Things You Never Heard - Chapters in This Church’s Pilgrimage
In today’s program Reverend David Johnson provides a story, followed by his sermon titled, “Things You Never Heard - Chapters in This Church’s Pilgrimage.” Our introductory hymn was number 345, “With Joy We Claim the Glowing Light.” Our intermediary music was, “Autumn Farewell,” by Bob Ashton. Our closing music is “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” marimba performed by Marjorie Mitchell, and, “Go Out With Joy,” words from Isaiah, music by Hank Beebe. All music was performed by the UCMH choir and congregation under the direction of Marjorie Mitchell. This recording was produced by Ben Peck.
Chapters in Your Pilgrimage
Marlborough Hudson UU Church
Sermon, Sunday, December 3, 2006
Rev. David A. Johnson
The story of this congregation is generally told in honorific biographical sketches of prominent women and men, dates, buildings, crises – a few of those. I’d like to make it human in a few brief chapters in an amazingly long and fascinating story – most of it never told.
Hudson finds its beginnings mostly in Marlborough, the parent town, whose beginnings go back to the original charter of 1660 from the British Crown. The Marlborough Unitarian Church was one side of a division in the original 17th century parish, into East and West parishes which continued a few blocks apart for more than 150 years. So our beginnings go back to that tiny frontier church of 1660. This was an isolated settlement, a kind of small stopping place or way station for travelers West. It had a small rough meeting house which in King Phillips War was burned to the ground and most settlers dispersed. They regathered, rebuilt and continued. It is impossible for this generation to imagine the griefs and hardships of that day, the suffering, courage, struggle, perseverance – but they are the beginning of this congregation’s story.
Let us move forward to the separation of this parish in the late 1700s. The belief that noone could fall so far or flee so far as to be beyond the reach of the Love of God was spreading broadly. Universalism and God’s all embracing love began to disturb and challenge the reigning Calvinism – as Calvinism itself became more fierce and rigid in emphasizing original sin, God’s wrath, the eternal selection of some for heaven – so few – and most for a fiery and everlasting Hell!
In Marlborough the early proto-unitarians became universalist and universalisats became unitarian. Universalists and Unitarians contested to be the first to establish their faith in wood and spire. The Unitarians won in the separation of the old parish into East and West meeting houses in 1808 – West meeting house being Unitarian, but in theology also universalist. Asa Packard had ministered to the original contentious parish for 21 years. Although the Congregational records say he was summarily dismissed by the Calvinists it appears that he preached to both congregations for several years. Packard was a “unique and colorful man” the historians say, a wounded hero of the Revolutionary war, who had a limp from the musket ball in his leg life long. Packard’s continuation with both churches had one effect historians didn’t notice, perhaps affecting his continuation. The sermons of that distant day often lasted a morning. With two churches to serve the sermons had to be much shorter so the ancient and honorable Asa Packard could limp from one church to the other for the second sermon. This must have been refreshing to both congregations.
The Unitarian congregation was soon served by official Unitarian ministers including Horatio Alger, Senior, (not Junior the famous author who got himself in so much trouble, about whom Marlborough is still arguing about today). Alger, Senior, was a fiercely religious and powerfully anti-slavery preacher – a human rights advocacy that the Marlborough church continued through the long years of its separate history.
The Universalists were organized in Marlborough in the 1830s, apparently by the Streeter brothers – ministers, evangelists, hymn writers and publishers. It is almost certain their hymnal that the founders of the Hudson church borrowed each week for their early services so that the congregation could sing its faith with passion and joy, and a good universalist message.
This brings us to Hudson where Charles Brigham had arranged Unitarian preaching from 1847 on – paying the preacher and feeding his horse. The minister was George Stacy, a Unitarian minister who had been preaching in the Marlborough Universalist meeting house where Charles Brigham found him – persuading him to preach in Hudson. For 14 years from Cox tavern dining room to the school house, to this building Story preached a heady mix of Universalism, Unitarianism, temperance and anti-slavery, emphasizing always that faith was a choice each made in her or his own heart, not to be dictated by creed or clergy, but by the persuasion of one’s own soul. Stacy was not a preacher of flight and fancy, of elegance or heavy handed theology. He was they said direct and practical, forthright and useful.
Charles Brigham was an extraordinary man, a farmer and contractor – he graded the new courthouse lawn next door in his spare time. He was a Universalist and Unitarian, a spiritualist, a fiery temperance man and a passionate defender of human freedom. His house was a station on the underground railroad – the bicentennial history of Hudson says – which spirited needy folk North to Canada – housing, feeding, healing, clothing and transporting them. Perhaps that’s one of the reason that Brigham’s favorite conveyance was a hearse. Who would believe that a horse drawn hearse was being used to transport escapees from the South? Or, perhaps Brigham drove the hearse because he was a character, and loved funerals. He would have delighted in his own – the church was crowded to the walls and folk lined the street in both directions – so beloved was he. He left Hudson for two months in 1859 for Kansas – nothing more is ever said. Long ago nothing more needed to be said. Lawrence was named for the same Amos Lawrence this building was named for (by Brigham’s insistence). Two years before his trip Southern raiders had sacked Lawrence, Kansas. 1857 also saw the Dred Scott Decision from the Supreme Court declaring that Blacks had no rights a white man need respect. (Jefferson Davis had tried to patent a major invention of one of his slaves – but was rejected since the slave was not a “person” under law.) Did Brigham carry “Beechers Bibles” as smuggled rifles were called? We may never know. He was surely there to aid the anti-slavery settlers with Harper’s Ferry and the Lincoln election just around the corner.
Brigham and a team of friends scoured the countryside and neighboring towns for unused couches, chairs, chaises so that the congregation could be comfortably seated in their borrowed space. This was quite unlike the Baptists whose meeting house had hard backless benches – no sleeping or drifting off there. Brigham was a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson – doubtless the reason for Emerson’s appearance here. Charles Brigham was an unusually public spirited citizen and leader. A delightful story is told of his serving on a jury in Superior Court in Cambridge. He was the foreman of the jury, and it was his sad task to tell the judge it was a hung jury – they couldn’t reach a verdict. He told the judge, “Those are 11 of the most stubborn men I have ever met.” The 11 jurors may have cherished a similar view of him.
In 1857 Brigham began a Sunday School and was its superintendent. He worked with it for more than 40 years, while he also organized the congregation and the building of the church. But we mistake the story if we assume that this church was the shadow of one person or even several. There are very few congregations I’ve ever known or heard about that received so much help in getting started and in the formative years than this one. Dr. Joseph Allen of Northboro, distinguished minister and historian of liberal religion was on call for services, weddings and funerals for years. He was called “the Patron saint” of this congregation. Dr. George Bartol, liberal leader and excellent preacher in Lancaster preached here frequently – officiating at the installation of several of your ministers. He was a benign eminence visitor here for more than a generation. Dr. Ely Fay, prominent neighbor pitched in in the dark days of the Civil War. Dr. Rush Shippen, long famous minister in our Nation’s Capital, kept watch over this congregation when he was in Worcester. Dr. Grindal Reynolds, minister in Concord and Secretary of the American Unitarian Association came often. Ralph waldo Emerson filled the pulpit briefly between your first and second ministers – a rarity. I know of only one other place he preached after resigning Second Church, Boston, over what he called the dry creaking formality of the communion service – both places did not then serve communion I believe. Emerson also came here on the Lyceum Circuit as did many more. These are only a few in a long, long list of those who mostly gave their services and followed with love this congregation – including the famous Edward Everett Hale. We should not forget several women ministers who helped here, Rev. Ms. Haynes of Waltham, Margaret Barnard of Rowe, and the “Queen of the Platform” though not an ordained minister, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore. Livermore was a national figure in anti-slavery and women’s rights, and lead figure in the Western sanitary Commission in the Civil war which provided so many things (including medical care) that the government did not for Northern troops.
During the harsh years of the anti-slavery crisis three of the leading figures, Wendell Phillips, Parker Pillsbujry and William Lloyd Garrison were all here, some more than once. The deep anti-slavery identity of this congregation was strong, obvious and made real in action. No wonder the hall downstairs was called “Freedom Hall,” and later “Union Hall.”
We should not let all these stories slip by without reflecting on what they mean. Emerson was regarded as a heretic even among Unitarians. Clearly there was an openness to difference of faith and understanding here – a real, accepting, nurturing openness. When the Roman Catholics sought to organize a congregation they were hosted in this building. There were many Protestants who thought of them as evil, the devil’s people. This congregation welcomed them.
The prominent women ministers and speakers should not pass by unnoticed. These were all pioneers charting a new role for women in the pulpit, in education – including higher education, in professions and public life. The women you hosted were not wallflowers – they were agents of change – as were many women of this congregation. The women’s organization here predated he national, and from the first meeting set out to work for those who needed help. It is no accident that a large number of the founders of the Hudson Women’s Club were from this congregation.
We remember Susan B. Anthony being willing to go to jail for trying to vote. There were several women in this congregation who petitioned to vote, who pled to be permitted to vote in town and municipal elections. F. Ellen Brown challenged the registrar un til she was added to the voting list. It was Brown, who later in the great conflagration of 1894 climbed through the Vestry window (having no key) to open the church and make coffee and food for the weary firemen (She was 59 years old then.). At least half the women who paid poll taxes and fought directly to vote were members of this church.
You had an organ and an 8 member choir even before you had a building. That says a great deal about the warmth, celebration and faith of the founders of this church.
I haven’t mentioned a single settled minister or even touched on the life of the congregation after it was officially organized and established here in Hudson. That will have to wait another day. But note the passion, the devotion to human freedom, the determination in a difficult time, the very real courage to stand up and be counted – to stand out and be known as defenders of the rights of people, all people, not just the ones we like, who believe as we do, not just some, a few, but all people. That’s still not easy but it is a great heritage to hold, to cherish and to live.
