Landis, Dennis

Dennis Channing Landis (named for William Ellery Channing) grew up in the Unitarian Church of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Over the past two decades, he has been closely involved with the restoration of the 1771 meeting house that is home to the Unitarian Universalist Society in Brooklyn, Connecticut. He was for six years president of that Society and serves as its archivist. A long-term project is the history of the Brooklyn congregation, the only Congregational church body in Connecticut to accept Unitarian theology.

Landis was for 20 years editor of a bibliographical project that produced the six-volume reference series, European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Books Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1776 [i.e. 1750]. He is the Curator of European Books in the John Carter Brown Library, a special collection of early Americana at Brown University. He studied rare book bibliography at Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in German literature from the University of Connecticut, where he also taught for three years. His research interests range from European intellectual history in the 17th century to American religious history of the 19th. He is married to Ann Phelps Barry, a librarian and church musician.

Articles: Celia Burleigh, Samuel J. May

Lavan, Spencer

Born in New York City, Spencer Lavan graduated from Tufts University and Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained in 1962 at the Unitarian Church of Charleston, SC, where he served for two years before undertaking further studies at McGill University in Montreal. There he earned an M.A. in Islamic Studies and a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion. He taught courses on Islam and the religions of India at Tufts from 1969 to 1979 and served as an undergraduate dean. He then chaired the Department of Medical Humanities at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine and edited the Journal of Medical Humanities and Bioethics. From 1988 to 1996 he was President and Dean of Meadville/Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago. He and his wife Susan raised four children. He received three honorary doctorates, served as president of the UU Historical Society, as a founder of Collegium, and as a co-editor of this Dictionary. Suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he retired to Harpswell, ME, where he died in 2016.

Articles: Walter Channing, Caroline Dall, Charles Dall, Hajom Kissor Singh, Eliza Sunderland, Jabez T. Sunderland

Lloyd, Jeanne

Rev. Jeanne W. Lloyd earned her M.Div. from Meadville Lombard in 2002 and was ordained by the UU congregations of West Hartford and Manchester, CT. As a community minister, she served and advocated for people with disabilities and was co-president of the UU Society of Community Ministers. She served in congregational ministry from 2007 to 2020 and is now an Affiliated Community Minister with the Shoreline Unitarian Society of Madison, CT. The subject of her biography Frances Wayland Wood, was great aunt to her husband, Robert Hard. 

Articles: Frances Wayland Wood

MacDonald, JoAnn M.

JoAnn M. MacDonald is a non-fiction writer living in Joppa, MD, and a member of the UU Fellowship of Harford County. After joining in 1998, she began studying, writing, and speaking about UU women of the 19th century. She published a book called Democracy vs. Theocracy in 2009. She continues to write biographies, currently with living persons, with her business “What’s Your Story?”.

Articles: Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Maria Mitchell

Magidson, Errol

A one-time Peace Corps volunteer and now a retired professor of psychology, Errol Magidson is a member of the Beverly Unitarian Church on Chicago’s South Side, which is housed in Chicago’s Only Castle, to use the title of a documentary he produced about the history of Givin’s Irish Castle and its keepers. He dedicated that work to his late wife Jan and to Bill Diana, president of Men of the Castle, both of whom died in 2011. He has recently produced a second edition of the film.

Articles: Rufus Austin White, Florence Ellen Kollock Crooker

Mann, Anthony

Anthony Mann was educated at Longcroft School, Beverley and at the universities of Warwick, Manchester and Keele in the United Kingdom. His doctorate The Brahmins and Britain: the significance of British models in the forming of the upper-class of Boston, Massachusetts, 1780-1840 was awarded by the University of Keele in 2000.

He is the author of “Unitarian Voluntary Societies and the Redefinition of Elite Authority in Boston, 1780-1820” in Secular and Religious Reform Movements in America – Ideas, Beliefs and Social Change eds., D. K. Adams/C. A. van Minnen (Edinburgh University Press, 1999); “‘A Nation first in all the arts of civilisation’: Boston’s post-Revolutionary elites view Great Britain” American Nineteenth Century History (Summer 2001); and “How ‘poor country boys’ became Boston Brahmins: The Rise of the Appletons and the Lawrences in Ante-bellum Massachusetts” Historical Journal of Massachusetts (Winter 2003), available here.

Articles: Josiah Quincy

Mannis, Jedediah

A graduate of Yale College (1966) and Yale Law School (1969) practiced law in Boston and chaired the Conservation Commission for the town of Winchester. He served as head of a non-profit devoted to the preservation of open space in Massachusetts. With Galen Wilson, he edited a book of civil war letters, Bound to be a Soldier: the Letters of James T. Miller (Univ. of TN, 2001). Having supported the outdoor church for the homeless on Boston Common, Mannis earned an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity in 2004, was ordained in the United Church of Christ, and co-founded the Outdoor Church of Cambridge. In 2009 he published Joseph Tuckerman and the Outdoor Church in the Princeton Series of Theological Monographs. He died in September, 2019.

Articles: Joseph Tuckerman

Marsh, John

Rev. John Newcomb Marsh was dedicated as an infant and attended Sunday school at the First Parish Church in Norwell, MA. He was an English major at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and earned his M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School. He also graduated from the World Council of Churches graduate program in Bossey, Switzerland. He served as a Minister of Religious Education before becoming Minister of the Unitarian Church in Edmonton, Alberta. There he met Alison Patrick, who became his wife. They raised three children together. John served as Co-Minister of the First UU Society of San Francisco, 1995-2004. He was founding chair of California People of Faith against the Death Penalty. After several interim ministries, he served the Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa as Lead Minister, 2009-2016, and then returned to interim service. His interest in UU history was strong and persistent. In 2020, while serving the UU Society of New Haven, CT, he suffered a debilitating stroke. He died the following year. 

Articles: Samuel Gridley Howe, Margaret Laurence

Martin, Virginia

As a retired speech pathologist, Virginia Martin did research on the history of her profession in Canada and contributed to several provincial and national association websites. As a member of the First UU Church Winnipeg, she researched and wrote about individuals in the history of that congregation. She died in November 2022 at the age of 87. 

Articles: Eliza Anne McIntosh Reid, Helen Richmond Young Reid

Mehler, Ralph

Ralph C. Mehler is an insurance broker residing in his hometown of Sharpsville, Pennsylvania. As a board member of the Sharpsville Area Historical Society, he has a particular interest in the history of the town that is so closely associated with the family of noted industrialist “General” James Pierce. The Pierces were leading members of the Universalist congregation there and paid to erect its church in 1882. In researching the history of the First Universalist Church of Sharpsville, Mehler was able to obtain its listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The building is now owned and is being restored as its headquarters by the Historical Society. Mehler received a B.A. in linguistics from Yale.

Articles: Clarence J. Harris

McEmrys, Aaron

Aaron McEmrys received his B.A. from the National Labor College at the George Meany Center for Labor Studies. He wrote on Brook Farm while preparing for the UU ministry at Meadville Lombard Theological School. He served as Lead Minister at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara and then at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA. In 2019 he was removed from ministerial fellowship with the UUA for conduct unbecoming a minister. 

Articles: Brook Farm

McGonigle, Gregory

Rev. Dr. Gregory W. McGonigle became Dean of Religious Life and University Chaplain at Emory University in 2019. He previously served for six years as the University Chaplain of Tufts and five years as Director of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at Oberlin College and as a campus minister at the University of California at Davis.  He received his B.A. magna cum laude from Brown University in Religious Studies, focused on South Asian religions, and an M.Div. from Harvard focused on American religious history. He wrote his brief bio of James Freeman Clarke as an HDS student in a course taught by John Buehrens. He earned his D.Min. from the Boston University School of Theology. He is past president of the National Association of College and University Chaplains and a past board member of the Association for College and University Religious Affairs. He currently serves on the executive board of the International Association of Chaplains in Higher Education. 

Articles: James Freeman Clarke

Miano, David

David Miano is an ancient historian, specializing in the histories of the Near East, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, and China. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, and is the author of Shadow on the Steps: Time Measurement in Ancient Israel, geared toward scholars, How to Know Stuff, a little e-book designed for the general public, and several anthologies designed for classroom use, including Ideas in the Making: A Sourcebook for World Intellectual History to 1300 and Pen Stylus, and Chisel: An Ancient Egypt Sourcebook.

Articles: James Freeman

Mishra-Marzetti, Manish

The Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti serves as Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is a co-editor of the 2018-2019 UUA common read, Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class, and the Environment. He has served extensively in Unitarian Universalist leadership, including as a member of the UUA Board of Trustees; President of DRUUMM (our UU people of color organization); Commissioner on the UUA Commission on Appraisal, co-authoring its report Engaging Our Theological Diversity; Secretary of the Board of Starr King School for the Ministry; and as an author and advocate of the 2007 General Assembly resolution confronting gender identity-related discrimination. He brings to the ministry his multicultural experience serving as a U.S. diplomat during the Clinton administration.

Articles: A. Powell Davies

Morgan, John C.

Rev. Dr. John Crossley Morgan earned his B.A. in sociology and religion from Albright College in Reading, PA, and M.A. in philosophy of religion from Oberlin College (1966). Prior to ministry, he was a community program director and newspaper journalist. He earned his M.Div. from Andover Newton Theological School (1984) and was ordained the same year. He worked on the UUA extension staff and served UU congregations in Northumberland, PA (1995-98), Reading, PA (2000-2004), and Wyoming, PA (2004-2005). Now retired, he has published many articles, poems, and books, including Awakening the Soul: A Book of Daily Meditations (SHB, 2001) and Thin Places, a 2009 collection of poems. 

Articles: George de Benneville, Abel C. Thomas

Morris, Richard

Richard Morris was the author of Cologne No. 10 For Men, a Vietnam War novel, “Skytroopers,” a song series he wrote in 1967 while serving in Vietnam, and Well Considered, a thriller about race and history in Maryland. Earlier in his career, he designed and built solar homes, conducted housing research, and wrote books, articles, and speeches for the National Association of Home Builders.

He resided in Hyattsville, Maryland, and was a member of the Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Bowie, Maryland, where he was a past president and where he directed the choir for twelve years. He did historical research leading to the name change from Bowie Unitarian Universalist Fellowship to Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation, and wrote the chapter on Don Speed Smith Goodloe in Darkening the Doorways: Black Trailblazers and Missed Opportunities in Unitarian Universalism, Mark D. Morrison-Reed, ed., Skinner House, 2011. He died in 2017. 

Articles: Don Speed Smith Goodloe

Mylvaganam, Thurairaja

Thurairaja ‘Raja’ Mylvaganam was born in Malaysia in 1949 to Ceylon Tamil parents whose religion was Saivism (one root of what is generically called Hinduism). He was educated in the neo-colonial school system in Malaysia. After high school he went to England, where, while making a fruitless attempt to be an accountant, he was inculturated into ‘the Sixties’ instead. After a promoting extra-curricular education in Malaysia, in the eighties he returned to England and joined academic life. He ventured to the United States in 1984. He joined Meadville as a D.Min student with the specific intention of writing a biography of William Roberts. This remains an ongoing and uncompleted project. He has received graduate degrees from Mundelein College, Chicago (M.A.,1987), and Meadville Lombard Theological School (M Div.,1993). During his ministerial training Raja served as Intern Minister at May Memorial Unitarian Society in Syracuse, New York and Intern Campus Minister at Hendriks Chapel, Syracuse University. After completing programs conducted by the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education, he worked as a Campus Minister and Chaplain at the Channing Murray Foundation and the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas. He now lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with his spouse Geneviève Trintignac. He continues his research into the Unitarian mission in the wake of the Enlightenment.

Articles: William Roberts

Nagel, Laura

Laura Nagel and her husband are retired to Monterey, California, Laura’s hometown, where they rebuilt her mother’s old house on the beach about which Laura wrote the blog Phebe Force. They are members of the UU Church of the Monterey Peninsula, where Laura has served on the board and they both sing in the choir. They have two adult daughters and three grandchildren. Laura was educated at Barnard (1972) and has a master’s degree in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research (1976). She had a career as an urban planner specializing in housing and community development from 1976-2000.  She served as Board President and then as Executive Director of Southwest Unitarian Universalist Women (SWUUW), 2004-2009. She served as co-convener of UU Women and Religion’s core group from 2005-2007. She was founding Executive Director of the International Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Women (now the International Women’s Convocation), from 2010-20.. She first met Margot Adler while arranging for her to be a keynote speaker for SWUUW in 2005. She received the Annie Margaret Barr award from ICUUW on her retirement in 2020. 

Articles: Margot Adler

Noble, Laurie Carter

Laurie Carter Noble, writer and long-time Unitarian Universalist and social justice activist, has written extensively on issues affecting women and children. She has taught writing at Villanova University and Bryn Mawr College, as well as for the American Management Association and the Boston Center for Adult Education. For several years she was the feature columnist in her community newspaper, the Back Bay Courant, writing with a focus on Boston history. She teaches writing workshops and is particularly interested in helping women write the stories of their lives and those of their foremothers.

A founding member of the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society, Noble served as an editorial consultant for the UUWHS anthology, Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936. She edited Reverend Violet Kochendoerfer’s autobiography, A Modern Pioneer. She is currently researching the life of suffragist and Universalist minister Olympia Brown in preparation for a new biography. See http://www.laurienoblelectures.com/.

Articles: Abigail Adams, Olympia Brown

Nugent, Jim

Jim Nugent is a writer and designer living in Matteson, Illinois. He grew up in Mt. Clemens, Michigan where he attended Zion (German) Evangelical Church with his family. “It was a liberal congregation influenced by German Pietism,” Jim says, “but, I was always an agnostic or atheist . . . still am!”

In 1962, Jim registered as a concientious objector. The following year he traveled to Southern Illinois University to study design with R. Buckminster Fuller. As a student he was active in the Student Peace Union and the Student Non-violent Freedom Committee. Good food and talk attracted Jim to the Sunday evening student group at the Carbondale Unitarian Fellowship.

Jim worked as a communication/media specialist with behavioral psychologists, criminologists, mathematicians, and in Buckminster Fuller’s research office before joining the University of Illinois field staff in 1974 as a communication generalist.

Jim, his wife Becky, and their three children have been members of the Universalist Unitarian Church in Peoria, Illinois and the Abraham Lincoln UU Congregation in Springfield, Illinois. More recently they have attended the UU Comunity Church in Park Forest, Beverly Unitarian Church, and Unity Temple UU Congregation in Oak Park. He served on the board of the Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Society, 2010-2014.

Current interests include writing, design, mathematics visualization, history, and bicycling. Jim started working with the DUUB in 2004 as a contributor. In addition to being a contributor of biographies, he took on the position of managing editor in 2010-2019. As of November 2016, he had fact-checked and edited 75 biographies written by contributors and researched and written 10 biographies from scratch.

Articles: William Bentley, Nathaniel Bowditch, John Murray Forbes, Lucia Fidelia Woolley Gillette, Elizabeth Briant Lee & Alfred McClung Lee, George Mortimer Pullman, Helen Richmond Young Reid, Henry Nelson Wieman, John Bird Wilkins, Clarence Mott Woolley, Edward Mott Woolley, Smith Rensselaer Woolley

Papa, Stephan

Rev. Dr. Stephan Papa became a UU at the Universalist Church in Wausau, WI, graduated from the University of Wisconsin, and earned an M.A. and D.Min. from Meadville Lombard during its affiliation with the University of Chicago. He further studied Unitarian history at Manchester College, Oxford, and traveled to Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland. He served congregations in Buffalo and Ft. Lauderdale before leading First Universalist Church of Denver, 1982-2001, where he was named Minister Emeritus in 2017. From 2001 to 2006 he was Senior Minister of the Main Line Unitarian Church of Devon, PA, and from 2006 to 2013 served the UUA Growth Fund as Special Assistant to the President. He is the author of An Agnostic Talks to God (1989) and The Last Man Jailed for Blasphemy (1998). 

Articles: Abner Kneeland

Parker, Sandra

Sandra Parker was born in 1943. She received her B.A. from the State University of New York at Geneseo, 1965, and her M.A., 1967, and Ph.D., 1968, from Case-Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She taught English at Hiram College (Hiram, Ohio), 1968-2000, where she is now Professor Emerita. Currently she does part-time teaching at Florida Gulf Coast University and Southwest Florida College in Ft. Myers, Florida. She has written three books on 19th-century Ohio women writers: Home Materials, Ohio’s Nineteenth-Century Regional Women’s Fiction (1998), After the Western Reserve, The Ohio Fiction of Jessie Brown Pounds (1999), and ‘Tecumseh’ and Other Stories of the Ohio River Valley by Julia L. Dumont(2000).

Articles: Frances Dana Barker Gage

Pedon, Creighton

W. Creighton Peden is the Fuller E. Callaway professor emeritus of philosophy, Augusta State University. He was educated at Davidson College (B.A.), the University of Chicago (M.A.), and at St. Andrews University, Scotland (Ph.D.). He wrote Wieman’s Empirical Process Philosophy (1977), The Chicago School: Voices of Liberal Religious Thought (1987), The Philosopher of Free Religion: Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1992), Civil War Pulpit to World’s Parliament of Religion: The Thought of William James Potter (1996), A Good Life in a World Made Good, Albert Eustace Haydon (2006), An Intellectual Biography of David Atwood Wasson (2008), Evolutionary Theist: An Intellectual Biography of Minot Judson Savage (2009), and many articles and chapters for other books. With Charles Hartshorne he wrote Whitehead’s View of Reality (1981). He co-edited H. N. Wieman’s Creative Freedom: Vocation of Liberal Religion (1982), H. N. Wieman’s Science Serving Faith (1987), The Chicago School of Theology: Pioneers in Religious Inquiry (1996), The Collected Essays of Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1996), Essays and Sermons of William James Potter (2003), and Pragmatism and the Rise of Religious Humanism, The Writings of Albert Eustace Haydon (2006). He died in 2016.

Articles: Francis Ellingwood Abbot

Pettee, David

Rev. David Allen Pettee was a lifelong Unitarian Universalist from a family that has worshipped in UU churches for eight generations. David was raised in the Winchester (MA) Unitarian Society, and was a member of UU churches in Reading, MA, San Francisco, CA, and Newton, MA. David received his undergraduate degree from Ithaca College and finished graduate training in social work at Boston University in 1983. David first felt called to serve as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1984 while attending an installation service. At the suggestion of one of his predecessors at the UUA, David attended Starr King School for the Ministry to deepen his appreciation of Unitarian Universalist culture on the West coast. While a seminarian, David walked across America on the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. He was ordained at the First UU Society of San Francisco and, as a hospice chaplain, served that congregation as an affiliated community minister. David retired from his position as UUA Credentialing Director in June, 2020 and died of cancer in September, 2020.

Articles: John Turner Sargent

Pochatko, Andy

Andy Pochatko is an independent scholar and reference librarian for the Harbor-Topky Memorial Library, Ashtabula, Ohio. He has graduate degrees from Clarion University of Pennsylvania (M.S., Library Science, 2010) and Bowling Green State University (M.A., English, 2014). He lives near Meadville, PA, with his wife, son, and four cats.

Articles: Harm Jan Huidekoper

Resly, Erik Martínez

Erik W. Martinez Resly became Communications Director for the ACLU of Texas in 2021, based in Houston. He grew up overseas and was confirmed in the Unitarische Freie Religionsgemeinde in Frankfurt, Germany. A graduate of Brown University and of Harvard Divinity School, where he was a Presidential Scholar, he was granted preliminary fellowship as a UU minister in 2012. He founded and co-directed The Sanctuaries, a multi-faith non-profit in Washington, DC that trained and placed young artists with grassroots organizing campaigns and national social movements. HDS awarded him its Peter Gomes Distinguished Alumni Honor. Resley also led digital and cultural advocacy for Muslim Advocates, completed the American Muslim Civic Leadership Instituted, and served as a Culture Caucus Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

Articles: Clemens Taesler

Richards, Marilyn

Marilyn Richards is a life-long Unitarian Universalist. She graduated from Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA, and was a computer programmer and teacher of international folk dancing at MIT prior to enrolling at Andover Newton Theological School. She wrote her biography of Rammohun Roy while studying there and serving an internship at the First Church UU in Milford, MA. 

Articles: Rammohun Roy

Ritchie, Susan

Susan Ritchie has served as Minister of the North Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Lewis Center Ohio (formerly the Dublin UU Church) since 1996.  Previous to that she served as the first (interim) Associate Minister of First UU Columbus, which ordained her in 1995. She is also Director of the House of Unitarian Universalist Studies at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, where she also teaches UU history, theology, and polity.  Previously she was Associate Professor of Church History at the Starr King School for the Ministry. Sharing a solid understanding and enthusiasm for liberal religious identity is important to this life-long, third generation Unitarian Universalist. Rev. Ritchie is well-published on the topic of Unitarian Universalist history and identity, including many articles, and her book, Children of the Same God: The Historical Relationship Between Unitarianism, Judaism, and Islam.  She is currently working on a new book: Unitarian Pirates of the Carribean: Historical Adventures in UU Polity.  She holds a PhD. in Cultural/Religious Studies from the Ohio State University and a Masters of Divinity from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. Rev. Ritchie has also served a six year term on the national Board of the Unitarian Universalist Association; with part of that time as Secretary of the UUA. She is Director of the Harvard Square Library, a digital library of UU biographies, history, books and media. 

Articles: Horace Mann, Mary Peabody Mann

Robbins, Paula

Paula Ivaska Robbins was an author, editor, and university administrator. Born in 1935 to Finnish immigrants, she grew up with Finnish as her first language. She earned degrees from Vassar, Boston University, and a Ph.D. in higher education administration from the University of Connecticut. She wrote two historical novels based on the life of her family: Nights of Summer, Nights of Autumn and Below Rollstone Hill. While living in Concord, MA, and serving as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of UMass at Lowell, she began researching The Royal Family of Concord: Samuel, Elizabeth, and Rockwood Hoar and Their Friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson (XLibris, 2003) In 1993 she moved to Asheville, NC, where she worked as an editor, planned a co-housing community, and served on the board of the UU church, and continued writing. The Travels of Peter Kalm, Finnish-Swedish Naturalist Through Colonial North America 1748-1750, was published in 2007 by Purple Mountain Press. In 2009, they also published Jane Colden: America’s First Woman Botanist. These were followed by The Best of the Rune Singers: Based on the Life of Elias Lönnrot, Compiler of the Finnish National Epic, The Kalevala. (Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012); and On Strawberry Hill: The Transcendent Love of Gifford Pinchot and Laura Houghteling (University of Alabama Press), as well as occasional op-eds for the Asheville Citizen-Times. She died in 2022.

Articles: Abigail Adams Eliot, Hoar Family, Ezra Ripley

Robinson, David

David M. Robinson is Oregon Professor of English and Distinguished Professor of American Literature, Emeritus, in the Department of English at Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. He is a scholar specializing in Emerson, Thoreau and the New England Transcendentalist movement, and in the early history of American Unitarianism. He was educated at the University of Texas at Austin (BA 1970); Harvard Divinity School (MTS 1972); and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MA 1973; PhD 1976). Robinson has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, served as a Fulbright Guest Professor at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and as Chair of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Panel on Theological Education. He has also directed several National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars for teachers on the Transcendentalist movement. His publications include Apostle of Culture: Emerson as Preacher and Lecturer (1982); William Ellery Channing: Selected Writings (1985); The Unitarians and the Universalists (1985); Emerson and the Conduct of Life (1993); and World of Relations: The Achievement of Peter Taylor (1998). He is currently engaged in teaching courses in American Literature at Oregon State, and preparing a new book on Henry David Thoreau.

In 2001, Robinson became, director of Oregon State’s Center for the Humanities. Over the next three years, Robinson wrote or edited three more books about Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, including Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism (2004). In 2005 he was given the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, and he published two more books near the end of the decade, including 2008’s At Home and Abroad: The Transcendental Landscapes of Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892). Following his retirement from OSU at the end of 2016, Robinson has pursued further exploration of American Transcendentalist authors as well as the early history of American Unitarianism, and the interplay between literature and environmental studies.

Articles: John Sullivan Dwight, George Ripley

Ronalds, Beverley, G

Beverley F. Ronalds grew up in Melbourne, Australia and completed post-graduate studies at Imperial College, London. Serving as Group Executive at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and Woodside Chair of Oil and Gas Engineering at the University of Western Australia (UWA), she also has significant industry experience in the design of offshore production facilities. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Engineers Australia and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, as well as an adjunct professor at UWA. Find out more about her book Sir Francis Ronalds: Father of the Electric Telegraph along with research on her other Unitarian forebears at: SirFrancisRonalds.co.uk.

Articles: Samuel Carter, Thomas Gibson, Thomas Field Gibson, Elizabeth (Betsey) Ronalds, Sir Francis Ronalds

Ross, Warren

Warren Ross began his lifelong commitment to Unitarian Universalism in his teens as president of the youth group at All Souls Church in New York City. After time out for graduate work, the United States Army, getting married, and starting a career in medical journalism, he served as the first president of the New York Metropolitan Unitarian Universalist District, as a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association board of trustees, and then as a trustee of Starr King School for the Ministry. He was a contributing editor of UU World and the author of two Skinner House books. He held various offices at the Flushing Unitarian Church (where he first heard about Veatch funds) and at the Community Unitarian Church of White Plains, both of New York.

He was a founder and principal of Kallir, Philips, Ross, a medical communications company in New York City, and served two four-year terms on the Rye, New York City Council, the first as a member, the second as mayor. He was the father of three daughters and lives in Rye with his wife, Lucile. He died in 2015

Articles: Caroline Veatch

Ruchotzke, Renee Zimelis

Since 2010 Renee Ruchotzke has been on the Congregational Life Staff of the UUA, expanding online resources for governance, leadership and organizational development, and as primary contact for some thirty congregations in the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. She wrote her contribution to the DUUB while preparing for UU ministry through Meadville Lombard. She lives in Kent, Ohio, where she is an Affiliated Community Minister for the UU Church of Kent. 

Articles: Caroline Bartlett Crane

Ruston, Alan

Alan Ruston was editor of the Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society (UK), 1988-2012, and twice president of the Society. Over a period of forty-five years he published numerous articles and books on British Unitarian and dissenting history, including On the Side of Liberty: A Unitarian Historical Miscellany (Lindsey Press, 2016). He has written for family historians, My Ancestor was and English Presbyterian/Unitarian, published by the Society of Genealogists in London. He held many posts within the British Unitarian movement, including that of Chairman and became well-known both as a writer and speaker. A retired civil servant, living near Watford, Hertfordshire, in 2022 he published These Eighty Years: Recollections. 

Articles: Robert Aspland, Seth Curtis Beach, Robert Brook Aspland, John Relly Beard, Sir John Bowring, Sir John Carter, Austen Chamberlain, Joseph Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain, Field Marshal Neville Chamberlain, Brooke Herford, Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Henry Solly, Robert Spears

Schulman, Frank

Frank Schulman (26 Mar 1927-4 Jan 2006 ) graduated from Harvard Divinity School (S.T.B.) and was ordained at the Arlington Street Church in Boston in 1954. He served churches in Worcester, Massachusetts; Youngstown, Ohio; Emerson Unitarian Church in Houston, Texas; and, in retirement, The Huntsville (Texas) Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. He also served in Horsham and Oxford, England. At Oxford he supervised the training of the divinity students at Manchester College, Oxford, taught various courses, and was appointed to the Faculty of Theology of Oxford University (the first Unitarian ever to hold that appointment). He held a D.Min. from Meadville Lombard, having done his doctoral work on “Emerson’s Reasons for Leaving the Parish Ministry.” He also held four degrees from Oxford (including the D.Phil).

Schulman wrote three books on English Unitarian History and a number of pamphlets and articles. Dr. Schulman served on numerous denominational and civic organizations. He and his wife, Alice, had four children and lived in The Woodlands, Texas.

Articles: Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Martineau, Charles Wellbeloved

Seaburg, Alan

Alan Seaburg was He was born in Medford and was the son of the late Nils Henry and Eva (Gerrard) Seaburg. He was Librarian of Crane Theological School, Tufts University; Co-minister with Kenneth Patton of the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston; and Curator of Manuscripts for 25 years at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School. When he retired in 1995 the school made him Curator of Manuscripts, Emeritus. In 1999 the Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago gave him an honorary D.D. He was for many years Poetry Editor of Snowy Egret. His poetry has been issued as Thoreau Collage (1978), The City of Love (1990), On My Own (1992), 52 Tavistock Square (1994), and Affectionately Yours, Paris (in the Anne Miniver Reader, 2008).

With his brother Carl Seaburg he wrote Medford on the Mystic (1980), a town history in photographs and text, and The Incredible Ditch (1997), a history of the Middlesex Canal. He has edited Carl Seaburg and Stanley Paterson, The Ice King: Frederic Tudor and His Circle (2003), written An American Artist: Thomas Dahill (2011), and contributed “The Evolution of Religion in Twentieth-Century Cambridge” to Cambridge in the Twentieth Century (2007). Alan Seaburg’s other works include Cambridge on the Charles (2001), a history of Cambridge, Massachusetts, At the Fair (1990), a study of the Boston immigrant experience, and the ebook, Botega a Roma: Tom Dahill at the American Academy (2007). His writings appear in many magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, Amherst Review, Hawaii Review, and Commonweal. His “A Visit to Crane Theological School” is in the Unitarian Universalist Christian (2005). The Unitarian Pope: Brooke Herford’s Ministry in Chicago and Boston, 1876-1892  was published as an ebook in 2014.

Rev. Dr. Alan Leslie Seaburg, 86, of Billerica, formerly of Cambridge, died on July 22, 2018 in Boston.

Articles:  Horatio Alger, Johannes A.C.F. Auer, P. T. Barnum, Seth Curtis Beach, William Bentley, Georgene Esther Bowen, Bruce Wallace Brotherston, Seth Chandler, Paul Carnes, Ernest Cassara, Alfred S. Cole, John Cousens, Albert Dieffenbach, John Hassler Dietrich, Richard Eddy, Frederick May Eliot, Roger Etz, Henry Wilder Foote II, Victor A. Friend, Judith Ripley Goodenough, Dana McLean Greeley, Robert Edward Green, Edward Everett Hale, Frank Oliver Hall, Alice Harrison, Brooke Herford, John Holmes, Homer Alexander Jack, Charles Rhind Joy, Andrew Kuroda, The Larger Hope, Charles Lyttle, Jean Mayer, Lee Sullivan McCollester, Charles Edwards Park, Arthur Peacock, Leslie Pennington, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, Richard Pierce, John Moses Ratcliff, James Joseph Reeb, Curtis Williford Reese, William Rice, Elmo Arnold Robinson, Caroline Soule, Albert Warren Stearns, Charles Vickery, Von Ogden Vogt, Robert Nelson West, Earl Morse Wilbur, Rhys Williams.

Senghas, Catherine

A graduate of Smith College (BA, 1977) and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (MBA, 1981), Catherine Senghas enjoyed a 20-year career in accounting and financial management, first in high tech, and later in the non-profit realm of sponsored research. She wrote her contribution to the DUUB while preparing for the UU ministry at Andover Newton Theological School, earning her M.Div. in 2009. She served as Senior Minister and Executive Director of the UU Urban Ministry in Roxbury from 2009 to 2015, and as Interim Minister of the UU Church of Reading 2015-2017. She served on the board of the UU Buddhist Fellowship. 

Articles: Mary White Ovington

Senghas, Dorothy

Dorothy “Dorrie” Senghas was born on March 7, 1930 and grew up a Unitarian in the First Parish in Concord, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from Radcliffe (Harvard) and an M.A. in History from the University of California (Davis) and an MLS from Simmons College. She served as Director of the Simmons College Library from 1974 to 1979. She moved to Burlington, Vermont when her husband became minister of the UU Society of Burlington. Until her retirement she worked at the libraries at the University of Vermont. She later served as the Archivist of the Burlington congregation. She was chair of Vermont ACLU, 1983-85. She served for eight years on the UU Funding Program and was on the Board of the UU Mountain Retreat and Learning Center. She was a practicing Zen Buddhist. Dorrie died on December 10, 2002.

Articles: Mary White Ovington

Simonson, Nelson

Nelson C. Simonson was born in in Detroit, Michigan and grew up in New York City. He served in the United States Navy, 1944-74. While in the Navy he attended Cornell University, the University of Rochester (B.S. in Mechanical Engineering), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Bachelor of Civil Engineering). He then worked in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps.
Simonson joined the Unitarian Church of the Larger Fellowship in the 1950s. Since then he has attended Channing Memorial Church in Newport, Rhode Island and the Unitarian Church of Arlington, Virginia. On retiring from the Navy, he moved to Reading, Pennsylvania and took a job with a large engineering firm. There he joined the historic First Unitarian Universalist Church of Berks County, Reading, Pennsylvania and “fell in love with” the history and theology of Universalism. He has been on the board of the Joseph Priestley District, a president of the Pennsylvania Universalist Convention, and on the board of the Murray Grove Association.

Nelson and his wife Caroline have five children, eight grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. He is now fully retired and lives in a community run by the United Church of Christ outside of Reading, Pennsylvania. He served on the board of the Joseph Priestley District of the UUA, as President of the Pennsylvania Universalist Convention, and on the Board of the Murray Grove Association. He died in July 2023 at the age of 96.

Articles: George de Benneville, James Shrigley

Slyfield, Brian

Brian Slyfield, a native of Horsham, has long been fascinated by the people and events relating to its long history. After taking a degree in English at Manchester University he enjoyed a career in magazine publishing, and now, in retirement, has time to concentrate on the research and writing of books and articles of local appeal. Among other publications, he has produced a popular history of Horsham. He is editor of the Horsham Society Newsletter, which every month features material on the town’s past, much of it written by him.

He is a keen collector of antiquarian books and pamphlets relating to Horsham and Sussex. His collection has become an invaluable research source. He lectures on local history and book collecting both at home and abroad. He was invited, for example, to give a series of talks in Horsham, Pennsylvania, on the origins of that township and its relationship with Horsham, Sussex.

Brian was born on 21 October 1941 and has two children by his first marriage. He is now married to Jill, and they live at Arun House, one of Horsham’s historic houses, which dates back to 1541 and was once owned by the family of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Articles: Matthew Caffyn

Smith, Bonnie Hurd

Bonnie Hurd Smith has been researching Judith Sargent Murray for over twenty years; at Simmons College as part of her undergraduate and her graduate studies in history and communications, as a board member and president, 1992-96, of the Sargent-Murray-Gilman-Hough House in Gloucester, Mass. (Murray’s home); as founder of the Judith Sargent Murray Society, 1996; and as an independent scholar, author and lecturer. Smith has reissued many of Murray’s essays and her catechism in print and electronically. She has also embarked on a multiyear effort to transcribe and publish Murray’s letters; Smith published From Gloucester to Philadelphia in 1790: Observations, Anecdotes, and Thoughts from the Letters of Judith Sargent Murray in 1998, and, most recently, The Letters I Left Behind, Judith Sargent Murray Papers, Letter Book 10 in 2005.

Smith devotes her career to combining history and communications in an effort to make history accessible, engaging, and well-funded. She has served as executive director of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail, created a similar walking tour in Salem, Mass. (both feature Murray), and was director of external affairs for the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Smith started her own company, Hurd Smith Communcations, in 1990, through which she has provided services in the areas of organizational management, public relations and marketing, event planning, fundraising, graphic design, and writing. See http://www.bonniehurdsmith.com.

Articles: Judith Sargent Murray

Speck, Richard

Rev. Dr. Richard G. Speck earned a B.S. in biology from the University of Memphis and an M.A in Health Administration from the University of Illinois, Sangamon, before preparing for the UU ministry with a D.Min. from Meadville Lombard in 1990. From 1991 to 2000 he was Minister of the UU Fellowship of Vero Beach, FL., then District Executive for the Joseph Priestley District of the UUA from 2000 to 2014. 

Articles: Vincent Brown Silliman

Sprecher, Paul

Prior to ministry, Rev. Paul Sprecher, who graduated from Harvard summa cum laude in 1972, worked on computer systems for the American Stock Exchange and lived in Ridgewood, NJ, where he was a member of the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood. He earned his M.Div. through New York Theological Seminary and became Minister of the Second Parish in Hingham, MA (2006-2013), then of the First Parish Church UU in Bridgewater, MA (2014-2021). He served the UU History and Heritage Society as its Treasurer for some years. He is a trustee responsible for the literary legacy of James Agee, his wife’s father. 

Articles: John Haynes Holmes

Sprigge, Timothy

Timothy L. S. Sprigge was born in 1932 in London. He has taught philosophy at the Universities of Sussex and of Edinburgh. (In the latter he was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics.) His books include Santayana: An Examination of his Philosophy (1974) ; Theories of Existence (1984) ; The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (1984) ; The Rational Foundations of Ethics (1987) : James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality (1993). He became a member of St. Mark’s Unitarian Church in Edinburgh. When he retired to the South of England, he attended the Unitarian Church in Brighton. He died in 2007. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Sprigge 

Articles: Mrs. Humphry Ward

Steers, David

David Steers is the minister of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian churches of Downpatrick, Balllee and Clough in county Down, Northern Ireland. He is chaplain at Stranmillis University College and St. Mary’s University College, both in Belfast, and is editor of the Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society and the Oxford based Unitarian theological journal Faith and Freedom.

He trained for the ministry at the Unitarian College, Manchester and holds degrees from the Universities of Oxford (BA & MA), Manchester (BD & MPhil with distinction) and Glasgow (PhD). He was tutor and examiner in the Faculty of Theology/Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow from 2001-2003. He has contributed to the Dictionary of Irish Philosophers, the Dictionary of British Classicists and the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Philosophers (all published by Thoemmes Continuum), as well as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and many other works. He is a member of the Councils of both the Unitarian Historical Society and the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland and is the editor and co-author of European Perspectives on Communion (2001) and Liverpool Unitarians: Faith and Action (2014). He is married to Sue and they have four children. He blogs on historical matters at: velvethummingbee.wordpress.com/

Articles:John Abernethy, William Drennan, William Drummond, Alexander Gordon, James Kirkpatrick, William Roscoe,

Stringer-Hye, Richard

Richard Stringer-Hye is a Science librarian at the Stevenson Science and Engineering Library at Vanderbilt University who occasionally writes biographical pieces for reference publications. He is currently conducting research and writing a history of Pierre Bernard and the Clarkstown Country Club. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his family.

Articles: Charles Francis Potter

Tauscher, Cathy

Cathy (Gearheart) Tauscher studied at Wellesley, M.I.T, Goddard College, and Pacific Oaks, earning a masters’ in Human Development with a specialization in Leadership in Education. After an initial career in teaching and school administration, during which she developed an interest in historical research, Cathy became a Unitarian Universalist in 1984, and her interest in history then became focused on Unitarian Universalism. Since 1991, she has been a religious educator in the state of Washington, first serving the Evergreen UU Fellowship and then the Woodinville UU Church.

Starting in 1991 she served as a UU religious educator, first serving the Evergreen UU Fellowship, then the Woodinville UU Church, both in WA. As part of her credentialing, she wrote a study of “Jenkin Lloyd Jones: A Life that Faith Made,” and “A History of Trends in UU Religious Education. Widowed in 2000, she has since made her home on Whidbey Island, WA, where she raises miniature horses. She has a daughter and two stepchildren. 

Articles: Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Susan Charlotte Barber Lloyd Jones

Thierry, Joyce

Joyce Thierry, later Joy Thierry Llewellyn, is an avid long-distance hiker who loves living out of a backpack. She was a story editor and screenwriter for film and TV, and taught screenwriting in Canada, India, and China. She’s been a journalist, wildlife biology technician, governess in Australia, spent time in a TIbetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal researching the resident Rinpoche, stayed in a remote Indian hospital while travelling the world in the footsteps of Dr. Lotta Hitschmanova, and worked in France on a goat farm in the Pyrenees. Her memoir short story about growing up in isolated fishing camps in Northern Quebec was short listed for the Commonwealth Prize. She now lives on a small BC island where she writes Young Adult novels about adventurous female rebels, and is finishing a travel memoir, Lovers of Leaving. She is a member of the Writer’s Union of Canada. See https://www.writersunion.ca/member/joy-thierry-llewellyn 

Articles: Lotta Hitschmanova

Thomson, Douglass

Douglass H. Thomson is Professor Emeritus of English and former director of the graduate program in English at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA. He published numerous articles on British Romanticism and Gothic literature, including “Mingled Measures: Gothic Parody in Tales of Wonder and Tales of Terror,” in Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (May 2008), and an electronic edition of Walter Scott’s An Apology for Tales of Terror (1799) for the Walter Scott Digital Archive of the University of Edinburgh (2007). He did extensive research on dissenting academies and circles in late eighteenth century England, with particular emphasis on the Aikins family.  

Articles: John Aikin

Trask, Kathi

Mary Kathleen “Kathi” Trask earned a BS in Elementary Education from New Mexico State University in 1970 and Masters in Education with an emphasis in Early Childhood at Eastern New Mexico University in 1979. She taught kindergarten in Clovis, New Mexico for 30 years before retiring in 2001. Kathi and her husband, Richard Trask Jr., have been active members of Westminster Presbyterian Church for 25 years. They have a daughter, son and one grandson.

After retirement, Kathi became interested in genealogy and was honored to find that Horace and Mary Holley were among her ancestors. Horace Brand Hening, Kathi’s paternal grandfather, inherited his great-great grandmother Mary Austin Holley’s talent of writing and observation and her spirit of adventure. He came to the New Mexico territory in 1902 as a young news reporter and became Secretary of Immigration. He wrote a book and pamphlets advertising for settlement in New Mexico—much in the way Mary Holley had promoted Texas a century earlier!

Articles: Horace and Mary Austin Holley

Twite, Stuart

Stuart Twite was born and raised in South Dakota and is the Director of Religious Education at First Parish Church, Unitarian in Norwell, Massachusetts. He was born and raised in South Dakota where he received B.S. and M.Ed. Degrees in education. For a time he worked in politics on the state and national levels, both in campaigns and as a staffer. He then taught history in public and private schools in Arizona and South Dakota. For six years he was a stay-at-home father for his three children. Five of those years were spent in New York where he worked as a freelance editor, was a Sunday School Superintendent, and served on the local Library Board of Trustees. His love of Unitarian Universalist history began in college and he has been a student of the tradition ever since.  He served for a time as Director of Religious Education in Norwell, MA. 

Articles: Ezra Stiles Gannett

Ulbrich, Holley

Holley Hewitt Ulbrich is Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita of Economics at Clemson University and the author of seven books in her field. Along with her economic writings, she has also contributed a chapter on Philip Prince to a book on the history of the Clemson University presidents. She received her BA (1963), MA (1964) and PhD (1969) from the University of Connecticut in Economics and her Master of Theological Studies (2003) from Candler School of Theology at Emory University. A member of UU Fellowship of Clemson, SC, she published her book The Fellowship Movement: A Growth Strategy and Its Legacy through Skinner House Books in 2008. Her latest book is Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtues and Democracy (2023).

Articles: John C. Calhoun

Viney, Donald Wayne

Donald Wayne Viney was born 13 February 1953 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the eldest of two children. He has lived in Oklahoma (1953-1966, 1977-1984), Colorado (1966-1977), and Kansas (1984-present). Viney received the B.A. in philosophy from Colorado State University (1977) and the M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Oklahoma (1979, 1982). He has taught philosophy and religion at Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas since 1984. He is on the editorial board of The Midwest Quarterly and he is a member of the American Philosophical Association and of the Society of Christian Philosophers. Viney publishes in the area of the philosophy of religion.

He is author of a number of articles in philosophical journals and dictionaries on Hartshorne’s life and thought as well as being author of Charles Hartshorne and the Existence of God (SUNY Press, 1985) and editor of Charles Hartshorne’s Letters to a Young Philosopher: 1979-1995 (Special Issue of Logos-Sophia, 11, Fall 2001). Viney has also written extensively on the life and thought of Jules Lequyer (1814-1862) and has translated some of Lequyer’s writings into English. See especially, Translation of Works of Jules Lequyer (Edwin Mellen Press, 1998) and Jules Lequyer’s Abel and Abel (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999). Don Viney is a father to two daughters, Jenny Viney and Aislinn Watts, and a grandfather to Lily Watts. He and his wife Rebecca Viney live in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Articles: Charles Hartshorne

Viney, Wayne

Wayne Viney received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology with a minor in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 1964. He is currently professor of Psychology at Colorado State University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the History of Psychology and in the Psychology of Religion. He has published extensively in the History of Psychology and has served as President of Division 26 (History of Psychology) of the American Psychological Association. More recently he has served as President of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association. He is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and in The American Psychological Society. He is also a member of the History of Science Society. His major research interests are in the psychology and philosophy of William James and the problem of authority as it pertains to human knowledge.

Wayne Viney is the father of two sons, Donald Wayne Viney and Michael David Viney. He resides with his wife Wynona Viney in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Articles: Dorothea Dix

Voelker, David

David J. Voelker is Professor of Humanities and History at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He became interested in Unitarian-Universalist history when he began a college research project on the controversial career of the Reverend Horace Holley as president of Transylvania University in Kentucky. His doctoral dissertation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2003) was a critical study of Orestes Brownson. His publications include essays on Thomas Paine’s religious beliefs and on the decline of Calvinism, as well as review essays on Patrick Carey’s biography of Brownson and Philip Gura’s history of Transcendentalism.

Articles: Orestes Brownson

Walker, Nathan

Nathan C. Walker earned a BFA from Emerson College (1994), an MA from Columbia University (2000), and his M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary (2005). He was Director of Religious Education at the Fourth Universalist Society in New York (2003-2005) and then Minister of the Unitarian Church on Staten for a year before becoming Senior Minister and Executive Director at First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia (2007-2014). He earned an Ed.M and an Ed.D. from Columbia and served as Executive Director of the Religious Freedom Center at the Newseum Institute in Washington, DC (2014-2017), becoming an Affiliated Community Minister for Religion and Public Life with the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Since 2017 he has been President of 1791 Delegates, a Philadelphia-based non-profit named for the year that the First Amendment was passed, producing academic research and educational initiatives to cultivate civic competencies. See https://www.1791delegates.org/about 

Articles: Peter Cooper

Wesley, Alice Blair

A 1960 graduate of the University of Louisville, Alice Blair Wesley became a UU minister in 1977 and served congregations in Bryan, TX; Silver Spring, MD; Cherry Hill, NJ; Hagerstown and Cumberland, MD; and Harford County, MD before retiring in 1996. She is the author of Myths of Time and History: A Unitarian Universalist Theology (1987) and contributed essays to The Transient and the Permanent in Liberal Religion (1995) and to The Abiding Questions of Free Congregations (2007). She delivered the Minns Lectures for 2000 on the theme of covenant. She received the UUA Award for Distinguished Service in 2009. She is now retired and living in Seattle, WA. 

Article: James Luther Adams

Widrick, Eugene

Eugene R. Widrick is Minister Emeritus of the First Religious Society of Carlisle, Massachusetts which he served for twenty-four years. He was born and grew up in New York State and is a graduate of State University of New York at Albany, New York (MSLS), Tufts University (BD), and Andover Newton Theological School (DMin). During his ministerial career he served churches in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. From 1968-71 he served the Unitarian Church in Cape Town, South Africa. The author of Neighbours & Fellow Creatures, he is currently preparing a collection of his sermons for publication.

Articles: Robert Edward Green, Judith Ripley Goodenough

Williams, Gayle

Gayle A. Williams was an Assistant Dean in University College at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) from 1998 to 2011. She has an Ed.D in Higher Education and Student Affairs and an M.A. in Religious Studies from Indiana University. She has published a number of articles on the academic success of freshmen. Another of her research interests is religious history and its role in higher education in America. She published an article in Indiana Magazine of History (March, 2003), “Andrew Wylie and Religion at Indiana University, 1824-1851: Nonsectarianism and Democracy.” Gayle is the mother of three adult daughters. She lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Articles: David Starr Jordan

Zen, Beringia

Beringia graduated from Northern Arizona University with a degree in cultural anthropology. While in school she focused her research on two diverse social groups; heroin users and women from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Results of her studies were presented at The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Annual Conference on AIDS Research, NAU’s Women’s Studies Lecture Series and published in Connections. After deciding to leave the field of anthropology, Beringia took her late night hobby of computer programming and turned it into a career as a database designer for large scale manufacturing systems. She quit working in 1998 to stay home, full-time, with her newly adopted daughter, Darby Rose. She subsequently became a Roman Catholic and is a hospital chaplain and administrator.

Articles: Rod Sterling

Ziemer, Melissa

Melissa Ziemer, now Rev. Melissa J. Carvill Ziemer, graduated from Smith College with a B.A. in Women’s Studies. From 1995 to 2001 she worked primarily in early childhood education and in the movement to end violence against women. She became a member of the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, MA. She earned her M.Div. from Meadville Lombard Theological School in 2005 and served the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, OH, from 2005 to 2016. Since 2016 she has served the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, most recently as Director of Ministries for Collegial Care. She is also an Affiliated Community Minister for the First Parish Church Unitarian in Northfield, MA. 

Articles: Florence Buck