Across the Years, Around the World: A Short History of the CLF
BY LAURA CAVICCHIO, CHAPLAIN AND PASTORAL COUNSELOR, BEVERLY, MASSACUSETTS
The story of the CLF has its taproot in the pioneering spirit of 19th century America and the spread of liberal religion to the West. It is a story about the determination to share the Unitarian and Universalist faith, and the evolution of a new paradigm for a “church without walls.”
Missionary zeal was high in the 1800s, as churches of all denominations competed for theological territory. Unitarians and Universalists felt an urgency to promote their gospel of a loving God in answer to the dominant Calvinist message of depravity and damnation. Unitarians in Boston organized the American Unitarian Association, which dispatched itinerant ministers and missionary expeditions to fledgling Midwest cities and distant places. Universalists devised similar outreach efforts.
Liberal views in the form of letters, tracts and pamphlets were carried on foot and horseback, house to house, and, during the Civil War, to soldiers in their camps. Sunday school lesson sheets were mailed to subscribers for use in the home; printed sermons passed among neighbors served as “paper pulpits.” A Unitarian women’s alliance opened an office in Chicago and formed a relay system of letter correspondence called the Post Office Mission. In Cincinnati, a woman named Sallie Ellis started a ministry by mail in her Unitarian church, and Post Office Missions spread among churches. These missions sent thousands of letters and packages to farflung free thinkers, bridging spiritual isolation for the farm family, the housebound, and the prisoner.
This liberal religion forged in the wide-open spaces was a blend of a radically inclusive spirit with an ethic of individualism, mixed with a strong dose of social conscience. By the early 1900s, ministry by mail had grown into a global network. It seems that the first person to conceive of such a network as a church was Unitarian minister William Channing Gannett. In 1904, he launched the Church of All Souls, and for forty years he mailed a monthly pastoral letter and a sermon to a scattered fellowship of otherwise un-churched Unitarians. But with no means to join and no mechanism for growth, the church dwindled.
By then, World War II raged. The Rev. Frederick May Eliot, then the president of the American Unitarian Association, wanted to find a way to meet the needs of religious liberals serving in the armed forces. Eliot set up a committee to study the feasibility of reestablishing a correspondence church like All Souls under the umbrella of the Association. Eliot’s vision was for a larger fellowship, beyond the concept of geographical location. In his words, it would be “a church by mail…A church in the fullest sense of the word, a church which will serve isolated religious liberals wherever they live.” The church would have a minister—Dr. Albert Dieffenbach being the first—for pastoral correspondence. Members would not just be names on a list, but active participants in the life, governance, and financial support of the society, receiving the Association’s services especially tailored for home and field use. Institutionally, the CLF would be semi-autonomous in nature: a self-governing member congregation of the Association, but with its budget and leadership under the Extension Department of the AUA.
The founding of the Unitarian CLF took place on May 24th, 1944, at the Annual Meeting of the Association. In a time of war, the name was chosen to reflect a radical vision of religious hospitality beyond division and sectarian category. The CLF’s Purpose was two-fold: “To provide a spiritual home for isolated Unitarians and their families, and to transfer the allegiance of its members to local Unitarian churches whenever and wherever possible.”
The CLF was true to its purposes. Within four years, it grew from its original charter of 34 members to membership in every state in the USA, eight Canadian provinces, and nearly twenty countries. Additionally, as an extension arm of the Association, the CLF undergirded the popular Fellowship Movement. Geographically clustered CLFers were instrumental in starting new Unitarian fellowships— more than 400 by the end of the 1960s.
“My Church Coming to Me” was the slogan which the CLF used to expand its services beyond monthly pastoral letters and sermons. A volunteer religious education committee helped to develop the first full-fledged religious education materials and worship resources for use in the home or by small groups. In conjunction with the AUA’s Department of Education, the Church School by Mail program was launched, with lessons adapted from the Beacon Series available on loan.
In 1961, the Unitarians and Universalists merged to create the Unitarian Universalist Association. The Universalists had founded their own Church of the Larger Fellowship in 1947 under the auspices of the Universalist Church of America and the leadership of the Rev. Clinton Lee Scott. With the denominational merger, the two CLFs joined, and the Church of the Larger Fellowship Unitarian Universalist was born. The new entity retained the semi-autonomous nature and dual purposes of its predecessors.
The post-merger time was one of increasing innovation and diversification. In response to requests for home educational materials for adults, the minister, Dr. George Marshall, created the popular Independent Study Program and the Directed Discussion Course, through which participants corresponded with a CLF director and each other. This new concept in religious learning attracted the attention of the incarcerated, and in 1965 the first prisoner joined the church.
The CLF was now producing a variety of youth publications, and a handbook for ceremonies of marriage, baby dedications, and memorial services. By the late 1960s, the CLF boasted a record membership of 5,000 adults, youth, and children, and eight staff, including the minister. Unfortunately, this boom time corresponded with a wide-spread fiscal crisis in the UUA. The CLF struggled to meet its share of operating expenses and resolve its debts. The UUA concluded that the CLF would have to come of age as an autonomous and financially independent entity or close its doors.
On September 24, 1970, the CLF became chartered and legally incorporated as a religious society in its own right. This was a critical turning point, as the CLF resolved to move ahead, in the words of George Marshall, “holding in its own hand and guiding by its own light (its) destiny…in the service of a greater cause.” Fortunately, in response to continuing financial challenges, the CLF membership responded with generous gifts to the newly established Eliot-Scott Endowment Fund, named for the two men whose vision founded the CLF.
The next few decades recorded significant changes—many under the ministerial leadership of the Rev. Eugene Pickett—which transformed the CLF. The Church in a Box program was developed, along with A Month of Sundays, offering complete worship services available by subscription for use by small groups, lay-led fellowships and small churches. The institution’s lending library became an increasingly important department of the church, including sermons on videotape .With an updated style and format, Quest replaced the former monthly newsletter. As yet another means to meet the needs of a long-distance membership, the Rev. Scott Alexander introduced the minister’s toll-free phone line, increasing the accessibility of pastoral connection with the minister.
With the coming of the Rev. Jane Rzepka as senior minister in 1999, the CLF entered the new millennium with a creative and contemporary approach. “Church by mail” became “church online”; the post office mission became a mission by website.
Betsy Hill Williams, the CLF’s Director of Religious Education for ten years, created the first color-printed periodical for Unitarian Universalist children, uu&me!. Innovations developed by the CLF’s current minister for lifespan learning, the Rev. Lynn Ungar, include online courses and community forums, email-based small communities, a web page for children, and complete religious education curricula designed for families and small groups, emailed monthly.
The face of the CLF has shifted as it reaches out as a welcome wagon of radical hospitality and socially conscious liberal faith. Of more than 3300 members, 500 are between the ages of 18 and 35 in the new and expanding Church of the Younger Fellowship.
The CLF has chosen to become a church for the prisoner, and it now has more than 400 incarcerated members served by the Rev. Patty Franz and scores of CLF members who participate in the letter-writing Prison Ministry. In addition, the CLF’s membership is more international than ever, with 250 members living outside of the United States in 53 countries, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the South Pacific.
Hits on the website come from everywhere as religious seekers discover the CLF and learn about Unitarian Universalism. The CLF is, by its heritage and its vision, a church without walls, providing a church home all around the world.
Legacy
Legacy. We are, as Laura Cavicchio describes, part of a rich history reaching all the way back to the 1840s.
We are an enduring beacon, building on that past, even as we light the path ahead for UUs, and potential UUs, everywhere.
Thank you for your role in keeping this legacy alive. Who knows what this church without walls will become in 100 years?
Let us each take our part in ensuring the longevity of this church—so that the message of liberal religion can continue to shine as a beacon in places that we can not even begin to imagine. Your offerings, easily given with the enclosed envelope or on our website, www.clfuu.org, will be received in grateful appreciation.
For the most enduring legacy to the CLF, let us know your interest in exploring how to make bequests and other planned gifts to the CLF.
