SERMON DELIVERED BY REV. ROBERT WEST at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York on September 8, 1963. This was Rev. Robert West's first sermon at First Unitarian in Rochester. Late on a Sunday afternoon, five weeks ago, my family and I drove into Rochester to begin our life here with...

The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Stewardship and Development staff is pleased to announce that The Reverend James C....

If you have been paying attention lately, you have been exposed to a mountain of information about the status of immigrants and aliens in the United States. You have heard some of the heart-wrenching stories about separated families and exploited workers, about thousands of deaths as a result of...

Step One:​ Invoke an external and internal threat. Pose it as a threat to civilization itself. Create a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solution. Insist that the leader’s superior instinct and access to privileged knowledge are more reliable than universal...

"Few of their children in the country learn English Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our Language, and even our Government will become precarious." Does this sound familiar? This...

As part of my seminary training I spent a summer working as a hospital chaplain, assigned to the psychiatric floor. I found it to be deeply gratifying work, and I was able to build relationships with many of the patients. Some were long-term and others had a quick turnaround. Some were what we...

Today is the second of our three-part sermon series dedicated to Rev. Forrest Church. As I noted last week, Church spent nearly 30 years as the senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in New York City....

How clearly I remember it. My husband, Dan, and our daughter, Sarah, had spent the night in Taos, New Mexico. The next morning we set out for the pueblo, an ancient village inhabited by indigenous people known as the Pueblo. Clearly tourists, easily identified as European Americans, we were...

One day I was sitting in a coffee shop downtown when I noticed a couple of street corner evangelists setting up shop across the street—an older and a younger man (possibly his son?), wearing dark suits and ties and wielding King James Version bibles. They commenced taking turns preaching the...

Pity the poor dandelion. It is, in many ways, nature’s perfect plant. With a tap root that grows more than a foot long, it can survive in climates of scorching heat and bitter cold. Its tender, young greens make a tasty addition to any salad, or they can be boiled like fiddleheads or as a tea...

In his 1947 biography of Theodore Parker, the American historian Henry Steele Commager wrote about Parker's first trip to Europe: There was everything to be seen and much to be remembered, and Parker invaded Europe with the ruthless thoroughness that ever characterized him: he carried the towns b...

In his book, Facing Death, Averil Stedeford recounts the following story about a woman who was diagnosed with a terminal illness: Mrs. N. was a very particular housewife who felt she should clean her home every day. She did not entertain often, for it was such an effort; everything had to be...

There was a fascinating story on the public radio evening news on Wednesday: The town of Port Arthur, Texas, a conservative, middle American community, is building a memorial to its best-known native daughter—Janis Joplin. Janis Joplin—rock star, rebel, outrageous dresser, screamer and shouter,...

[This sermon is second in a three-part series: "The Humanist in Me," "The Theist in Me," and "The Christian in Me."] You may have noticed that I do not completely attach myself to one label....

In the summer of 1989, I attended the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists at the General Assembly at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Yale is right downtown, and it was my custom to get out of the hotel and university setting for most of my meals. One morning, as I was in town...

[This sermon is third in a three-part series: "The Humanist in Me," "The Theist in Me," and "The Christian in Me."] In this series of sermons, there is much more we could do....

I have come to discover that what most people know about humanism they learned from the lips of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other televangelists. It is a shame that this is so, but it is. One key leader of the religious right, Tim LeHaye, wrote an immensely popular book years ago about...

Some of you may have heard Garrison Keillor’s Thanksgiving story in which Unitarians are featured. Somebody needs to find out what Keillor’s experience is with Unitarians. He mentions us frequently and, I might add, usually, his comments (whether complimentary or critical) are right on the...

I want to tell you about something that happened a few years ago on a Sunday after services. The congregation I was serving then was gathered for a congregational meeting....

In the Unitarian Universalist Church we find inspiration from many different sources. The inspiration for today’s sermon comes from a joke. You may have heard it: Q: What’s the difference between cats and dogs? A: Dogs look at people and say, “They feed us. They give us shelter. They take care...