A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
February 5, 2006
Copyright 2006, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
Because of Unitarian Universalism’s emphasis on the freedom of individual belief and conscience, and because we do not have one set of closed scripture or sacred stories, we look to the stories of the lives of individual Unitarians, Universalists and Unitarian Universalists as one source of spiritual inspiration and ethical guidance. We do biography as theology well. We praise those who have pushed against the prevailing prejudices and attitudes of their day to urge humanity toward freer, more rational, more enlightened and perhaps more compassionate living: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Clara Barton, Theodore Parker, to name a few. The real challenge lies in listening also to those whose stories reveal where we have failed to live according to our convictions. Few Unitarian Universalists know of the Reverend Egbert Ethelred Brown. There are lots of reasons why, I imagine. His story is a complicated one, he is as more a tragic figure as a heroic one. In part because of his own character and in part of because of the racial and class prejudices of the members of the American Unitarian Association. It is not the kind of story where we feel we can pat our Unitarianism on the back and say, "see how great it is, this tradition we are part of." And yet, Rev. Brown’s story is inspirational and it is important for understanding our tradition, not just then but now. It speaks to one of the core values of Unitarianism: freedom and how we understand it and live it as a conviction in community. Rev. Brown’s story is also inspirational because it is about being a pioneer: one who enters unknown, even hostile, territory and struggles to make a life in it. The Rev. Egbert Ethelred Brown was a black pioneer in a white denomination. He was the first black Unitarian minister who set out to bring the message of liberal religion to his community and to try to educate the American Unitarian Association about the potential for liberal religion in the Jamaican and American black community.
Egbert Ethelred Brown was born on July 11, 1875 in Falmouth, Jamaica, the oldest of five children. His call to ministry came at a young age. As a child, he liked to organize services for his siblings and friends and preach to them. He wrote: "There was a coincident with childish experiments in making speeches, an abnormally religious temperament. In all other respects I think I was a normal boy, but at times I was seized by a religious fervor which I now know was abnormal. My favorite hymn was, ’O Paradise ’tis weary waiting here.’ I sang it often and as I sang, my face was bathed in tears. Why should a boy have chosen a hymn so other-worldly?…I somewhat outgrew the abnormal religiousness of my youth" (p. 33-34).
Because Ethelred was the eldest, his education suffered somewhat. He was a bright and accomplished student and placed third in the Jamaican civil service examination. But his father was not as financially secure enough for Ethelred to pursue higher education in theology or law. By the time his younger brothers were ready, his father had become prosperous and one brother became an important lawyer and the other the first black canon in Jamaica. Instead, Ethelred entered the civil service as a clerk of the treasury, where he worked from 1899 until 1907 when he was abruptly asked to leave. Although there is no public record of this, Ethelred apparently secretly borrowed money from the treasury with the intention of paying it back. A young husband and father with four children who had steep education tuition fees, he found himself in growing debt and acted in a panic. It was discovered before he was able to pay it back. His father and brothers paid off the debt quietly to avoid scandal, with the provision that Ethelred be dismissed immediately. At aged 32, Ethelred Brown suddenly found himself without the security of the civil career he believed he would have until his retirement. He took this crisis as an opportunity to discern what he really wanted to do and recalled his childhood call to ministry.
Ethelred had been an active church member most of his life. But in returning to his call to ministry, he realized that he needed to become ordained in a tradition grounded in a theology he truly believed. As a youth, it hit him one Easter Sunday , as the priest and congregation recited the Athanasian Creed, that he did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Later that same afternoon, he visited an uncle who had a copy of William Ellery Channing’s famous speech defining Christian Unitarianism sitting on his table. His uncle was a closet Unitarian and tried to dissuade his nephew from adopting beliefs he knew would be unacceptable to the family and to the community. But Ethelred insisted, so his uncle lent him the sermon to read as well as a copy of the Unitarian hymnal. He wrote: "I followed up by reading other Unitarian literature and as a result I became a Unitarian without a church. For some years I attended no church, and then on a Sunday morning in 1895 I was drafted to take the place of the sick organist of the Montego Bay Wesleyan Methodist Church. On that day I began four years of service as an organist of that church. On my transfer to Spanish Town in 1899 I was placed in charge of the choir of the Wesleyan Church of that town. Thus for nearly twelve years I forgot my Unitarian theology as I engaged in these services…Then came…the year of decision…With that call came a very urgent and important question, namely this--into the ministry of which denomination should I enter?" (pp. 36-37).
He seriously considered entering the ministry of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. But he also sent a letter, addressed "To any Unitarian Minister in New York City", requesting information about entering the Unitarian ministry. The same day the AME church welcomed him, he received a reply from the President of Meadville Seminary, Franklin Southworth that was less supportive: "The mail which brought a reply form the Bishop of the AME Church which was practically an acceptance, brought also a reply from President Southworth. The latter informed me that the school did not conduct a correspondence course, and that therefore I would have to come to Meadville. And that as there was no Unitarian Church in American for colored people, and that as white Unitarians required a white minister he was unable to predicted what my future would be at the conclusion of my training. The issue was clear; the conflict was short but sharp." (pp. 37-38).
A reply like that he received from Southworth would have discouraged most from even attempting to enter the Unitarian ministry. But the tenaciousness that was such a mark of Brown’s character, a double-edged sword that brought out the pioneer and the tragic in him, rose to the surface and led him to choose the much harder path. He withdrew his name from consideration from the AME Church and continued to correspond with Southworth until he was accepted as a special student at Meadville. It is here that a gap in the ideals and the reality of Unitarianism revealed itself: while in theory, Unitarians believed in the equality of man (and I use man deliberately), they also believed their tradition was for a certain class of well-to-do, well-educated, independent and enlightened white men. While Unitarians were very happy to support benevolent causes that benefited the underprivileged: the poor, people of color, immigrants, they did not seek to bring them into the faith. Unitarians did not want to evangelize or to become a popular religion but rather to remain small and comfortable for those already inside. Even today, I hear newcomers say, "I have been Unitarian Universalist all my life. I just didn’t know something like this existed." We do not advertise ourselves in ways that are welcoming. This is a consequence of what the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed, one of the few life-long African American Unitarian Universalists calls "the liberal fear of mass appeal."
The leaders of the AUA, particularly its President Samuel Eliot and its secretary, Louis Cornish, would over the years offer Brown mixed messages, encouraging him but in the condescending way that one might encourage a child to do something they believe he or she will never really accomplish. Meanwhile, among themselves, they would decry his plans as unrealistic and a drain on resources better used for truly successful ventures. Then when Brown would cross a boundary that disturbed them, these leaders would respond with an abrupt harshness that took Brown by surprise. They expected Brown to hear not the encouraging words but the "but" that followed. They did not realize Brown’s tenaciousness and tendency to hear what he wanted to hear until it was too late. And they never saw and trusted in the truth and the depth of Brown’s call to Unitarian ministry. While Franklin Southworth would be able to overcome his racial prejudice to support Brown, Eliot, Cornish, and others could not. Just as Brown could only hear what he wanted to hear, they could only see what they wanted to see.
Brown would need to be tenacious and to trust the truth of his call for he would get hit from both sides. In Jamaica, his church community did not take well to his Unitarian theology and refused to give him their intended farewell gift. His family suddenly withdrew promised financial support for his passage to the United States. It took him three years and three tries to get over the immigration and financial hurdles just to get into the United States to go to Meadville Seminary in Chicago, leaving his family behind in a precarious financial situation. Finally, in 1910, he made it to Meadville. In seminary, he experienced what Morrison-Reed believed to be the happiest times in his experience as a Unitarian. There, he did very well in his studies and made friends with his colleagues. He finally found a place where he could express his theology and did not seem to encounter the same level of prejudice that he would in the larger Unitarian denomination. One of his most constant supporters was President Southworth. Upon his graduation in 1912, he was ordained by a group at Meadville with the intention of his returning to Jamaica to start a Unitarian church there. He came back to Montego Bay, full of energy and optimism, with a fund started by President Southworth and promises from the AUA for further financial support.
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation did not meet his exuberant expectations nor match his optimism. While the AUA and the British and Foreign Unitarian Association gave grants to Rev. Brown, they saw it more as a humanitarian mission and never supported Rev. Brown’s attempt to start a truly viable Unitarian congregation amongst the Black community in Jamaica. Brown, for his part, looked only at the encouraging words and ignored the veiled hints that perhaps this was not working out. When his attempts to start a Unitarian congregation in Montego Bay failed, Brown moved it to the larger city of Kingston. Just as he found land to build a church in 1915, the AUA cut off funds. Brown wrote: "I very soon learned that the men who directed the affairs of the AUA were not like the men at Meadville…They were ’business’ men." (p. 49). Brown boarded a ship for Boston to speak to the AUA directors face to face. He succeeded in convincing them to renew their financial commitment but he alienated Samuel Eliot and Louis Cornish for good. In 1917, Eliot once again cut off funding for Brown’s Kingston congregation, this time for good. The news was leaked to the Jamaican newspapers so that Rev. Brown was publicly humiliated and his work further undermined. Rev. Brown and his congregation struggled on for three more years. Because Brown had to work another job as an accountant to support his family, he was never able to give full attention to getting the congregation on solid ground. He also encountered a racial prejudice within his own community. He was very dark-skinned and in the hierarchy within Black Jamaican society, he was viewed as "not white enough" to earn the kind of respect and leadership building a new community would require. In 1920, he understood that his dream of establishing a Unitarian congregation in Jamaica would never be realized.
But in foregoing that dream, Rev. Brown did not give up on the idea of bringing Unitarianism to the Black community or of being a Unitarian minister. His tenaciousness served to inspire him to come at his hope from another angle. He sold everything, packed up his family and moved to New York City to start a new Unitarian congregation in the heart of the American Black community, in Harlem.
Resources:
Mark D. Morrison-Reed. Black Pioneers in a White Denomination. Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1994.
Mark D. Morrison-Reed and Jacqui James. Been in the Storm So Long. Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1991.