UUs Return To Their Roots

By Kaaren Valenta

After meeting for 33 years in a reconstructed barn and farmhouse in Redding, the 181-year-old Unitarian Universalist Congregation is moving back to Danbury, led by its new minister, the Rev Dr Linda M. Hansen of Sandy Hook.

The congregation soon will break ground on a $1.2 million church building on Clapboard Ridge Road, just outside the center of Danbury. Construction will begin later this year, with occupancy planned by September 2004. In the meantime, the UU congregation is holding Sunday services in Alumni Hall –– which originally was constructed as a church –– at Western Connecticut State University.

“The congregation was founded in Danbury in 1822 and remained there until 1970, so in many ways it is like going home,” Rev Hansen said. “We have been part of Danbury’s history for many generations and we want to be part of its future.”

The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury (UUCD) is a diverse religious community of about 150 members and friends plus 50 children. The membership includes 17 households from Newtown, and is drawn from an area that extends from Ridgefield north to Milford, east to Southbury and west to New York State.

Founded as the First Universalist Society of Danbury, the church merged with the Unitarians in the 1960s and is one of 1,000 congregations across the United States and Canada that are members of the Unitarian Universalist Association headquartered in Boston. Modern Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion that evolved from Jewish-Christian roots. The church is home to religious and philosophical seekers of many kinds including those that call themselves humanists, theists, agnostics, atheists, and Christians, and focuses on the religious questions that people have struggled with in all times and places.

“In some ways it is more the questions that hold us together and the idea that we need good company in our search,” Rev Hansen said. “And the desire to do good in the world –– we have more power to do it as a group than by ourselves.”

The move from suburbia back to an urban setting will enable the church to expand its outreach programs, she said, and it will also help the church to grow.

“We are a small congregation but growing steadily –– small but energetic,” she said. “Our new home will be more centrally located and it will be handicapped accessible.”

The new location will enable the congregation to expand its social and educational programs and enrich its religious education programs, she added.

Surrounded by neighbors that include a Greek Orthodox church, a Methodist church, synagogues, and the Bright Clouds Christian church, the new UU church complex will be built in stages, starting with a fellowship hall. A westward facing sanctuary is part of the plan, as well as office and religious education space. The congregation is currently renovating an existing structure for use as classroom and office space while the new facility is being built.

The previous minister, the Rev Dr Daniel Simer O’Connell, left almost two years ago when he and his wife, a UU minister in Woodbury, relocated to serve together in a new congregation. Interim Minister Shirley Rank came to serve while the congregation searched for a new minister, eventually voting on May 4 to call the Rev Dr Linda M. Hansen as their new settled minister.

Rev Hansen, 54, was the minister for nine years at The People’s Church, an urban congregation in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after becoming a UU minister in 1993. She grew up in Chicago in a Catholic family, attended religious schools from elementary through her doctorate in philosophy, which she earned at Marquette University in 1976. She then taught philosophy full time for 17 years, first at Clark College in Dubuque, Iowa, then at St John’s in Collegeville, Minn.

She took a leave of absence to earn a master’s degree in theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, went back to teaching and then took a sabbatical in 1990 to work at Christ House, a shelter for homeless men in Washington, D,C. Eventually no longer considering herself a Christian, she joined a UU congregation and entered its ministry program.

“When I became a UU, I was able to have the tradition that I grew up with and the freedom to explore others as well –– and I appreciate that,” she said. “I come closest to being a humanist, but with strong doses of existentialism and process thought included.”

“I really like the Universalists, who started with a message of universal salvation, a message of a loving god who could not condemn anyone to hell, and a willingness to look for good in every person and every world religion and tradition,” she added.

In her first sermon in Danbury on September 21, Rev Hansen led “Bring Them Hope, Not Hell.” This was the message preached by early Universalist John Murray, and offered to the people of Danbury in 1822 by the small group who formed the First Universalist Society there.

“Deeds, not creeds, is a cornerstone of our denomination, and living our faith requires an active community presence,” Rev Hansen said.

Linda Spione, the new president of the UU Board of Trustees, said the congregation’s new building on Clapboard Ridge Road will feature “green,” environmentally conscious, construction. “Green construction can be costly but we want to use some of its principles –– such as passive solar heating –– whenever we can afford it. Respect for the earth is one of our church’s seven principles.”

Ms Spione said the choice to move was “a risk that we needed to take not just for ourselves but for the denomination. Our membership loves The Barn [the Redding facility], but we are excited by the prospects of more exposure to the public [that] the Clapboard Ridge location will afford. Our liberal tradition has roots in break-away movements in Eastern Europe, in the 18th Century enlightenment and New England Congregationalism, and 19th Century humanism, for example, that need to be preserved and strengthened.”

Rev Hansen said The Barn was purchased by a member of the congregation and is being transformed into a meditation center.

“The congregation is very excited about the move,” said Newtown resident Kim Schmitt, who with her husband, Chris, is a member of the UUCD.

“The new location in Danbury fits with the Christian tradition of social involvement. There will be more opportunity there,” Chris Schmitt added.

For more information on the Danbury congregation and on Unitarian Universalism, visit the church’s website at www.uudanbury.org or call the church office at 798-1994.