The Fellowship Movement

According to my handy This Day in Unitarian Universalist History today is the sixty-third anniversary of the establishment of the Fellowship Movement, one of the signal events in the development of liberal religious communities in North America.

The article reads on this day in 1945 “The American Unitarian Association voted to establish fellowships, or lay-led groups. The fellowship movement encouraged individualism and in many cases stressed social commitment. Although many fellowships grew into churches, many preferred their lay status and its varying forms of worship. Munroe Husbands and Lon Ray Call guided the movement. Call had noticed during his pastorate in Louisville, Kentucky, that several small churches continued with lay leadership after they could no longer support clergy. From 1948 to 1958 he number of people joining fellowships accounted for one third of the denomination’s increase in membership.

I think this was a creative and exciting way to engage the needs of that generation.

I wish we would abandon what I find to be the ill-conceived mega-church starts that have become a drain on our meager resources, and look more to this model and possibly to underwriting ministers for three or four years with small budgets to missionize in various creative ways.

But, enough of the editorializing.

Right now I just want to tip my hat to those noble folk who started congregations for religious liberals across the North American continent.

Thank you!