DANA McLEAN GREELEY: THE FIRST UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST PRESIDENT
1908-1986
Few figures in our denominational history embody our unique tensions as
a religious movement as well as Dana McLean Greeley. Groomed by the New
England Unitarianism of Channing, Emerson and Parker, he became an internationally
respected advocate for world peace and interfaith understanding. Being in
the crossfire of many denominational struggles of the mid-20th century,
he remained optimistic about the future of Unitarian Universalism, and of
the world, and lived without guile or bitterness among those who could not
follow him. In the last years of his life when he struggled against a debilitating
cancer, he remained hopeful and courageous. He devoted his life to an institution
even as his primary religious inspiration was the unique worth and dignity
of every person.
A fifth-generation Unitarian,
Dana was born on July 5, 1908 at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning, the time
of the week he liked best. The Greeleys hailed from Portland, Maine where
their family pew was one behind the Longfellow pew at the historic First
Parish Church. Dana grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. In high school
he served as president of the Theodore Parker Guild of the Young People's
Religious Union at the Lexington First Parish, and later during his college
years he served as president of the continental YPRU. When he was a senior
in high school, his younger sister, Rosamond, died of a ruptured appendix.
This family tragedy was instrumental in his decision to enter the ministry.
At Star Island he proposed to Deborah Webster, whom he had known since childhood,
and they were married on December 27, 1931. He graduated from Harvard College
in 1931 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1933.
Rev. Dana McLean Greeley and Mrs. Greeley Photo by James K. O'Callaghan,
Courtesy of the Boston Public Library Print Department.
Dana served briefly two congregations—in Lincoln, Massachusetts
and in Concord, New Hampshire—before being called to the Arlington
Street Church in Boston in 1935. Dr. Samuel A. Eliot had served as minister
there for eight years following his service as president of the American
Unitarian Association for twenty-five years.
Dana arrived in the autumn of 1935 in youthful vigor to rejuvenate the venerable
institution. During his twenty-three year ministry at Arlington Street Church,
he served on the Board of Directors of the Benevolent Fraternity of Unitarian
Churches, a social service agency; as president of the North End Union,
a settlement house; and on the American Unitarian Association Board of Trustees
for twelve years where he chaired the World Churches Committee; served as
secretary to the Board, and as a member of the executive committee. When
his AUA board service ended, he became president of the Unitarian Service
Committee in 1953.
There had been only three presidents of the AUA since 1900: Samuel A. Eliot,
Louis C. Cornish, and Frederick May Eliot. Dana announced his candidacy
for the presidency in 1958. It was a contested election, the first in the
133 year history of the association. (The final tally was 823 votes for
Dana and 720 for Dr. Ernest Kuebler, the candidate of the board of directors.)
Dana noted, "I was a grass-roots candidate and a by-petition candidate,
but I seemed nevertheless to be too Bostonian (which I was) and to represent
the establishment." Nearly fifty years old when elected in 1958, he would
be the last president of the American Unitarian Association. Part of his
platform had been merger with the Universalist Church of America.
Boston's Dr. Dana
McLean Greeley (second left), a fellow Unitarian minister of James Reeb,
links arms with other church leaders in the march through Selma. With him,
from left, are Msgr. Daniel Cantwell of Chicago, Rev. C.T. Vivian, of Boston,
Rev. J.C. Killingsworth of Mississippi, Rabbi Eugene Weiner and Sister Rose
Walker of New York City. The 4,000 marchers protested Rev. Reeb's murder.
Courtesy of the Boston Public Library Print Department.
As early as 1900 there had been informal discussions between Unitarians
and Universalists about cooperation on matters of mutual interest and concern.
In some places cooperation had evolved into consolidation. In 1959 the Western
Unitarian Conference and several midwestern Universalist state conventions
merged. When he became president of the AUA Dana was committed to complete
merger between the Unitarians and the Universalists on the grounds of spiritual
unity and collegiality. The two denominations were consolidated in 1961.
Who would become the president of the newly consolidated Unitarian Universalist
Association? Once again there would be a contest. The other candidate, Dr.
William Brooks Rice was the chairman of the joint merger commission. (Dana
won 1,087 votes, Bill 935.)
One of the most difficult Board meetings over which Dana presided was that
last one of the American Unitarian Association. Mindful that he had worked
to create a new expression of liberal religion in America, Unitarian Universalism,
he was also deeply aware that he was the man who helped close the history
book on American Unitarianism. This feeling was to revisit him when he retired
in 1969 as the president of the UUA. He stopped his desk clock the minute
he moved out of his presidential office at 25 Beacon Street and placed this
frozen time piece in his minister's study in Concord, Massachusetts.
Issues that recurred throughout recent history plagued his administration.
When he became president of the AUA in 1958, he faced opposition from those
people who wanted to split the office of the presidency into two positions,
that of spiritual spokesperson for the denomination and that of administrative
head.
He struggled to achieve adequate coordination between field services and
his administration. A plan to create seven regional service centers was
never implemented. Crises around the viability of the Beacon Press and the
lack of regular denominational news vehicles recurred. When the Service
Committees of the two denominations merged, the Unitarians preferred independence
from the UUA and the Universalists wanted to remain a denominational office
as they had been.For many interfaith and international efforts were often
of lower priority, yet Dana advocated their inclusion even when they were
inadequately funded and staffed.
Befriending Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and involvement in the civil rights
movement were of paramount importance to Dana.His efforts in trying to help
the association accept its own institutional racism were less successful.
This short sketch cannot do justice to that important ongoing challenge.
Dana was an outspoken critic of American involvement in Southeast Asia and
denounced nuclear proliferation. He was instrumental in the founding of
the World Conference on Religion and Peace in 1962. He practiced a broad
ecumenism long before his participation in the Second Vatican Council as
a delegated observer.
He was a birthright Unitarian with a universalist persona. He was as comfortable
being with President Gerald Ford standing on the bridge over the Concord
River at our nation's bicentennial in 1976 as he was conversing with Dr.
Albert Schweitzer in Lambarene. The Universalists of the Phillipines, the
Unitarians in the Khasi Hills of India, and the Rissho Kosei Kai of Japan,
were as much his congregation as the cherished folk of Lexington, Concord,
and Boston.
After retiring as president of the UUA in 1969, he served as a visiting
professor for one year at the Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago.
From there he went to serve the First Parish in Concord, Massachusetts,
where he died June 13, 1986.
Source: Jon M. Luopa, Minister, University Unitarian Church, Seattle, Washington
