Heirloom #1
by Will Frank
The 75th anniversary of the re-covenanting of the Unitarian Church of Norfolk in 1930 celebrates a milestone in liberal religion in the Hampton Roads region that itself had a long history. The first documented arrival of Unitarianism in Norfolk was in July 1793. In the early decades of the 19th century there were individual Unitarians and Universalists in Norfolk, but not enough of either to form a church. A few acted as agents for denominational newspapers and magazines, and through the circulation of mailing lists some of our early local religious forebears got to know each other. Eventually in 1848 a Universalist church was formed in Norfolk, and then another in Portsmouth. These religious societies grew ever stronger as the storm clouds of the Civil War gathered, but then fractured and went inactive in the course of the war.
The first organized effort again to plant liberal religion in this soil came in the Black community of Norfolk in 1888. Under the leadership of our first Black Universalist minister, the Rev. Joseph Jordan, The First Universalist Church of Norfolk, situated on Princess Anne Road in Huntersville, then a suburb of Norfolk, prospered. It established a successful school and operated preaching stations in Ocean View and Kempsville. But after Jordan died in 1901, the Universalist effort in the Black community shifted to Suffolk and the Norfolk church, without ministerial leadership, withered and by 1915 ceased to exist.
By that time, however, the First Unitarian Church had been formed in the White community. As Universalism had expanded in the South, and with the disruptions caused by the Civil War seemingly having receded, the Unitarians also began to think of the South as a field for growth. Just after the Civil War the only active Unitarian church in the South was the oldest in the South, that of Charleston, South Carolina. As the only Unitarian theological schools were in the North, the Charleston church survived the rough and bitter years after the war by calling a Unitarian minister from England, one who would not speak with a Yankee accent. Then, in the late 1880s leaders of the American Unitarian Association in Boston thought the time ripe to help the movement develop in other Southern cities as well. Unitarianism was then hardly known anywhere in the South. So cities were targeted and mission efforts funded by Boston, efforts in each city starting from scratch. Atlanta was first on the agenda, and when a Unitarian church had been founded there and was on its feet, Boston turned its attention to Virginia. The First Unitarian Church was established in Richmond in 1893.
By 1911 the American Unitarian Association finally turned its attention to Norfolk. The Post Office Mission (the forerunner of today's Church of the Larger Fellowship) had names and addresses of some Unitarian-minded people in Norfolk, and the town was a rapKeyly growing railroad and seaport hub. Norfolk seemed a likely place to target for a new Unitarian church. By early 1912 Samuel A. Eliot, the president of the American Unitarian Association, knew just the minister to come to Norfolk and take on the job.