Last Sunday I ended my sermon encouraging participation in our upcoming capital campaign with a quote from the late Rev. Dr. John B. Wolf, for 35 years senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa. At the virtual coffee hour after the service I agreed to share it again in the newsletter. So here it is. I share a more complete rendition I have found of the quote and believe it still reads well though it was written decades ago.    The only thing I would amend is to add “sexual orientation” at the end of the first paragraph.

There is only one reason for joining a UU Church. This is to support it. You want to support it because it stands against superstition and fear. Because it points to what’s noblest and best in human life. Because it is open to men and women of whatever race, creed, color, or national origin.

You want to support a UU Church because it has a free pulpit. Because you can hear ideas expressed there which would cost any other minister his or her job. You want to support it because it is a place where children can come without being saddled with guilt or terrified of some celestial peeping Tom, where they can learn that religion is for joy, comfort, for gratitude and love.

You want to support it because it is a place where walls between people are town down rather than built up. Because it is a place for the religious displaced persons of our time, the refugees from mixed marriages, the unwanted freethinkers and those who insist against orthodoxy that they must work out their own beliefs.

You want to support a Unitarian Universalist Church because it is more concerned with human beings than with dogmas. Because it searches for the holy, rather than dwells upon the depraved. Because it calls no one a sinner, yet knows how deep is the struggle and how great is the hunger for what is good.

You want to support a Unitarian Universalist Church because it can laugh…because it insults neither your intelligence nor your conscience, and because it calls you to worship what is truly worth your sacrifice…

I want to thank Kathleen McKenzie and Peter Racine, co-chairs of the Capital Campaign, for their excellent, inspiring presentation launching the campaign as part of the service.

~ Rev. Paul