The Unitarian Universalist Church of Lancaster is a
Unitarian Universalist church located at 538 West Chestnut Street,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Lancaster, ( ; pdc, Lengeschder) is a city in and the county seat of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest inland cities in the United States. With a population at the 2020 census of 58,039, it ranks 11th in population amon ...
. The church building is part of the
Historic District
A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...
of the City of Lancaster. The congregation is a member of the
Unitarian Universalist Association
Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is a liberal religious association of Unitarian Universalist congregations. It was formed in 1961 by the consolidation of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America, both P ...
, in the Association's Central East Region (Joseph Priestley District). Like all Unitarian Universalist churches, it is noncreedal, covenantal and religiously liberal. According to the UUA, the Lancaster church currently has 275 members and is an LGBTQIAA+ Welcoming Congregation.
Early history
The church was established as a Unitarian congregation in 1902, in outreach between the expanding
American Unitarian Association, then promoting a "new Unitarianism", and local businessmen and women who wanted a religiously liberal church in their community. The original congregation consisted of 13 men and 10 women; it met in temporary quarters until a new building could be erected for it (1908-1909). Originally called "The Church of Our Father, Unitarian", the congregation took its present name after the consolidation of the
Unitarian and Universalist denominations in 1961.
Architecture and interior design
The church has ties to several historic religious communities in Lancaster, notably St. James Episcopal Church (also in the Historic District) and the
Lancaster Theological Seminary
Lancaster Theological Seminary is a seminary of the United Church of Christ in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1825 by members of the German Reformed Church in the United States to provide theological education for prospective clergy an ...
, but the Unitarian Universalist building is newer and represents the last era of generally acknowledged architectural distinction in the city. Except for an addition built next door in 1972, the exterior of the church is largely unchanged from its appearance in 1909, when it was dedicated. It was designed by Lancaster's leading architect,
Cassius Emlen Urban, but is an unusual example of his work. Smaller than his other Lancaster churches, it follows the transitional Gothic style with Norman elements advocated for such churches by
Ralph Adams Cram
Ralph Adams Cram (December 16, 1863 – September 22, 1942) was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partner ...
and Alexander Bourne.
![Early picture of the Church of Our Father, Lancaster PA (digitized at LancasterHistory](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Early_picture_of_the_Church_of_Our_Father%2C_Lancaster_PA_%28digitized_at_LancasterHistory.org%29.jpg)
The interior underwent extensive renovation in the 1920s, including installation of stained-glass windows by the firms of
Franz Xaver Zettler
Franz Xaver Zettler (1841-1916) was a German stained glass artist.
Early life
Zettler was born in 1841.
Career
Signature of the company ''F.X. Zettler''.
He started his own stained glass design company in 1870.Jean M. Farnsworth, Carmen R. Croc ...
(sanctuary and vestibule) and
Charles Connick (women's parlor). The interior has stayed essentially unchanged since those renovations, and, like the exterior, the interior work is atypical of the firms that produced it. The choices were influenced by the views of a founding member of the church, Milton T. Garvin (1860-1936), a prominent local merchant and philanthropist who personally funded the construction and decoration of the building and worked closely with the architects and ministers involved. Garvin's family were
Hicksite
Elias Hicks (March 19, 1748 – February 27, 1830) was a traveling Quaker minister from Long Island, New York (state), New York. In his ministry he promoted unorthodox doctrines that led to controversy, which caused the second major schism (relig ...
Quakers
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...
from the Nottingham Lots community of southern Pennsylvania and Maryland,
and he joined the "new Unitarian movement", as he referred to it, in the absence of a recognized Quaker meeting in Lancaster. Garvin became a Unitarian activist and initiated the Association's Religious Arts Society (1923), but was a life-long "advocate for universal peace", which complicated his attitude toward the controversial pro-war stance of the Association during World War One.
[David B. Parke, "A Wave at Crest". ''A Stream of Light,'' ed. Conrad Wright (2nd ed.), Boston: Skinner House, 1989, pp. 95-124. Pp. 102-05.] After the war Garvin commissioned sanctuary windows which, while taking World War One and the American Civil War as subject matter, advocate for peace and reconciliation as core values in American history and civic life. The sanctuary windows and other sanctuary decoration were designed by the Swiss-American architect and artist Woldemar H. Ritter (1880-ca. 1935), whose modernist artistic approach was approved by Garvin and distinguishes the Lancaster windows from other work by Zettler. The sanctuary windows were installed in 1926. The windows by Charles Connick were commissioned for the women's parlor and were designed by Connick; they were installed in 1929 and dedicated in 1930.
List of ministers
*William A. Lawton (1902)
*Charles Phelps Wellman (1903)
*Melvin Brandow (1904-1908)
*Eugene Rodman Shippen (1908-1909)
*John Wallace Cooper (1910-1912)
*Edmund Henry Reeman (1913-1916)
*Charles Reidel (1916-1918)
*Earl Clement Davis (1919-1923)
*John Boynton Wilson Day (1924-1929)
*Robert Sheridan Miller (1930-1937)
*Harvey V. Swanson (1937-1956)
*Nathaniel Page Lauriat (1957-1963)
*Anthony R. Perrino (1964-1967)
*Robert Payson (1967-1987)
*Webster 'Kit' Kitchell Howell (1990-1996)
*Susan Milnor (1997-2002)
*Valerie Mapstone Ackerman (2003-2004)
*Patricia Hart and Peter Newport (2007-2013)
*Anne Mason (2013-2016)
*Barbara Coeyman (2016–2020)
*Israel Buffardi (2020 -Present)
References
External links
Unitarian Universalist Church of Lancaster{{List of Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist churches, state=autocollapse
Unitarian Universalist churches in Pennsylvania
Historic sites in Pennsylvania
Gothic Revival church buildings in Pennsylvania