2. Congregation Histories : Iowa

Burlington

Unitarian Fellowship of Burlington

The Unitarian Fellowship of Burlington was founded in 1950 with sixteen original members. Two public meetings had been addressed previously by Monroe Husbands from the American Unitarian Association. For two years, monthly services of worship were held in a small auditorium at the YWCA. In 1952, with some financial aid from the Iowa Unitarian Association, an old carriage house was purchased and remodeled into an attractive meeting house, which stands on a spacious lot in an excellent situation. Besides the principal room for worship services and other meetings, it contains a small kitchen, rest room and the common room for coffee hours on the first floor, and religious education rooms and the minister’s study on the second floor.

During the first six years, 27 successive guest preachers conducted worship services. They included Dr. Frederick May Eliot, President of the American Unitarian Association, and the leading Unitarian ministers from Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, Davenport, Urbana, Miami, Florida, and the President and faculty from Meadville Theological School, including an eminent Dutch theologian.

In 1956, the Rev. John W. Brigham came to be the first minister of the Fellowship, also acting part-time in ministerial recruitment from coast to coast for the Stevens Committee of the American Unitarian Association. When he was called to the Department of Ministry in Boston in 1959, the Fellowship ordained James Curtis who served us for two years. During an interim, the Fellowship was assisted by Rev. Carl Bretz, a Chaplain at a nearby mental health institute. In 1963, the Fellowship called George Brooks who also taught physics at the high school. Justin Kahn was ordained in 1968 and left to serve in the navy in 1970, followed by Raymond Rohrbach who was ordained in 1970 and who died in an auto accident in 1973. In 1974 Dr. Brigham returned as the minister of the Fellowship, and soon after he began to serve a joint ministry with the Fellowship and the Quincy, Illinois Unitarian Church. The present minister, the Rev. Eric A. Haugen, was ordained in 1982 and also serves this joint ministry.

The Fellowship currently has 43 members. Worship services are held every other Sunday, with forums on a variety of timely topics at the same time on alternate Sundays. Church school convenes at the same time each week.

Finally, since it is housed in a former carriage house, the Fellowship has possibly the only church building where the Commons room has a windowsill, which a horse has chewed!

April 16, 1986 (No author noted)