I'm sure that each of you has read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle. I would like to use as a subject the church remaining awake during a great revolution. It is a real privilege, and I can assure you that it is a real honor to be in this significant lectureship. Let me say that I'm happy to be a Ware lecturer, and to be a part of the great names that have been in this lectureship. I want to express my personal appreciation for your support and let me say that it has been of inestimable value in the continuance of our humble efforts. So you can see that in many ways and for a long time now we have worked together in a very meaningful way. We are happy to welcome the cooperation of Unitarian Universalists in that movement. In Chicago we are also engaged in a campaign to end slums and the conditions that create slums. So far we have substantially helped the family of Jimmie Lee Jackson and other victims of racial violence. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which I have the honor of serving as president, participates with the American Friends Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Association in the James Reeb memorial fund. Reeb, and I was glad to participate in his memorial service in the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma. Now this support expressed itself both before and after the death of your colleague and mine, the Rev. I also want to acknowledge your massive participation through your commission on Religion and Race in the events in Alabama during 1965. Jack in Montgomery, in Ghana, West Africa, in Washington, in the world peace effort and also in Selma. I refer to David Cole, Alfred Hawkins, and my dear friend who's on the platform tonight, Homer Jack. And I can remember beyond that, in the early years of my ministry, indeed, beyond that in the early years of the bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama, three of your ministers visited and encouraged me during that very trying and often difficult period. I can remember on several occasions visiting Arlington Street Church where your distinguished Dr. My own personal experience with Unitarian Universalism began when I was a student at Boston University, back in the early 50s. I can assure you that I feel that way tonight. You don't feel like you are in the midst of strangers. There are those wonderful moments in life when you speak before a group that is so near and dear to you that you don't feel like you have to engage in the art of persuasion. Greeley and other members of the committee who extended the invitation. And I do want to express my warm personal appreciation to Dr. I need not pause to say how delighted I am to be here tonight, and to have the privilege of being with you for this important meeting. It is a great privilege to give to you Dr. We offer him not only our respect, but our love and our loyal support. Preacher, reformer, citizen, man of peace, lover of justice, in any history he will be appraised as one of the truly great men of this century. In either case, the god of history is with him. We have been reminded just now of Goethe's statement that “great men create circumstances even more than circumstances create great men.” Who can say whether this man is more the product of his times or the architect of his age? Goethe would make his reply. We are extremely grateful to our present lecturer for honoring us tonight, and in the face of an exceedingly difficult program and of trying incidents. Harry Gideonse, President of Brooklyn College, last year in Boston. The last two Ware lecturers have been Professor Linus Pauling, also a Nobel Prize winner, in San Francisco two years ago, and Dr. The grandson of the third generation, John Fothergill Waterhouse Ware, was a distinguished Boston minister. His son, Henry Ware, Jr., was a minister and one of the general founders of the American Unitarian Association. The Reverend Henry Ware, Sr., became in 1805 the liberal, but controversial, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, precipitating the Unitarian movement. It is in honor of three generations of the distinguished Ware family. Our gathering tonight is for the annual Ware Lectureship, perpetuated by a sum of money and Board action early in this century. Dana McLean Greeley, President, Unitarian Universalist Association At the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assemblyīy Dr.
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