Our Roots and Our Legacy
What do you do when you move to a town that doesn’t have a congregation that aligns with your faith? In 1822, Thomas Jefferson remarked that his neighborhood was too “slender” to be able to organize a Unitarian church, so he had to practice on his own.
But, if you were a Unitarian in Midcentury America, the American Unitarian Association granted you permission to start a Unitarian Fellowship by gathering just nine other people and organizing a congregation on your own! No minister required.
It was a radical idea, but that’s exactly what Patsy Eger did when she moved from Washington DC to Lakeland, FL in the early 1950s.
The first attempt to start a fellowship in 1952 was unsuccessful. However, Eger, along with Ellinore Dettman (who eventually took charge of creating a Sunday school for the many children that began to arrive at the Fellowship), did not give up! On November 20, 1955, thirty-five charter members signed the membership book and the Lake Region Unitarian Fellowship was formed. Today, we call ourselves the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lakeland.