An Early Fellowship Service: Liberalism with a Hint of Orthodoxy

A note on the oldest-known order of service for the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship has a handful of pencil-written words annotating it: “Negatives, Orthodoxy’.”

There was no clear list of positives, but the words “Attitudes, Reverence, Good Will, Freedom” precede that note by the unknown author.

The order of service does not contain the name of the speaker, topic or date but the name “Dr. Dale DeWitt, November 28, 1955.” was added by the notetaker.

Sunday was actually November 27, but an article in the Thursday, November 24 edition of the Madison Eagle, noted DeWitt was to speak on the subject of “A Religion of One’s Own” on Sunday.

A Unitarian minister, DeWitt was the executive director of the Mid-Atlantic region for the then-American Unitarian Association from 1939 through 1964, and gave this sermon over the course of years, covering the history of and attributes of liberal religion.

The notetaker did not elaborate on the meaning of “Orthodoxy”, but a good guess can be made because the order of service showed there was a prayer—and that was not common for the congregation through the first years of its existence and would have been anathema for many years in the late twentieth century.

One of the hymns, “Morning So Fair to See”, is also known as the “Crusader’s Hymn” (and in Christian circles is sung as “Fairest Lord Jesus”. Another hymn sung was “God of the Earth, the Sky, the Sea”.

Certainly, there were periods in which the mentioned of God drew objections at the Fellowship, although it was not as unusual as the use of a prayer in the 1950s. But we can suspect it drew the notetakers criticism. Indeed, the word, “hymn” became unpopular with some later in the century.

The service also included a responsive reading, “The Riches of the Spirit” by Robert T. Weston which points to a belief in a deity with the first two lines of its closing verse “Let thy house be built upon a rock of virtue and let thy trust be in the riches of spirit.”

The use of the word “God” would recur, although not frequently The Feb. 26, 1956 service included a musical interlude, “Glory to God”. The use of “Hymn” for songs during services was standard, as was the offertory, which was discarded sometime before the early 1980s in favor of having individuals place their contributions in a kiosk, although hymns and offertories would be restored to the congregation's practice.

The term for the services themselves, usually programs in the last 20 years of the century, was usually meetings in Fellowship publicity, and sometime lectures, with orders of service routinely referring to main presentations as sermons.

But among orders of service examined so far, it would not be until Jan. 20, 1957 until a prayer found its place on Sundays again. In fact, services would more commonly offering a meditation before a prayer was offered again