HISTORY

OUR IDENTITY

Several influences contribute towards establishing the identity of our Congregation and to how it is viewed by our fellow citizens:- the Principles and Objectives of the Unitarian General Assembly; the spiritual priorities, personality and life experiences of our individual members; the moral values of contemporary society; the Minister’s contribution to the community beyond the Church and how this is perceived by the general population as being of practical value to society as a whole.

During the first half of the 20th century, Revs, A. Webster, H.H. Ceiron Jones and L. Baker Short all held elected civic office, and Unitarian influence in City affairs reached its peak. At the same time, membership numbers also reached their peak at over 300. During the late 1950s, the Rev. Wallace Tavener introduced the Unitarians and the City ( and eventually the U.K.) to Humanism, when he acted as Chair at a series of talks in the Music Hall on Humanism by Dr Laura Knight, Aberdeen University lecturer in psychology. The talks were subsequently broadcast on BBC Third Programme and immediately provoked nationwide controversy. Unfortunately, Wallace Tavener died suddenly in December 1960 and our participation (whatever it may have been) in the Humanist debate died with him.

Mr. Tavener’s successor, after a lengthy pulpit vacancy, was the Rev. Colin Gibson, a deeply spiritual pastor whose energies were concentrated upon attending to the spiritual needs of his flock. While Mr Gibson made contact with his fellow City ministers, his participation in their joint activities was never innovative or challenging. We, meanwhile, enjoyed the tranquillity and certainty of a settled ministry, and perhaps became too complacent to pursue a programme of outreach.

Another lengthy vacancy followed the Rev. Colin Gibson’s retirement in 1976, during which time, the Congregation turned inward again, being fully engaged in maintaining, as lay people, all the basic services expected of a church. At last, in September 1979, a young woman with a husband and three young children, the Rev. Carol Burrows, was appointed and our profile changed immediately. Mrs Burrows was energetic, confident, innovative and had a sense of mission to reach out to the lonely, the bereaved, the deeply troubled and the set-aside. She quickly made herself known to her fellow clergy and became involved in inter-church activities. She mobilised the resources of the church to help the needy and we found ourselves cooking and serving meals to the homeless and despairing on a regular basis and acting as host to inter-faith events. She involved herself in every aspect of congregational life, started a youth club and made certain that everyone felt themselves to be a valued member of her church family. For several lonely members, she was their principal (on occasion only) emotional support. She was greatly interested in religious broadcasting and it was due to her initiative that the Church Secretary, Bill Stephen, became the first presenter of “Sunday Best”, the North Sound Radio weekly religious programme, again ensuring that our congregation contributed to the on-going religious life of the city. For ten years we maintained this momentum until Mrs Burrows concluded her Aberdeen ministry with a self-confident flourish, when in April 1980, we welcomed the Annual Meetings of the General Assembly to Aberdeen. Unitarians from all over the U.K. and abroad, gathered in Aberdeen for our annual get-together which included a Civic Reception and an Address by the Lord Provost. It seemed to us that the city had become Unitarian for a week. Over the ensuing ministries, we continued to serve Mrs Burrows’ initiatives until gradually circumstances changed and other outreach priorities presented themselves, such as the community cafes on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Burrows’ successor, Rev. Glyn Eastman was a gentle, kindly man in whose service we found reassurance, compassion and consolation. Unfortunately, when he arrived he was suffering from an undiagnosed ailment which quickly consumed his energy and which proved to be fatal within three years.

Fortunately, the Rev. Anne Wicker answered our call in 1993 and we settled into what we expected would be a long, settled ministry. Miss Wicker was a conventional Unitarian minister who saw herself as a supportive pastor, a stimulating and instructive preacher and a participant in the wider religious life of the city. Miss Wicker was a forward-thinking Unitarian i.e. while appreciating and respecting what was valuable in our traditions, she recognised that social mores and priorities were changing rapidly and Unitarianism had to try to be relevant in this new age. We quickly established an effective routine and settled down to enjoy the blessings of a settled ministry. However, after several happy years, Miss Wicker’s health started to deteriorate and tragically, for her as well as the congregation, she was obliged to retire from the ministry and so a promising career was brought to an untimely end in 2000.

Miss Wicker’s successor, the Rev. Eric Breeze had, as a young man, travelled widely in the far east and had become interested in Buddhism and meditation, both of which influenced his ministry and his preaching. Meditation became a significant part of our Sunday worship and he contributed to a series of well-researched talks on the practice of meditation, which eventually appeared on our website.. Evening meditation sessions were introduced and, as an outreach measure, were advertised to the general public and continued until Mr Breeze ended his ministry in 2005.

Following Mr. Breeze was a brilliant young man, a cosmopolitan, a poet and playwright, witty, original, a visionary, intellectually stimulating and spiritually awakening, whose all-too-short ministry of two years, had revitalised us and brought hope of a future of endless possibilities but alas, the Rev. Cathal Courtney returned to his native Ireland and left us deflated.

Inevitably, another pulpit vacancy ensued and our priority was to preserve the day-to-day life of the church. Fortunately, the Rev. Caroline Cormack, already an Interfaith minister, rescued us, brought consolation and healing and restored a sense of direction by agreeing to become our Minister. Starved of pastoral care, our members turned to Mrs Cormack for reassurance and support. Meditation once again became prominent in our worship, while the triumph of goodwill over evil and the power of positive thinking informed many pulpit addresses. Weekly meditation sessions were resumed and we participated in Interfaith events. Mrs Cormack’s devotional contributions appeared in “The Inquirer”, our Unitarian and free Christian paper. We were fulfilling our role as a functioning congregation once again.

Then came covid and lockdown. People reassessed their priorities and a different world has emerged from lockdown. Ministers played a major role in establishing our identity and how we were perceived by our fellow citizens. Without a minister once again (at time of writing), we are thrown back upon our own resources. However, as this analysis of the past few decades has shown, resourcefulness, ingenuity, determination and a hopeful outlook have always been part of our identity.

Bill Stephe