2. Congregation Histories : North Dakota

Bismarck

Bismarck-Mandan Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

The Bismarck-Mandan UU Fellowship is the oldest fellowship in the old North Star Conference. It began when a group of social and political friends decided to answer an ad in Harper’s Magazine about the new fellowship program of the AUA. They sent Rev. Arthur Foote from St. Paul to talk to us, and Monroe Husbands came out from Boston to help us organize. We were made official in 1952.

We were organized during the oil boom in North Dakota, and many of our members were involved in the oil industry, including our first president, Wendell Smith. He and his wife Joann were particularly influential because they had been Unitarians elsewhere and brought that experience to that fledgling group.

At first we met in members’ homes, hotel meeting rooms, company hospitality room, holding Church School classes in our homes. We then rented an apartment and soon launched our first capital fund drive to purchase a moderately priced house. When a friend of the fellowship offered us a large lot for a small price, however, we built our present building, which was dedicated in 1957.

We often sponsored public meetings on controversial issues at the church, and in the sixties we ran a Friday night coffee house for young adults. Community groups use the church for their meetings, and for many years a small Quaker society has held their services there on Sunday morning. Currently a Montessori School uses our building during the week.

It was the need to provide a liberal religious education for our children that fueled our original organization, and in the late 50s we had 56 children in class. Some of these children are now active members of the fellowship and their children attend the Church School.

In the early years many UU ministers gave us encouragement and support, and William Hammond, then at Grosse Pointe, Michigan, often spent a week with us during the summer. At that time we organized statewide conferences with the Fargo Fellowship and the now defunct Jamestown and Grand Forks Fellowships, and included CLF members in the area. Arthur Foote continued to visit us and conducted both the fellowship’s first UU wedding and its first UU memorial service. Carl Storm made regular appearances in our pulpit, and Emil Gudmundson sustained us over the years with encouragement and advice. John Cummins helped us form our social action policy during one of his weekends here.

The fellowship’s first paid coordinator was one of our members, Rev. Robert Horn who was chaplain at the State Industrial School. Later we hired Brian Palacek with the specific goal of focusing the fellowship needs and purposes. This led to our participation with Fargo in the extension ministry of Rev. Lucy Hitchcock.

In July 1986, the fellowship called its first fulltime minister, and Rev. Lynn Smith-Roberts conducted her first service as our minister on September 7, 1986.

(Author not noted)