Our Ministers at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church

The Reverend Roger Fritts

Senior Minister

Thomas Roger Fritts (he goes by Roger) was born in Mesa, Arizona in 1951 the second of four children. His mother�s family were German Mennonites who arrived from Europe in the 1880s and settled in Idaho. His father�s ancestors came from Germany in 1738 and eventually became coal miners and southern Baptists in Eastern Kentucky. Both his mother and his father became disenchanted with the churches they grew up in, and discovered the Unitarian church in Phoenix in the early 1950s. Roger grew up attending that church.

Roger studied Political Science at Arizona State University, graduating in 1973. With the encouragement of his Minister and Religious Education Director in Phoenix, he applied to and was accepted as a student at the Unitarian Universalist seminary, Starr King School for the Ministry, in Berkeley, California. As part of his training he served as a student minister at churches in Santa Barbara, California and Charlotte, North Carolina. He also served as a student chaplain at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

Upon graduation from seminary, Roger spent three interesting years serving the Unitarian Universalist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, returning to live in the state where his father had been born. Wanting a grounding in Unitarian Universalist New England roots, he next accepted a call to serve the Unitarian Church in the seaport city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. In New England he married the Rev. Leslie Westbrook, (who was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister five years before Roger). In 1982 their first child, a son, Loren Westbrook-Fritts, was born and Roger bought his first personal computer, a Kaypro II. In August 1983, he came to Washington, D.C. to participate in the 20^th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. He stayed with his friend, the Rev. Sydney Wilde, who was a minister at Cedar Lane Unitarian Church. She showed him the church and he was impressed by the fact that they also had Kaypro computers.

After four and a half years in New Bedford, at the age of thirty-four, Roger accepted a call to serve as Senior Minister of the Evanston, Illinois Unitarian Church, the largest Unitarian Church in the Chicago area, with 580 members. One highlight of Roger�s ministry was the construction of a large addition to the church building. However, the part of his ministry that Roger found most satisfying occurred in 1991 when he organized his church to bring part of the AIDS Quilt to Evanston.

Two more children, David and Rachel were born in Evanston. To help pay the bills, Roger wrote a book on wedding services, For as Long As We Both Shall Live, published in 1993 by Avon Books. It has sold more than 40,000 copies.

In January of 1993 the search committee of Cedar Lane Unitarian Church asked Roger to apply to their position as Senior Minister, and he was happy to comply with this request. After being interviewed and voted on by the entire congregation, he was honored to accept their invitation to serve the church. Roger, Leslie, Loren, David and Rachel moved into the church parsonage, on the hill above the church in September 1993. A year later they bought a home at two miles from the church. The congregation converted the parsonage into a meeting space that we now call the Chalice House. At Cedar Lane Roger enjoys the day to day work of the ministry--the conversations with members, the view of the trees on the church grounds, the sounds of the music on Sunday, the children in our religious education program, the deep commitment of the members to social action, all combine to make the work of being a minister at Cedar Lane deeply satisfying.

In June, July and August of 2006, Roger took two months of sabbatical and one month of vacation to serve as the minister of the Unitarian Church in Adelaide, Australia. In March, April and May of 2007 he spent three sabbatical months serving the Unitarian Church in Auckland, New Zealand, and in June, July and August of 2007 he spent two months of sabbatical and one month of vacation serving St Mark�s Unitarian Church in Edinburgh Scotland. These trips, along with three trips to visit Unitarian congregations in Transylvania, have given him a broad perspective on Unitarianism.