Heirlooms of UCN History #50
by Will Frank
The turn of the calendar to 1940 saw the Unitarian Church of Norfolk limping along from Sunday to Sunday, with no settled minister. The Rev. John McKinnon of Richmond preached in Norfolk every other week, and other visiting ministers filled in several of the other Sundays. Dr. Clarence Skinner, a Universalist leader and professor at Crane Theological School of Tufts University (founded by the Universalists) came to preach on February 12. He suggested that the Rev. George La Point of the Kinston N.C. Universalist Church might be interested in a full-time ministry in Norfolk. This was the first connection made with the Universalists, the kindred but separate denomination, which sponsored the African American Suffolk Normal Training School twenty miles away but which had no active Universalist church in Norfolk. The Norfolk people were now quite interested in hearing La Point, with his extensive parish experience in the South, to see if he might be the right choice as settled minister. La Point came on March 27 and made an excellent impression on the Norfolk congregation, as La Point and his family were enthusiastic about the possibility of settling in Norfolk. The low salary remained a problem, as did the fact that the Unitarians and Universalists were at that time distinct denominations, and no AUA money would be available to subsidize the salary of a minister not in fellowship with the Unitarians.
Meanwhile, George Davis, the AUA church extension director, was searching for a young minister with Southern roots who would serve in Norfolk for a salary of only $1,500. The name of Robert Wilcox Sonen came up. Sonen would graduate from the Meadville Theological School (Unitarian) in Chicago that Spring. Davis wrote to the President of Meadville, Dr. Sydney Snow, saying that the Norfolk church had grown and then declined with both Lutz and FitzPatrick, the problem at least in part being liberal northerners not fitting in the conservative segregated South. “Norfolk, and the Norfolk people,” wrote Davis, “are of the ‘old South’ and are unbelievably old-fashioned in many ways.” An off-hand remark acceptable in the North might give offense in the South, as experience with FitzPatrick seemed to show. The Extension Department, continued Davis, “has come to the point of feeling that they will hardly recommend a man to one of our southern churches who has not had some southern background or experience. And this naturally leads me to young Sonen, who I understand comes from Washington [DC], and while this is not really the south yet Washington people do have a knowledge of southern ways and southern opinions.” The AUA, despite commitments elsewhere in the South to grow churches, would agree to contribute $600 to an annual salary of $1,500, a figure at the bottom of ministers’ salary range, but which a young unmarried minister might accept.
Snow sounded out Sonen, who was excited at the prospect of a church of his own in Norfolk, not just being the assistant to a senior minister as seemed his best chance. To be located in traveling distance to his home in Washington was a plus. The low salary did not bother him.
The Unitarian Church of Norfolk now in the Spring of 1939 had a choice to make – to find the money to call the warm and experienced Universalist George LaPoint, or to accept the bright and energetic but totally inexperienced Unitarian Robert Sonen.