2. Congregation Histories : Kansas

Topeka

Brief History of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

A visitor to our Fellowship gazing at the sleek lines of the 1983 building addition would not be likely to stop to consider that this congregation of religious liberals has a rich history of 102 years. Until recently few of our own members were aware that our congregation was organized and first held services in 1883 as a fellowship of twelve people, meeting in the home of our founders, George and Adelaide Wood. The congregation dedicated the building that was to be its home for fifty-six years in November of 1886.

So it is with the challenge of new endeavors that we learn about ourselves, our history, and are inspired by the visions and hopes of our forebears. None of us expected the search committee’s project would lead us to understand our past in the detail that has been revealed. And yet in the process of researching our history, we have discovered original documents, lovingly kept logs from the depression years and records of district Unitarian meetings held in Topeka beginning in 1889.

The “Golden Age” of First Unitarian Church was in the years 1921–1932 when Clifton Merritt Gray served as its minister. Under his leadership the church became an intellectual and cultural center where controversial ideas were aired in Sunday night forums and prominent Americans, Unitarian and otherwise, frequently made Topeka a way station in their travels. The church and its activities were often in the headlines of the Topeka Daily Capital. Mr. Gray, a Harvard classmate of American Unitarian Association president Louis Cornish, was AUA Minister-at-Large, with a salary partially subsidized by the Association.

The Depression years brought a decline in membership, financial support, and a subsequent merger with First Congregational Church in 1940. The original building was sold, razed and fifty of our members joined the Congregational Church, which became nominally affiliated with the AUA. One of our more cynical members referred to this as a “submerger.”

The core group from the old church was never really satisfied at First Congregational, so a new fellowship, including some of the older members, began to meet in 1950. In 1954, the group called Raymond Bragg as its part-time minister. Mr. Bragg was then serving the church in Kansas City, Missouri. The small congregation met at the Kansas NEA building, the YWCA and two other sites before deciding to find a new permanent home. With generous financial assistance from one of the members, a two-bedroom house in southwest Topeka was purchased in 1968. The garage was converted into the main meeting room, and a parking lot was added later.

In 1977, the group again began to consider professional religious leadership, and with the help of the Prairie Star District called a “Weekend Minister,” Alexander “Scotty” Meek, who came to Topeka periodically from Rochester, Minnesota over a three-year period. David Phreaner, the district extension minister, who served the Fellowship full-time in 1981 and 1982, followed Mr. Meek in 1981.

This five-year period saw significant growth in the Fellowship, a doubling of the budget, and a significant increase in membership—from 60 to 90. With Mr. Phreaner’s assistance the group formed a committee to consider building expansion, and a $130,000 addition was dedicated in the fall of 1983. Most recently the congregation reached two more milestones: surpassing the 100-member mark and voting to call its first regularly employed minister in forty-five years.

Eric Schuman, Historian
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Topeka
(Not noted in original text)

This history has been updated.