c. 1997 Religion News Service

CONCORD, Mass. _ Travel down the main road of this historic town and you can’t miss it. Drive down Main Street in neighboring Lexington and it dominates the vista. Visit virtually any New England town and you’re bound to see at least one: The”old white church.” Not only have they survived more than 300 years of American history, these wood churches _ always painted white _ continue to contribute to New England communities in ways that would have astonished their colonial founders.

Concord First Parish _ with its characteristic tall steeple, clock and clear glass windows _ was founded in 1635 by Puritans who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony to escape, among other things, what they considered the oppressive religious orthodoxy of their native Church of England. (The Pilgrims of Thanksgiving lore, founders of the Plymouth Colony in 1620, were also Puritans.)

In the course of building a new homeland, Puritanism, which soon became Congregationalism, created its own orthodoxy, often resulting in intolerance toward Roman Catholics and Jews. That makes it somewhat ironic that the Puritan spirit of non-conformism once found in these churches has given way to a broad openness of religious expression.

Today, a majority of the churches are Unitarian Universalist Association congregations, although some are Congregational or United Church of Christ. Unitarian Universalists churches are not considered Christian because of their rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity and their position that salvation is attainable without belief in Jesus.

The denomination has more than 200,000 members, about one-fourth of them in New England. To attend a Unitarian Universalist service is to witness the broadest of theological approaches.

A typical Sunday service at Concord’s First Parish, which is Unitarian Universalist, might include a celebration of the Buddha’s birthday, a recognition of the Hindu observance of Diwali, or a gay marriage ceremony.

That’s also the case with most of the other”old white churches”that bear the name”first parish”_ 17th-century congregations founded by Puritans to serve both as the town’s meeting and worship hall. Only their physical space, even though they rarely are the congregation’s original structure, reflects the traditionalism of their founders.”I love this old building,”said the Rev. Thomas Mikelson of the First Parish in Cambridge, which stands in the middle of bustling Harvard Square, as it has since 1833, when the congregation moved from the nearby Harvard University campus.”It’s sort of big and strong and plain.” Mikelson said standing in his church’s pulpit, looking out at the congregation, he can’t help but remember the countless others who have also spoken or worshipped there, including poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.”It’s a great place to stand in that tradition,”Mikelson said.

Unitarian Universalism is characterized by its reliance on”congregational polity,”which means that every decision is made not by a denominational hierarchy but by the individual parish. These decisions range from the selection of a minister to matters of theology.

In the late 18th century, a group of New Englanders separated from the Congregational Church and became the Unitarian Church after they abandoned the Trinity doctrine. In many towns, including Concord and Cambridge, the separation came to a vote.

Universalism, which merged with Unitarianism in 1961, developed in the United States in the 1790s out of a belief that godly salvation is available to all people, regardless of religious affiliation.”Both Unitarianism and Universalism, when they first started in America, were very Christian,”said John Hurley, archivist and information officer at the Unitarian Universalist Association’s headquarters in Boston.

But over the years, the group’s make up and style changed radically. Today’s Unitarian Universalist congregations attract a pluralistic group, including many Jews married to Christians. The association’s current top official, moderator Denise Taft Davidoff, grew up Jewish.”We really are a descendant of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and our central values come from that,”said the Rev. Helen Lutton Cohen, who has led First Parish of Lexington for more than 17 years. However,”no one has the whole truth,”she said.

From the beginning, the town churches were considered political mouthpieces. The Revolutionary War was born in the small white churches of Concord and Lexington.

Despite the relative political liberalism of its founding, however, Massachusetts was the last colony to incorporate the principle of church-state separation into its state constitution, holding out until 1833. Many of the”old white churches”still think of themselves as a center of their community’s public life, although taxpayers no longer support them. “We make ourselves available for community use,”said Doug Baker, Concord’s church sexton and curator.

Concord First Parish has hosted”Open Table”dinners every Thursday evening for almost eight years. Open Table is a local non-profit organization, unaffiliated with the church, that provides free meals to the hungry _ as well as anyone else who drops by to discuss community issues.

Cambridge First Parish, which was founded just a year after Concord’s, hosts the 30-year-old”Cambridge Forum,”a regularly scheduled series of presentations on community policy issues. The church also hosts yoga classes and an experimental theater group.

And in Lexington, where a separate town hall was not built until the 1840s,the town’s First Parish regularly collects food for the Woburn Council of Social Concerns and the Lexington Food Pantry. School children visiting the church learn it’s a public center even for people who are not among the congregation’s 350 members.”It’s there and you know it’s open to you,”said Anna Maria Skiotis, a local teen who attends a Greek Orthodox church.

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In Dorchester, an inner-city Boston neighborhood, First Parish’s Rev. Kenneth R. Warren said the tradition of opening the building to the community also continues.”We have quite a large building, larger than the congregation really needs,so we regularly make it available for other groups,”Warren said. Among others, he said, a Vietnamese cultural group and a civic association meet in the church. Locals who are not members of the church often approach it for wedding and baptism services.

It’s hard not to assume all the old white churches make a big deal out of the Thanksgiving holiday, given their historic ties to the holiday.

Cohen of Lexington First Parish said her congregation reflects on the story of their church and their nation during the holiday.”Saying this is an ongoing process, people coming here to seek another life, it feels like a sharing and social justice holiday,”she said.

Yet at Mikelson’s Cambridge congregation, there is no celebration of Thanksgiving other than a special evening meal during the holiday week that’s part of the church’s regular program to feed the homeless.”I don’t think you could say that Thanksgiving is a major event for us as a church,”Mikelson said.”Thanksgiving is a secular holiday, it’s a government holiday. It did not spring from any one tradition, it sprung from New England.”The other religious holidays are much more important in the calendar of our regular worship,”he said, referring to the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the African-American celebration of Kwanzaa and the Muslim observance of Ramadan.

MJP END LEBOWITZ