2. Congregation Histories : Minnesota

Duluth

First Unitarian Church of Duluth

On May 18, 1887, ten women and eight men endorsed articles of incorporation for the First Unitarian Society of Duluth, “an association where people, without regard to theological differences, culture, and humane work, by meetings and such other educational, social, and charitable movements as may be agreed upon.” In the fall of the same year, the Reverend James H. West assumed the pulpit, the first of seventeen full-time ministers who have served the church, throughout its history. In January 1888, six ladies formed “a society to aid in the building up of a liberal religious society,” known successively as the Ladies Aid Society, the Women’s Auxiliary, and the Women’s Alliance. In the same year, the Unity Club was formed for the study and discussion of religious, social, political, educational, and cultural subjects. A Sunday School was started early in 1889 and a Young People’s Society not later than 1896. Ten years after its founding, a fairly complete Unitarian society had been established.

Early services were held in the homes of members, or in rooms in different down-town buildings, for a time in a rented unused church, when in a modest frame building constructed for church use. In 1910, after longer than twenty years of movement from one location to another, the present church was designed and built for the congregation—“a tiny almost domestic Craftsman Medieval church in stone and half-timbering,” whose most striking architectural feature is its lone stone tower with a remarkably squat steeple. (Gebhard and Martinson, Guide to the Architecture of Minnesota, p. 195. The building is included in the Duluth Historical Resources Survey, 1984.)

The Unitarian Society began keeping a register of its members in 1890. The same register, containing some five thousand names, is still being used today.

The purposes of the church have been served generally through a variety of religious, social and cultural activities. Included among those, and at times the most conspicuous, have been stands on important, and sometimes sensitive, public issues, taken by ministers, by groups of church members, or on occasion through decisions and actions of the whole congregation. The earliest of these was women’s suffrage, a concern initiated by founders of the society and long promoted by members. Such interest is maintained to this day in the form of continuous advocacy of equality and full social autonomy for women. One memorable early action was the sponsorship on 1890 or a lecture defending women’s rights by pioneer Universalist minister, Olympia Brown.

At the end of World War I, members gave active support to international relief agencies. Other important concerns have been the promotion of racial equality in the support of Afro-Americans and Native Americans, appreciable gifts to public food shelves, a modest program of aid to “latch-key” children until the public schools assumed that responsibility, in 1923 the endorsement of the theory of biological evolution, throughout the century frequent and sometimes intense opposition to war. Possibly the boldest action in support of the offices of peace was taken in 1984 when the church joined two other Duluth congregations in endorsing sanctuary for Central American political refugees and serving as cohosts for a young Salvadoran guest.

The record of the church over ninety-nine years has shown as alternation of extended periods of success and briefer periods of membership, now 160, has probably never been larger, and if present circumstances allow a prediction for the future, the Duluth Unitarian Church will continue to keep the resolution adopted by its first members, to promote liberal religious and social culture.

(Author not noted)