homesunday services children's programsadult programsleadershipnewcomers A brief history of UUCTThe Congregation was organized (as the Unitarian Fellowship) at a meeting held in Doster Hall on the campus of the University of Alabama on September 27, 1954. One hundred and twenty people signed the original charter, indicating a pent-up demand in Tuscaloosa for the religious values exemplified by UU’s.

See also: about unitarian universalismUnfortunately, these large numbers were short-lived. At the same time the Fellowship was founded, the first attempts were being made to desegregate the University. Autherine Lucy attempted to register for classes. Violence broke out; Miss Lucy was made to feel unwelcome everywhere she went. The president of the Fellowship invited her to attend a service. She did, and her presence at the service was reported in the local newspaper. The following week only eleven families showed up for the service; it took more than thirty-five years for membership to climb back to levels that approached the original numbers of 1954.

During the next thirty years the group struggled to survive. Meeting in the YMCA (until we were invited to leave because we were not sufficiently Christian), Hillel House, a local hotel, and occasionally in campus buildings, membership fluctuated, decreasing to only five members in 1963. But the group did not disband. Members gave the services themselves, occasionally inviting the minister from the Birmingham Church to help. A Religious Education program was begun, and, except for a few years when membership was exceptionally low, has continued, growing from two classes to five, as membership has grown. We hired our first paid Director of Religious Education in 1990.

The emphasis for most of the years until the late 1980’s was on the intellectual aspects of Unitarian Universalism. Services were arranged around a lecture, with little spiritual content. University faculty were often asked to speak at services. The first ordained minister of the Fellowship was Dr. A.J. Mattill, who served as a part-time minister beginning in 1979 until 1983. In 1985 Dr. Carl Bretz, a member of the Fellowship who was a U-U minister on inactive status, became the part-time minister, serving until 1989.

In the late 1980’s three families decided to add flowers and music to the services, donating sound equipment and providing music from their own collections. An Order of Service was developed that has remained the core of services since then. Membership promptly began to grow. As membership grew, it became apparent that we needed a church home of our own, instead of using Hillel House. Coincidentally, the Jewish community in Tuscaloosa decided that we should leave Hillel, as they wished to re-dedicate it to Judaism. We were given one year to move out. Our on-and-off building plans (at one time we had owned two acres south of the city in the hopes of building a church there) were on again, this time with some urgency. As a result of a generous bequest from one of our members, we had enough funds to purchase seven acres of land near Lake Tuscaloosa. One of our members, Jim Ward, a prominent local architect, designed our building and we moved into it in January, 1992, and dedicated the building on April 26 of that year. Music at the dedication service was provided by world-renowned flutist Ransom Wilson, who was raised in the Fellowship.

Beginning in 1990 the Fellowship realized that we needed professional leadership, and during the 1990’s we  moved to greater and greater reliance on religious professionals. We made use of Minister-on-Loan programs, part-time ministers, and a ministerial intern, to meet our needs. Part-time ministers who have served our congregation in the last decade include Michael Seider, Joan Armstrong, Barb Jamestone, Chris Brownlee and Jeff Jones. Beginning in August 2000, the Fellowship retained Jennifer Innis to serve as a full time Interim Minister during a search for a full time settled minister. Our first full-time settled minister, Rev. Michael Thompson was installed in fall 2002. In April 2002, members unanimously voted to change the name to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa.

Over the years, our membership has drawn equally from town and gown. We have plans to add a wing to our building to expand facilities for Religious Education. We expect that in the future, as in the past, our members will exert an influence on the Tuscaloosa community out of proportion to their numbers.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa
6400 New Watermelon Road
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35406
(205) 758-8729 22 December 2005