Heirloom #8
by Will Frank
In the winter and spring of 1913, Julian R. Pennington settled into the pattern of preaching two sermons in the Assembly Hall of the Dickson Building every Sunday, one at 11:00 AM and the other at 8:00 PM, each on different topics. In this demanding schedule, he was following the custom of most of the other churches of Norfolk. He also presented “lectures” on Thursday evenings, to attract those to the strange religion of Unitarianism who might have been put off by a liturgical worship service. Informed by his strong liberal faith, Pennington’s enthusiasm and energy for the work remained unbounded.
Denominational leaders, including the president of the American Unitarian Association, Dr. Samuel A. Eliot, were impressed with Pennington’s work. They had the Norfolk minister journey to Washington in January 1913 to discuss his future with Eliot and other officials. Shortly after this meeting, the AUA assigned Pennington the mission of going to Lynchburg to repeat the seeming Norfolk triumph, with Roanoke and Charlottesville as possible further fields within which to cultivate other strong Unitarian churches. At that time in Virginia only Richmond had a well-established liberal church, the 1830 “Unitarian-Universalist Church of Richmond” recovenanted in 1893 as the “First Unitarian Church of Richmond.” In the rosy denominational vision, thanks to Pennington, Unitarianism would no longer languish in the South, but would sprout one new church after another. Putting such new churches on a sound institutional footing as a voluntary association for long-term survival and success, they must have assumed, would take care of itself.
With the First Unitarian Church of Norfolk in formal existence for only nine months from when the congregation gathered under its covenant on December 6, 1912, Pennington moved to Lynchburg in the summer of 1913 to build on his Norfolk experience to organize a Unitarian church in that city. A guest minister supplied the pulpit a few times in October and November. This was the Rev. Joseph M. Seaton, the former Unitarian minister in Richmond who had to resign due to ill health, but who had recovered and was then living in Roanoke trying to organize a church there. Pennington returned to Norfolk one last time to preach on November 8, 1913 on the subject of “Primitive Christianity,” and then was gone for good.
Julian Pennington did organize the Unitarian Church of Lynchburg in 1913 around seven founding members, but then in 1914 was assigned by the AUA to start a church in Charleston, West Virginia, and the Lynchburg church struggled on until it went inactive in 1918, only to be revived with renewed efforts from AUA headquarters in 1921. This second start of the Lynchburg church was a success nd continues today as the First Unitarian Church of Lynchburg.
In Charleston, Pennington married a religious conservative, and pressure from her and her family to abandon Unitarianism led him to allow his ministry to become inactive. At length his orthodox wife died and he later remarried, this time to a religious liberal, the two of them dedicating themselves to the advancement of Unitarianism. His enthusiasm undiminished, Julian Pennington returned to Norfolk one last time in 1940 to renew contact with his old congregation. He was saddened to hear that Eugene Darden, his closest lay associate in Norfolk, one who “came to every meeting,” had died in 1929, but was gladdened to hear that Darden spent his last days in the knowledge that his beloved First Unitarian Church of Norfolk, which had also gone inactive, was in the process of being revived.