A quirky timeline of UU history

Because Yvonne asked me to, I put together a timeline of UU history. Instead of focusing on White male ministers from wealthy urban areas, my timeline includes people and events from outside the mainstream of UU history.

13 October 2025: Updated in an attempt to give at least one entry for every decade

Timeline of Unitarians and Universalists (mostly North American)

Because race is so important in the U.S., racial identities of U.S. individuals are generally given. I note with sadness that there are very few working class people mentioned on this timeline.

18th century

• 1736 Naomi Isaac, an “Indian” (possibly Massachusett) joins the liberal church in Cohasset, Mass., which later became Unitarian
• 1773 Caleb Rich (White) becomes minister of a new church in Warwick, Mass., that has a universalist theology
• 1775 John Murray (White), Universalist minister, serves as a chaplain in the Revolutionary army
• 1779 The Independent Christian Church (Universalist) organized in Gloucester, Mass., one of the earliest Universalist congregations in the U.S.
• 1785 King’s Chapel is the first Unitarian congregation in the U.S.
• c. 1795 The scientist Joseph Priestley (White) holds Unitarian services in Northumberland, Penna.
• c. 1795 Prince (no last name), a Black man, joins the church in New Bedford, Mass., as a full member

19th century

• 1823 Mary Rotch, a White Quaker in New Bedford, Mass., is expelled from Quakerism for being too liberal; she joins the Unitarian church, where she later influences Ralph Waldo Emerson
• 1838 Nathan Johnson, a Black Universalist in New Bedford, Mass., shelters Frederick Douglass on the latter’s first night of freedom
• 1843 Adin Ballou, a White Universalist, founds the Hopedale community, a utopian pacifist community in Mass.
• 1859 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, a White Unitarian, opens the first kindergarten in the U.S.
• 1860 Samuel Jackson, a Black Baptist minister, asks to bring his entire congregation into the American Unitarian Association, but because he and his congregation are Black, he is ignored
• 1863 Olympia Brown, a White woman, ordained by the Universalist General Conference, the first woman to be ordained by a denomination (rather than just a congregation) in the U.S.
• 1871 Magnús Eiríksson, an Icelandic theologian living in Copenhagen, openly espouses Unitarian theology; this eventually led to the Icelandic Unitarian movement
• 1876-1878 The U.S. government invites Protestant denominations to manage American Indian reservations; the Unitarians receive the charge of Ute tribes in Colorado
• 1883 Poet William Carlos Williams, a Hispanic Unitarian, is born
• 1887 First Unitarian service is held in the Khasi Hills of India, led by Kissor Singh (South Asian)
• 1894 Watari Kitashima (Japanese) ordained by the Unitarian church of Vineland, NJ
• 1895 Eliza Tupper Wilkes, a White Universalist minister, is the first woman to preach in Stanford University’s nondenominational chapel

20th century

• 1902 The American Unitarian Assoc. publishes an essay promoting eugenics, written by David Starr Jordan, the White president of Stanford Univ. (Jordan was a member of the Palo Alto Unitarian church)
• c. 1915 Sylvie Thygeson, a White Unitarian, helps open a birth control clinic in St. Paul, Minn.
• 1917 Adeniran Adedeji Isola (Black) founds the Unitarian Brotherhood Church (Ijo Isokan Gbogbo Eda) in Lagos, Nigeria
• 1918 Unitarian minister William Short Jr. is arrested for draft evasion, because he’s doing peace activism; when he appeals to the American Unitarian Association to confirm that he’s a minister, they throw him under the bus
• 1922 Abigail Eliot (White), an LGBTQ Unitarian educator, brings the nursery school concept to the U.S.
• 1923 The first Flower Celebration is led by Norbert and Maja Capek, ministers at the Unitarian church in Prague, Czechoslovakia. This ritual is later wrongly called a “flower communion.”
• 1930s Probably a third of all Unitarian and Universalist churches close due to the Great Depression
• 1932 Poet Sylvia Plath, a White Unitarian, is born
• 1935 Utah Phillips is born; a member of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union and a musician, he became Unitarian Universalist as an adult
• 1937 Unitarians and Universalists cooperate to create a new hymnal
• 1937 Concerned that Leila Thompson, an ordained Unitarian minister, is running for city council in Berkeley, Calif., as a Socialist, American Unitarian Assoc. officials do their best to disavow her
• 1942 Unitarian minister Norbert Capek dies in the Auschwitz concentration camp
• 1947 Stephen Fritchman, a White minister, is forced out of his job editing the denominational magazine due to accusations that he is Communist
• 1948 Imaoka Shin’ichiro (Unitarian) and Shigetaro Akashi (Universalist) found the Japan Free Religious Assoc. in Tokyo
• 1950s (date uncertain) UU ministers officiated at some of the earliest UU same sex weddings
• 1956 Christopher Moore, a White minister at First Unitarian in Chicago, founds the Chicago Children’s Chorus, an interracial chorus which rapidly became one of the best children’s choruses in the U.S.
• 1950s Religious liberals in the Philippines affiliate with the Universalist Church of America
• 1961 Unitarians and Universalists consolidate into one denomination; the new UUA bylaws have six principles
• 1964-1976 Rev. Andrew Yoshinobu Kuroda leads Japanese language services at All Souls Unitarian church in Washington, DC
• 1965 Year with highest Unitarian Universalist membership in the U.S.
• 1965 Victor Carpenter, minister in the Cape Town Unitarian church of South Africa, delivers sermon opposing apartheid
• 1965-1970 Unitarian Universalism loses half its Black members during the Black empowerment controversy
• 1977 Ysaye Maria Barnwell founds the Jubilee Singers, a gospel choir, at All Souls UU church in Washington, D.C., the first Black-led UU gospel choir
• 1977 First Unitarian of Los Angeles publishes the first Unitarian hymnal with Black and working class music in it
• 1980 The first Water Ritual takes place at a feminist gathering of women; later, it was wrongly called a “Water Communion”
• 1985 The UUA adopts new non-sexist bylaws with seven principles
• 1991 Cheng Imm Tan, an Asian immigrant, ordained as a UU community minister
• 1993 The UUA publishes a hymnal containing Black spirituals, the first official denominational hymnal (Universalist, Unitarian, or Unitarian Universalist) with non-White music

21st century

• 2004 Unitarian Universalist Association of Uganda is formed
• 2005 Last year of growth in U.S. Unitarian Universalism
• 2008 Carleton Pearson, a Black Pentecostal minister who became a Universalist, brings his congregation to the Unitarian Universalist church in Tulsa, Oklahoma
• From about 2010 on, enrollment in UU children and youth programs declines steeply
• 2017 Peter Morales, the Hispanic president of the UUA, is forced out over allegations of racism