studies department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and was the founding president of the African American Intellectual History Society. His research and teaching interests include early American history, the history of slavery and abolition, and African American religious and intellectual history.
His talk focused the ideological origins of American abolitionism, locating the movement’s ideas and strategies in Unitarian theology, especially biblical interpretation techniques and notions of self-culture and the benevolent and loving nature of God. He also examined how denominational politics informed participation in the abolitionist movement, with leading figures of the denomination often more lukewarm about radical abolitionism than more marginal members like Samuel Joseph May. We learned about Black Transcendentalism and the Adelphic Union, and Dr. Cameron concluded by discussing Rev. Bellows himself, including his early opposition to abolitionism and embrace instead of colonization, and how Bellows' views changed during the Civil War.
Dr. Chris Cameron
2020
The 36th Annual Henry Whitney Bellows Lecture was given on Sunday, Nov. 22nd, from 1:00-2:30p.m., by Bernard Unti of the Humane Society of the United States and was titled, "Henry Bergh: Animal Advocate, New Yorker, Unitarian, and “Riddle Of The 19th Century.”
Dr. Unti is a scholar and recognized authority on the animal protection movement, whose expertise includes the history and sociology of the humane movement; the development of animal sheltering and the kindness-to-animals ethic; and the place of animal protection within American social reform and philanthropy.
Bernard Unti and friend
Henry Bergh, founder of the ASPCA and member of All Souls, stopping an over-crowded carriage pulled by a pair of suffering horses.
“The Crowded Car” by Sol Erynge,
Harpers Weekly, 1872
Dr. Unti spoke about Henry Bergh, the 19th-century member of All Souls who founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866, and the history of animal protection. Our minister at the time, Rev. Henry Whitney Bellows, worked with Bergh to found the ASPCA, and Peter Cooper, another prominent member of the church, was also on the board of the ASPCA. Click here for the recording.
2019
The 35th Bellows Lecture was given by Joan Tower, renowned composer and great-granddaughter of Rev. Henry Whitney Bellows. Her talk took the form of a conversation between her and Peggy Kampmeier, professor of music at Manhattan School of Music and member of All Souls, about her inspirations and family memories.
Dr. Tower was commissioned to write a major composition for All Souls, to be performed at the re-opening of the sanctuary after completion of the renovations.
Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, Trent Johnson,
Joan Tower and Peggy Kampmeier