Cedar Lane History: The 1960s

Roger Fritts

September 22, 1996

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church

Bethesda, Maryland

Before the Second World War, American Unitarianism was a religion centered in New England. Fifty-eight percent of Unitarian Churches were found in those six states. A standing joke fifty years ago was that Unitarians believed in the brotherhood of man and the neighborhood of Boston.

All this changed as World War II ended. Millions of people who had delayed marriage and children because of the Depression and the war started families. Some of these young adults began attending Unitarian churches. Our movement jumped from 200 churches in 1935 to nearly 1,000 congregations by 1960.

Our congregation was one of these new churches. Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church began forty-five years ago this week as the vision of Rev A. Powell Davies and the members of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington. All Souls was struggling with a waiting list in its church school and standing room only in its sanctuary. Rev. Davies recommended that instead of adding more Sunday services, or trying to move the congregation to a larger building, All Souls should start a new congregation in Montgomery County, Maryland. The founders of this church held the first service in September 1951.

In its first ten years the church moved quickly to become one of the largest Unitarian congregations in the United States or Canada. The congregation called Rev. John Baker as the church's first minister in November of 1953. In April 1955, the congregation purchased this land where we now worship. By January of 1956, they completed building plans. The architects intended the congregation to build the church in three stages. The first stage included the construction of this all-purpose auditorium, which we are now in, and eleven classrooms, a lounge, a kitchen, four offices, and restrooms. The second stage was to be a Chapel with more class rooms, and the third stage was to be a Sanctuary.

By March of 1958, the congregation began holding services in this building. In the spring of 1960, this church's first minister, Rev. John Baker tendered his resignation. Rev. Baker's resignation letter suggested that after six-and-a-half years, he was weary of the intense experience of serving a fast-growing congregation. With Rev. Baker's departure in June of 1960, the first chapter in the life of this congregation ended. This morning I want briefly to explore the second chapter of the history of this church, starting with John Baker's departure in the summer of 1960.

The Church newsletter of September 29, 1960 reported that the past Sunday 1,235 people were present at three worship services, held at 9:00 A.M., 11:00 A.M. and 1:00 P.M.. This included 507 adults at the worship services, 667 children in the school of religion, and seventy-three teachers. The newsletter also reported that a Search Committee of thirty-seven people was interviewing forty ministers to find a replacement for John Baker.

Laura Dittmann, was one of the members of the thirty-seven-person committee. This week she recalled for me one of the meetings at which the committee was listing the qualities they wanted in a minister. After a time, one of the committee members said in frustration, "This is like picking a spouse. You can sit and list all the ideal qualities you want in your wife or husband. Then you go out on the street, and see a pretty face. At that point, you toss you list in the trash and fall in love."

By January of 1961 the Search Committee had unanimously fallen in love with the minister of the Unitarian Church in Syracuse, New York, the Reverend Bob Zoerheide. The same weekend that President Kennedy was inaugurated, Reverend Zoerheide came to speak at Cedar Lane and be voted on by the congregation. In a letter written to me last summer, Bob Zoerheide said:

It was a heady time candidating here as the Kennedys arrived at the White House. Sam Hughes chaired the Search Committee . . . He had arranged for us to view the Kennedy Inaugural from the Executive Office Building where the Kennedy family was viewing the high drama of that cold and snowy day from the floor under us.

Before Reverend Zoerheide arrived, the church dealt with another pressing issue. There were simply not enough adults willing to teach in the School of Religion at 1:00 P.M. Week after week, the third service went without enough Sunday School teachers. The Director of Religious Education, Mildred Lester, made countless phone calls. Committee members tried to persuade more adults to teach at 1:00 P.M. Mildred Lester made appeals for more teachers in a full-page letter published in the newsletter. Parents simply did not want to commit to teaching at 1:00 P.M. on Sunday. The church board decided in April 1961 to go from three to two services and to rent space at Parkwood School to make room for the children.

Bob and Jean Zoerheide moved into the church parsonage in September 1961. Cedar Lane had a total membership of 1,765 adults and children, and was the fourth largest Unitarian Universalist Church in the United States or Canada. Of the sixth largest Churches in 1960, today only Cedar Lane remains one of the largest churches in our movement today.

The Cedar Lane Church had several well-known members. Bob Zoerheide wrote this past summer:

Senator Paul Douglas and Emily Taft Douglas were highly regarded members of the church and spoke at Sunday services several times. . . Emily had been Moderator of the American Unitarian Association, and Paul was the prime mover in legislation to save the rapidly disappearing dunes of Illinois. One of my most vivid memories is of a flower service in which each person was asked to bring a flower. Paul and Emily arrived a little tardy for the service and came down the aisle with small bouquets of wild flowers they had picked on the way. . . . Paul also had a deep concern for the plight of the native Americans. After a sermon of mine on the subject, he asked for a copy to insert into the Congressional Record. Justice William O. Douglas, a close friend of Paul and Emily, also spoke at services several times.

In part because the public school system told our church that we could only rent space for classes for three years, the board established a Chapel Wing committee in 1962 with Sam Hughes as its chair. In November of 1962, the board authorized Sam to seek bids on the construction of the Chapel wing. This was the second part of the three-segment construction plan for the church. Ground breaking for the chapel wing was March 10, 1963. It was dedicated December 22, 1963.

On Mother's Day 1963, Bob Zoerheide gave a sermon called "Is the Feminine Mystique a Myth?" in which he talked about the ideas in Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique. Last summer he wrote:

For years I kept that unenlightened sermon of male righteousness as a reminder that a well-intended minister can preach with flawed determination and make no sense at all in a rapidly changing world.

Jean Zoerheide remembers the many great women she met in this church. This summer she wrote:

Lucy, Mildred, Stevie, Betty, Martha, Aileen, Roz, Wanda, Mary, Win, Doris, Ella, Elizabeth, Shirley, Marilyn, Marion, Flo, Helen--the list could go on and on: the women whose enthusiasm and gifts and visions you have inherited in this later decade. They and others are still in our memories.

Civil rights issues were a primary focus of the church throughout the 1960s. In March 1965, at least eleven members of the congregation traveled to Selma, Alabama. There they joined with thousands of others to march from Selma to Montgomery, supporting the right of black people in Selma to vote. The marchers included Tom Eliot, who is here today.

Cedar Lane called a new associate minister in September 1965. Jean Zoerheide wrote:

In 1965 a Search Committee began looking for an associate minister and came to a final interview time with Bill Moors. Much to their amazement, Bill arrived for the committee to look him over without Marilyn. Marilyn was home where she had three young boys to care for and was working toward her Ph.D. in Anthropology. She had just received a fellowship to study at Brandeis University. She was obviously going to be a different kind of minister's wife. Marilyn managed to get away from her responsibilities to board a plane. Fortunately the committee had the wit to recognize a treasure, and Bill received the call. Marilyn's expertise in her own field enriched our programming at Cedar Lane. . . . But she defined her role.

About Bill Moors, Bob Zoerheide said:

When the Search Committee was formed to seek a staff person for a youth ministry, I asked for someone who would pace me. Bill Moors was called as associate minister. In youth leadership, social action and ministry, Bill was a splendid choice. He paced me all right, when I could see through his dust! The youth group grew to over 100 and its Saturday night dances attracted several hundred youths and cars requiring Montgomery County police to monitor traffic.

Several church members held major responsibilities in government. For example, in March 1966 the newsletter announced that President Johnson named Sam Hughes to become deputy director of the Bureau of the Budget. Among the praise for Sam was the following:

More than any other man not immediately on the President's staff, Sam Hughes has been responsible for the drafting of the President's Great Society legislative program. Not a single bill has escaped his personal attention, and all the important legislation bears his personal mark. He is one of those quiet but highly effective civil servants whose influence reaches into every corner of this government. . . .

In September 1967, the church selected a young man as its new music director. Richard A. Darne came with impressive credentials. While still in high school, the Washington Chapter of the American Guild of Organists had chosen him to represent this area in a national competition, where he won first place. He had a Bachelor of Music degree from Curtis Institute of Philadelphia and a Master's degree in Church Music from the College of Church Musicians, Washington Cathedral. The congregation was delighted to add such a well qualified young man to the staff. They hoped he might find leading music in a Unitarian church so satisfying that he would stay for a while.

In 1966 Bob Zoerheide delivered his first sermon on Vietnam, that tragic war that would eclipse Johnson's Great Society programs. Like the nation, the issue divided the church. In 1967, 7% of the congregation supporting an escalation of the war. Twenty percent supported a complete withdrawal from Vietnam. The rest of the congregation hoped our government might negotiate a peaceful settlement.

Increasingly the life of the church reflected the conflict over the war. By the fall of 1967 church members had formed groups supporting and opposing the war. Letters appeared in the newsletter for and against conscientious objection to the war. A two-page letter appeared in the newsletter in November 1967 with thirteen signers. They quoted Unitarian Adlai Stevenson (who had died in 1965) in support of the president's policy in Vietnam. In January 1968 the church newsletter published a letter by a young man in the church who stated that he was refusing to carry his draft card, violating federal law.

The week after Dr. Martian Luther King was killed, and following days of riots in the District, Bob's sermon title was simply "How Can We Celebrate Easter This Year?" In the weeks that followed King's death, the church became a coordinating center for the Poor People's Campaign and March on Washington. After a highly successful fund raiser--a poor people's dinner of chicken necks and wings--CBS asked to record and broadcast Cedar Lane's special church service for the event. The following Thursday, the Walter Cronkite evening news showed excerpts.

In the summer of 1969, Bill Moors accepted a call to serve as the minister of the Rockville Unitarian Church. On leaving, Reverend Moors wrote a letter that spoke about the divisions of the late 1960s.

Many times my style, ideas and actions were in conflict with some, yet you have always supported in trust during those moments of doubt, if not disagreement. There has always been an attempt for communication when there has been misunderstanding. Times of open, and I think healthy, disagreement have always brought better dialogue rather than bitterness.

In May 1970, reacting to the extension of the war into Cambodia and the killings at Kent State, Reverend Zoerheide gave a sermon titled "Win the War--Lose our Soul." The sense of things falling apart peaked at Cedar Lane a month later. At a Sunday in early June 1970, three college-aged Unitarians interrupted a worship service and tried to take over the pulpit. In his letter to me this summer, Bob Zoerheide described the event:

One Sunday morning a delegation from our own youth group marched up and seized the pulpit. . . . "If you will be seated while I finish this service, we will then remain for you to make your statement," I responded--after outcries from the congregation. One member of the congregation had to be restrained from rushing forward to retake the mike. My sermon happened to be on the rights of youth in a rapidly changing world. At the end of the service, however, the youth marched out stiff limbed, leaving us forever unenlightened about their demands. We learned later that they had alerted the media. . . . Perhaps our very prominence for concern for action on social issues had made us an ideal stage for youth to prove their protest. . . . For them, protest became a thing in itself; they no longer had need for an agenda.

Reflecting on the state of the world in September 1970, Reverend Zoerheide wrote in the church newsletter:

We are in a strange, disquieting and sometimes terrifying time, one in which the numberless nightmares we have brought upon ourselves is headlined daily. The sharp collision of values . . . is reflected within each one of us. . . . the whole human fabric which once kept things together now is being critically examined by us. . . . Amid the turmoil of our time, I find our church to be a place where many people help the center to hold. It is good to be together again . . .

However, a year later, by the summer of 1971 Bob and Jean Zoerheide felt that both they and the church were ready for a change. On June 30, 1971, Bob wrote a letter to the congregation:

After ten years with you as minister at Cedar Lane Church, I have just received and accepted a call to the ministry of First Parish, Lexington, Massachusetts. . . . A young and vital church like Cedar Lane must not become biologically locked in with any minister. . . . A change in the ministry will be stimulating for the church and stimulating for us.

Bob and Jean spent nearly ten years in Lexington, Massachusetts. In 1979 he accepted a call to the church in Baltimore, where he retired in 1985. In his letter to me last summer, Bob said:

Assisting a fast-moving church like Cedar Lane to preserve its history should help it to avoid simply wandering in the ephemeral currents of the present. Giving voice to mute events of the past can be nourishing and transforming words for today. Recalling our years of the sixties with you has kindled fond recollections for us, and those words of a signature song from radio days is appropriate for us, too-- "Thanks for the Memories."

To Bob and Jean and to all of you who helped create the church we have today, I want to say thank you. We will do our best to maintain and enhance the heritage you have given us. I feel a deep gratitude for the past, a profound respect for our precious inheritance and a high regard for all my predecessors. But in 1996 this church is not a museum--it is a vital, living community. Building on the good work of the past, in the coming months and years Cedar Lane will continue to be a home for new dreams and great adventures.

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300    Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail: office@CedarLane.org
Sunday Services at 10 a.m.
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