Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mankato History as of 2019

In the Fall of 1952 Rev. Arthur Foote (minister at Unity Church, St. Paul) and GS Peterson (Sociology Professor at Mankato Teachers College) brought Munroe Husbands, director of fellowships for the American Unitarian Association, to speak to a public meeting at the Saulpaugh Hotel.  Husbands later wrote that many to whom the fellowships appealed had “developed an antipathy toward the entire religious vocabulary: worship, God, prayer, invocation, benediction.” He found that the fellowship experience addressed those issues: “Slowly the individual divests himself of his negativism, talks out the resentment accumulated over the years, and begins formulating a positive philosophy of religion.”  Husbands also saw value in the fellowship’s ability to bring out the “latent talents” of its members and encourage a strong degree of participation in the religious community.

So, out of that meeting the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mankato was formed.  The charter members included John and Jane Foster, Grace L. Burnell, Wm. F. and Harriet Hinrichs, Louise Roth, G. S. Arnold, Ethel Ann Devaney, and C.J. and Dorothy Arnold.  Although GS Peterson helped form the Fellowship and was active in it, he never formally joined (he was, instead, a lifelong member of the UUA’s Church of the Larger Fellowship).  John Foster was an English Professor at the College and he and Jane were actively involved in the Fellowship well into the 90’s.  Louise Roth was married to Dr. Fred Roth, who practiced at the Mankato Clinic. She was still involved with the Fellowship into the 80’s.  CJ Arnold taught Science at Mankato High School.

Beth Haugen was an early member of the fellowship, and her path into the Fellowship echoes many of ours today.  Her husband was an English teacher at the High School, and one of his colleagues offered to pick up their children and take them to one of the local churches.  Their 5-year-old came home, concerned that she was going to hell because she had not been baptized.  They came to the Fellowship looking for an alternative religious education for their children.  In fact, in the early years children’s education was the primary focus of the UUFM; some even say that the parents decided to hold adult meetings to have something to do while the children were in Sunday school.  Jane Foster said that the adults got into lively discussions while waiting for their children and decided to formalize their meetings.

While the primary focus was on religious education for children, the Fellowship also supported an active Wednesday evening Speakers Forum.  While there were about 15 families regularly involved in the fellowship, the Speakers Forum usually hosted twice that number.  In these early days, there were apparently many ties with the Quaker Fellowships in the Cities as well as the Unitarians. The Speakers Forum frequently included Rev. Foote from Unity Church in St. Paul, and Mulford Sibley, a Quaker who was a professor at the University of Minnesota.  The faculty at Mankato State College also provided links to other speakers who were in the area.  The Fellowship also had a strong social action focus; founder Louise Roth was active in Republican Party politics and another early member, Eiler Ravenholt who taught at Mankato High School, was chair of the State DFL and later moved his family to DC where he became the Librarian of the Senate and then an aide to Senator Humphrey.  The children, too, were encouraged to develop a community awareness.  In 1961, our children’s RE group collected their pennies and sent $6.05 to the Tyrone Guthrie Theater Foundation to help build the first Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

In these early days, the Fellowship met in people’s homes and in rented space at the YWCA, the Town Hall, and a house which Jim Maslon helped us find on the Honeymead property.  While the official membership was small (24 members and $136 budget in 1953), the Fellowship received significant support from friends in the business community.  They helped underwrite the expenses of the Speakers Forum and contributed heavily to the initial purchase of the Pohl Rd. house in 1961. In addition, Unity Church donated its entire unpledged Easter offering for this project.  By that time, many of the parents who had initially accompanied their children to Sunday services, and then came for their own services while the children were in RE found themselves trying to get the children to come to RE while they (the parents) went to the services. After the children had flown, they found themselves staying for the services and the beloved community that they had come to treasure.

With the purchase of the building on Pohl Rd., membership grew to about 60 people, with regular attendance at Sunday services of around 45 people.  We were still lay-led, and opened our pulpit from time to time to visiting ministers.  In 1985 a larger meeting room was added to the building.  Roy Cook, a Professor of Sociology at the College, regularly led the services (“I don’t belong to an organized religion,” he used to say, “I’m a Unitarian!”).   Around this time Mary Kelley reinvigorated the Religious Education program at the newly expanded Fellowship, and started visiting families with young children.  Longtime member Tony Filipovitch recalls that their 7-year-old had come home from school a few months earlier and asked “Why don’t we believe in anything?”  When they started describing all the things they believed in, like being concerned for each other and living simply and lightly on the earth, she cut them off and said, “No, I mean why don’t we believe in Jesus or go to church?”  “When we read the 7 Principles,” he said, “we knew this was a place with room for our beliefs.”

It was in the ‘80s that we began to explore a relationship with a regular minister.  For a few years, we had a part-time intern minister, Lee Greene, while she was a student at United Seminary in the Cities.  Member recall her coming to make home visits early in her tenure, and rolling around on the living room rug playing with the children.  Later, we shared a minister, Rev. Sara Oelberg, with Nora Church, our sister congregation in Hanska, MN.  It was Sara who started our tradition of remembering on Memorial Day Sunday those who have died in the past year.  When Sara retired, we decided to seek part-time ministry of our own, and invited Rev. Lisa Friedman and then Rev. Laurie Bushbaum as part-time ministers.  It was Lisa who led us from Pohl Rd. to our new home on Charles Ave. in 2005 and Laurie who helped us work through the growth from a “family-sized” fellowship to a mid-sized congregation.  Next, Rev. Don Cameron became our first full time minister on an interim assignment.    It was Don who led us to take the leap and call our first full-time settled minister.  In May, 2018 we called Rev. Rita Capezzi who joined us in August of that year and has been serving us ever since.

And that brings us to where we are now.  As you look around today, you see a congregation of around 120 members, with a paid part-time Religious Education Director, Office Administrator, and Choir Director.  We arrived at this point through the efforts of a relatively few people who were convinced that there was a need in south central Minnesota for a community of liberal faith, fulfilling our promise to ourselves when we first came to this building to make it accessible and welcoming to all, building on our long tradition of liberal religious education for children and adults, and extending the reach of our community even more broadly into the world in which we are embedded

Tony Filipovitch