Re-Blog: Investing in Your Beliefs

Some thirty years ago, a family crisis led me on a roundabout route toward finding my religious home, and I joined my first Unitarian Universalist congregation, Community Church of New York. That particular congregation had a long history in liberal religion and civil rights, with names like William Cullen Bryant, William Ellery Channing, John Haynes Holmes, and Donald Szantho Harrington. Dr. Holmes especially was a powerful orator and leader, one of the founders of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Under Dr. Holmes’ ministry, from 1907 to 1949, the church grew many times over, and people of color felt welcome. When I joined in the mid-1980s, about half the congregation was black, and many of those members drove all the way in from their suburban communities to the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City on Sunday morning for services…