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There have always been people who believed that one Creation embraced all
people, that life should be a unity, not warring factions of sacred and profane,
and people who believed that life was good, death was peaceful, and hell and
devil were mistaken superstitions. The early Christian Church contained both
Unitarians, arguing for the unity of God and the humanity of Jesus, and
Universalists, arguing that a good God and a loving Jesus would save all people,
but these beliefs became heresies. At the beginning of the Reformation, in the
1500s, individuals and small movements throughout Europe began again to proclaim
Unitarian and Universalist beliefs. The first edict of religious toleration in
the Western world was made in 1568 by a Unitarian King: each community should
elect their own religious leaders and agree upon their shared doctrines in love.
Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen and hydrogen, was an 18th
Century Unitarian minister in England. Unitarian and Universalist ideas came
early to the American colonies, and many prominent Americans were members of our
faiths: 5 Presidents, a multitude of famous authors and musicians, philosophers
and inventors, and, particularly, women and men social reformers. In 1961, the
two denominations joined together. Our Association of independent congregations,
the UUA, is headquartered in Boston, and is governed by an elected President and
Moderator, and by our annual General Assemblies. There are presently more than
1000 Unitarian Universalist congregations, and more than 200,000 Unitarian
Universalists in North America.
The Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville [UUCJ] was founded
significantly by Duncan Fletcher, who served as Mayor of Jacksonville, Governor
of Florida, and who became one of Florida�s US Senators. After hard times
during the depression and war years, the congregation was renewed in the 1950s
by strong lay-leadership, led by Dorcas and Francis Alberti. The congregation
built, by 1958, a church on St. John�s Avenue in Riverside. In 1960, a new
minister, the Rev. McGehee was hired. He became active, with many from the
congregation, in the civil rights movement. In 1966, this building was
dedicated. The architect was Robert C. Broward, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright
and still himself a leader in the congregation and community. We share a
boundary with the Nature Center, and our buildings have received significant
architectural awards. We are, at present, a congregation of more than 200 adults
and more than 50 children and youth.
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