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Wichita
The First Unitarian Church of Wichita
The First Ninety-Nine Years
The records are not clear: was it two societies or one with two names that became the Unitarian Society of Wichita in 1887? The Emerson Society and/or The Sunday Circle began negotiations by December and called themselves a church.
It must have been a handful of people who welcomed the first minister, apparently sent from Boston in 1888, thus beginning a struggle to both pay a minister and begin financing for a permanent building.
Somehow money was raised to build a church that was to be their home until 1953. Total cost was about $12,000, which was a considerable sum for such a small group. On October 16, 1902, the Society dedicated the new building. These events set the trend for recurring continuity, severe financial hardship, great difficulty in adequately financing a minister, and receiving fiscal help from the AUA. That latter began in 1900 and continued until 1915. In the interim, one minister left because funds ran out, and another existed on $40 a month.
To continue the theme of difficulties, with their recurring drop in morale and probably membership, a popular minister, Mr. Walter Vail, died in office in 1907, and the record indicates the group was temporarily stunned. Another minister, in the 1920s, left to become an Episcopalian, and then came the Depression—and the dust storms. Again the AUA came to the rescue, subsidizing part of the minister’s salary from 1930–1937. When the Rev. John MacKinnon left in 1937 after a popular (but financially depressed) ministry, the Sunday bulletin referred to “a very generous offer from Mr. MacKinnon in the way of a settlement of the rather large accumulated deficit on his salary that had been carried for several years.”
Present memories of older members recall the tempestuous days of a young man without full Unitarian training hired in 1950 who proceeded to siphon church funds for his own purposes, which meant study trips to eastern European countries and lecture tours recounting their glories. When membership and money fell, he demanded the building be repaired. To enforce his demands, he took a sledgehammer and knocked the plaster off the walls. The members spent a hot humid summer (before air conditioning) doing the repairs themselves and then that fall sent the young man on his way. Again the AUA came to the rescue and underwrote the new minister, John Isom, who successfully brought the church renewed membership, financial stability and a new building in the form of a fine old home near Wichita State University. Later, in 1970, we added a fine octagonal shaped meetinghouse.
This theme of difficulty is really only half the story, for the group did always win out in the end and managed to persist. Further, it found its original theology, based on James Freeman Clarke’s Five Points of Unitarianism, broadened both by its association with the Western Conference and the ministry of L. M. Birkhead, 1915–17, one of the signers of the first Humanist Manifestos, and some of his successors.
While the church had not been successful in having a pipe organ, it did acquire early a manually operated reed organ and this instrument, now supplemented by a fine Hammond electric and a grand piano, is still in use today, as is a valuable rabbi’s chair given the congregation by the reformed Temple who early rented the old building on Fridays and Saturdays.
A constant theme, beginning shortly after the group became a church, is the role of the Women’s Alliance. In 1905, that group numbered 35 and was described as having “grit.” Time and again they came through with clutch fund raising and aid. But sex roles do not stay constant. The first woman to be president was elected in 1919, and many have followed her footsteps. The Alliance metamorphosed into the People’s Alliance in 1984, but continued their historical continuity with the gift of a computer in 1986. Meanwhile, the annual Unifest, a bazaar, sale, games and fun occasion, has become an all-church affair and has been headed by a man, while last year women took over the pledge drive. All this occurred under the successful ministry of Rev. Greta Crosby.
From the beginning the church school has been small, with the exception (an echo of the national trend?) of about 1957–65. Indeed, in 1923, an AUA staff member spent three weeks organizing a “Sunday School” by recruiting unchurched children from the neighborhood. Today the RE Director is paid a foot-in-the-door token, but church school enrollment is under 30.
In 1889, the third year of our history, the church served the greater community by sponsoring a visit from Julia Ward Howe attended by “193 people.” More recently, Wichita can thank its Unitarian church and its members for the Wichita Community Theatre, the South-central Kansas of the ACLU, leadership city and statewide in the League of Women Voters, and Planned Parenthood of Kansas, among many other causes dealing with social and racial concerns.
Wichita’s geographical position in the center of the nation has meant healthy contacts with the Western Conference, then membership in the Southwest Conference, and then in 1973, reunion with Prairie Star District and the Southern Cluster. Its historical trend now continues its past 35 years: a healthy active church in a healthy active district.