January 5th is an important day in Universalist history. It was on a January 5th that a little girl was born to a Universalist family, who would grow up to be an important leader in the Universalist Church, and became beloved by all who came to know her and work with her. Her name? Olympia Brown. Her legacy? That is the subject of at least some of what I want to share with you this morning.

In preparing for this sermon, I learned a valuable lesson that is worth mentioning. I went to a couple of volumes in our archives, histories of Universalism written by the leading historian of the movement late in the last century, Richard Eddy. The author, being a Universalist minister and professor, set the historical record straight on the development of the religious movement known then as Universalism, now part of what we represent, Unitarian Universalism. In none of the volumes was there any trace of Olympia Brown’s name. There are hundred’s of other Universalist clergy mentioned in the index for giving a sermon at someone’s ordination, or for building an impressive church edifice, or for editing a denominational newspaper for a few years. But Olympia Brown as good as didn’t exist for Mr. Eddy. I suspect that reveals a great deal about Mr. Eddy. By the end of my remarks, I imagine you will have a better sense why this was such a glaring omission to the historical record, not only of Universalism, but also of religious history in America.

Olympia Brown was, as I spoke about in the children’s focus, a minister in our churches. A fact which seems almost insignificant today with women in the majority among Unitarian Universalist ministry. But in the mid-ninetieth century the thought of a woman preacher was more than most good church-going people could imagine....including most Universalists and Unitarians. That it ever happened is more a tribute to Olympia Brown’s determination to become ordained, than it is a credit to the denominational institutions that blocked her way.

There are no recorded occasions during which Olympia Brown was in Syracuse, but we know that she passed through here several times as a young woman as she traveled on the Erie Canal as a part of her journey from her home in Michigan to her grandparents home in Vermont. She enjoyed those trips, and the excitement of the life along the canal as it wove in and out of towns and countryside, but even as a young girl she noted the inequity of the conditions on board the canal boats, where the men had the more spacious airy cabins, and the women and children were packed into tight and dingy quarters. That incident, that recognition, was just the beginning of her questioning about the place of oppression in the world, and started her on her life long quest for equality and justice.

Her family were Universalists in Vermont, who instilled in this young child an understanding of a loving and nurturing God, that had created human life for fulfillment and happiness. As she matured she measured this understanding of the Ultimate against what she witnessed in the world. She found slavery and the subordination of women radically inconsistent with this image of the divine intentions for life on earth, and rather than conclude that she had been taught the wrong things about God, was convinced that it was the world that was not in conformity with the intended order for human life. She held to her beliefs, even when they were powerfully challenged by more conservative religious arguments. She and her sister were sent to Mt. Holyoke for college, but stayed only a year because of the restrictive role that the female students were held to. Such things as having visiting lecturers come to give talks on subjects like chemistry and biology, of which the women were told “ you are not expected to remember most of this, but only enough to make you intelligent in conversation”. She aimed for something higher for herself in life than polite conversation.

She enrolled in 1855 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs Ohio, one of the first coeducational institutions of higher learning in America. But she found that in many ways, even at Antioch, the instructors expected the women to get married, or if they failed at that, become school teachers. As progressive as the school was designed to be, Olympia Brown forced them to reassess their own self-image as a school. Never had the college invited a woman to address the student body. They regularly heard the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, Edward Everett Hale, and other notable political, literary, and religious leaders. When she suggested that the college might invite a woman to speak, she was told that there were none comparable to any of the men. She asked, what of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Lucritia Mott? She failed to persuaded the selection committee. So she formed her own committee, raised the money, and invited the Rev. Antoinette Brown, no relation to Olympia, but a major influence on her entire life. Antoinette Brown was trained in theology, but was unable to find anyone willing to ordain her. She served a small Congregational church in South Butler, New York, which ordained her in 1853, but her ordination was never recognized by that denomination. Olympia Brown credited that fortuitous visit from Antoinette Brown as a turning point in her own sense of calling to the ministry.

After graduation from Antioch, she spent a year in preparation for theological studies in preparation for the Universalist ministry. In that year she also became active in a drive in Ohio to change laws giving women the right to own property. She was a bright woman with a very limited sense of the impossible. She shocked the other women by going unaccompanied by a man into business offices throughout Cleveland in search of signatures for the petitions. This was unheard of! Yet she collected more than anyone else, and was the one chosen to present the petition to the Ohio legislature.

Her sense of the impossible may have been expanded as she awaited responses from various theological schools to her application for admission. One after the other rejected her application, citing the unlikely prospects that any woman would have in the ministry. It was not uncommon for them to quote the ever-enlightened St. Paul who proclaimed in the first century that “let your women keep silent in the churches, for it is not permitted them to speak....”: But then a letter came in March from the Theological School at St. Lawrence University, in northern NY. A letter from the President of St. Lawrence, Ebenezer Fisher, saying: “You will be admitted into the school and have all the opportunities the school affords....you must bring satisfactory testimonials as to your moral and religious character, believe in the Holy Scriptures, and you must have a fixed determination to devote your life to the Christian Ministry.....Tuition is free. Board costs $2.25 per week including washing. Students supply their own bedding and room furniture.”

Three months later, Dr. Fisher wrote Brown another letter, this one a bit less welcoming. He warned her of the many problems she would face as the only woman in an all-male theological school, pointing out that there had never before been any female students, adding, “and it is unlikely that there will ever be any others.” He went on, “”if you feel that God has called you to preach the everlasting gospel, you shall receive from me no hindrance, but rather every aid in my power.” (talk about doublespeak!). He closed by saying, “I do not think women are called to the ministry, but I leave that between you and the great head of the church.” And that is where it was left.

Her years at St. Lawrence were painful ones. Her greatest resistance came from the wives of the faculty members. They were harsher in their criticism of her than their husbands ever were. Fellow students made fun of her voice and manner, but had a hard time keeping up with her thinking. At St. Lawrence again, she found herself astounded by the inconsistency between the struggle for an end to slavery and the absolute resistance to applying those same arguments for justice and equality to women. In her own words, her years at St. Lawrence were described this way: “I came away with every feeling outraged and my nervous system permanently shattered, through the persecutions which I had endured at that institution inflicted solely because I, a woman, was seeking a chance to do the work to which the Lord had called me.”

Upon completion of her course of study, she sought Ordination, which in the Universalist church, could be done by regional conventions of clergy and laity. She made application to the Northern Universalist Association. None of her professors would support her, and several spoke out against her ordination. She addressed the Council and asked only that they be fair and impartial, judging her on her merits and not on her sex. The council, aware of the precedent they were possibly setting, surprised everyone by agreeing to ordain her. Dr. Fisher, President of St. Lawrence overcame his initial opposition, and even took part in the ordination service. His wife, upon hearing the news, wrote this in warning to her husband: “You will see now the consequence of this. Next year there will be fifteen women in the class, and then women will flock to the ministry!”

It took longer than poor Mrs. Fisher thought, but she was right! What they decided that day in 1863, made Olympia Brown the first woman ordained to the ministry with denominational endorsement. That is true, in a technical sense, of course, but it was because of the integrity and risk of a handful of Universalists in northern New York, and the astounding determination of a single woman, that broke down the barrier that had stood against women in the ministry for nearly 2,000 years. You would think that that was worthy of a footnote in Mr. Eddy’s late nineteenth century histories of Universalism....

Into the Universalist ministry Brown was followed by several other women: Augusta Jane Chapin, Phebe Hanaford, Caroline Augusta Soule, among many others. By 1920, there were 88 women ordained by the Universalist Church. At that time, the Unitarians had something less than half that number of women clergy. It would be a great mistake to assume that, because women had entered the ranks of the clergy, that they had an easy time of it. They did not. They were often lucky to get any church at all, and the ones they got, were typically ones in rather dilapidated condition: physically and spiritually. They were (news flash) paid less than men. They were never given leadership on a denominational level.

Olympia Brown served several churches in her ministerial career. She began in South Waymouth Massachusetts, went on to Bridgeport Connecticut where she was P.T. Barnum’s minister, and finally in Racine Wisconsin, where she served her last full time pastorate before devoting her full energies and attentions to the struggle for women’s suffrage. She was a working mother, having married while in Connecticut and having had two children. Brown kept her family name throughout her life, and showed a streak of her will and determination when someone referred to her as Mrs. Willis. When she learned that she was being billed as a speaking engagement as Mrs. Willis, she wrote the organizers this scathing rejoinder:

“I received a letter from you inviting me, Olympia Brown, no one else, to speak anniversary week, May 30th. In Boston, at the conference of the churches I, Olympia Brown, no one else, accepted that invitation and expect to be on hand to meet the engagement.

I have, in my private capacity, made various changes since accepting your invitation. I have bought a new stove, joined a sewing society, moved to another house, joined a social club; but none of these things concern the audience to whom I am to speak or the committee who invited me. To intrude them would be forcing my private affairs upon the attention of the public. It would be obtruding my personality where the people ought to think only of the subject of which I am to speak.

My marriage is an arrangement I have made in my individual capacity as a private person. It doesn’t concern the audience and I don’t wish it thrust upon them. I shall be much obliged to you if you will see to it that my name appears on the program and is announced when I am introduced to the audience as ever, Rev. Olympia Brown, neither more nor less.”

In her career as a reformer, Olympia Brown was a close associate with Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Both Anthony and Stanton frequently urged Olympia to give up the ministry to join them full time in their work to secure the vote for women. They did persuade her to take a four month leave from her parish in South Waymouth in 1867 to go to Kansas, to speak on behalf of the state’s proposed extention of the vote to women. But in the end, Brown was torn by her allegiance to this great cause, and her deep commitment to her calling as a minister. Had she agreed to leave the ministry, her image might be carved along with those other women in the statue that stands in the Capital. As things stand now, Olympia Brown is not even a part of the Women’s History Museum in Seneca Falls. I think that ought to be addressed. Maybe it is something for us to do.

In the last several decades of her life, Olympia Brown lectured widely, ran her husband’s newspaper, preached occasionally, and lead the drive in Wisconsin to pass the 19th amendment. Olympia Brown was the only one of the first wave of women fighting for suffrage to be alive to cast a ballot in 1920. She was 85 years old. It was that same year that she preached her last sermon, titled, “The Opening Doors”, in anticipation of the vote she would cast that year. Some of those words she spoke that day were those we used as our affirmation this morning.

She came to the end of her life in 1926 when she was 91, having been able to vote in two national elections. Mr. Eddy’s view of our history is really a rather inadequate one. He might have preferred that Olympia Brown had been turned down by that profound little committee of Universalists in northern New York in 1863, but that’s not how things turned out. Fortunately, Mr. Eddy did not have the last word on Olympia Brown, and in this century, our view of history has been made more complete and whole. Scholars continue to study the place that women had in that time of great transition and change. The past continues to reveal itself to us, showing us the shadows and the light of our own tradition as it has struggled to make sense of the major issues of the day, and to do justice in this world of suffering and need. Olympia Brown’s life attests to the certainty that what is right and just will prevail, just not overnight. It’s a good reminder for some of us. On a tablet placed in her honor at the National Memorial Universalist Church in Washington DC, one would read her favorite quote, with only a modest pronoun adjustment by me, “She who works in harmony with justice is immortal.”

I have not left too much time to cover the other great women of Universalism, so I will leave it at a few remarks about just one more.

I started out by saying how important January 5th was in Universalist history. And it wasn’t just because Olympia Brown was born in 1835. More important to us, is the fact that it was on that day in 1914, in Syracuse New York, Alice McBride was born to a Universalist family in this church, and has for all these 85 years been a part of this congregations celebrations, challenges, and change. We are proud to have other long term members....Glen and Esther Meitz, Lois Petrie, Caroline and Ray Davies. We are proud to have other life long members, George Tennent, Carol Davenport, Janet Harder. But Alice lead the pack in her tenure here, and today, along with her birthday, we would celebrate her unique place among us.

When Alice was born, her mother and father, Katherine and Thomas MacBride - in whose memory Alice gave the brass candlesticks - were members of this congregation, then located in a building downtown on the corner of Adams and S. Warren. They had become Universalists several years before after coming away from a service about which her mother said to her father, “I enjoyed that man’s sermon last Sunday”, and he replied, “I don’t know too much about the sermon, but I did love to hear that woman sing!”. (I imagine similar conversations following services in this church these days as well...) In those days, the singer was Sada Button, the mother of the church organist, Bertha Button. As a girl, Alice would sit beside Bertha on the organ bench as she practiced, and later, would sing in the church choir herself.

It is impossible to fully chronicle all the ways Alice has earned the rank of “Great Universalist Woman” in her 85 years of close association with out congregation, but some contributions can’t go unmentioned.

* In her 20’s she was a Sunday School teacher, and outside of church, she took several of the little girls under her wing, and they formed the “Betts Busy Beavers” - Dr. Betts being the minister then. Alice helped them learn about service to the community, how to prepare a proper tea party, how to be a loyal friend. Those five or six women continue as her friends to this day, and if I had to bet, I imagine Alice is wearing a necklace the women gave her a few years ago with a little gold charm of a beaver on it! (And she was! -dsb)

* Alice has always been an active and involved leader in the women’s groups in this church. In an earlier time, the women’s groups supplied the primary energy and resources for most of the community outreach, social functions, and pastoral care to members in need of meals or visits. Alice has her turns as President and every other office and job there was to do. Those groups also supplied - from what I can tell- most of the fun people had as well. Alice continues to do her part to supply the latter. The Clara Barton Circle’s Christmas Party at her house is a festive event that keeps going late into the night with stories, silly gifts, and always, Alice at the piano.

* Perhaps it has been her birthright - as her mother was a great planner of church festivities and celebrations - but Alice has long played a role that might be called “hospitality”, but really means much more than that. When a new minister comes to town, Alice has been the one these last 30 years to organize and direct a gracious welcoming reception. When a church member has died, Alice has prepared a reception to follow countless Memorial services, making sure that the silver is polished and the linens are pressed. Alice never cuts corners when it comes to giving something the care and attention it deserves. She has made this a more gracious and welcoming place than most of us will ever imagine.

I can only touch the tip of the iceberg of what Alice has added to the life of our church. She has seen a great deal change here, and yet has been a constant presence of support and encouragement to her church. Her church stories of times past are priceless, and she’s always ready to share them with a laugh and a smile.

A couple of years ago, in a visit we were having, Alice said to me,

“My wealth is my friends.”

She is one wealthy woman.

And without her,

this church would be a poorer place, indeed.

Happy Birthday Alice!