Heirlooms of UCN History #64
by Will Frank
The Rev. Robert W. Sonen opened the 1940-41 church year of the First Unitarian Church of Norfolk on September 15, 1940, with these words:
“This morning is the beginning of another church year. For the tenth successive fall the only church dedicated to the princi8ples of liberal religion is opening its doors to the free minds of this city. In a time when the world needs as never before the strength and power of religion we find ourselves growing, our material equipment improving, and our message more vital. It promises to be a grand year and if our hopes can be realized and our plans carried out this promise will be fulfilled. This is a church founded upon the principles of democracy. As such it looks to all members and friends for support, for advise and for criticism. To a degree unknown in any other denomination this is your church. Through our combined efforts may it be a church of which we can be proud, for which we can make sacrifices, and in which we can face all problems fairly and revisit the sources of truth both new and old.”
The year ahead held promise. The children’s religious education program was set to begin on schedule at 10:00 every Sunday morning and the worship service at 11:00. The youth group (YPRU, or Young People’s Religious Union) had met through the summer and was ready for its fall program with meetings every other week. The Women’s Alliance met every second Thursday. New member Cecil Bailey was now the regular church organist every Sunday. The board met monthly. The church office would be staffed every weekday morning. All was ready for the new church year.
Sonen revised the statement on the back of the order of service about the purpose of the liberal church. It read as follows:
“This church is dedicated to religion, but not to a creed. Neither upon itself nor its members does it impose a test concerning doctrinal formulas. Love to God and man and the perfecting of our spiritual nature it regards as the unchanging substance of religion, and the essential gospel of Jesus. Consecrating itself to these principles, it aims at cultivating reverence for truth, moral character and insight, helpfulness to humanity and the spirt of communion with the infinite. It welcomes to its worship and fellowship all who are in sympathy with a religion thus simple and thus free.”
The serenity of the church and its people, however, was about to change as war in Europe and Asia came ever closer to America and the First Unitarian Church of Norfolk.