UU Icons by Robin Gray A. Powell Davies Bela Bartok Charles

UU Icons By Robin Gray A. Powell Davies Bela Bartok Charles Dickens Daniel Chester French Dorothea Dix Edward E. Hale Egbert Ethelred Brown Emily Balch Joseph Tuckerman May Sarton Pete Seeger Phebe Hanaford Roger Baldwin Sophia Lyon Fahs Theodore Parker Viola Liuzzo Whitney Young Jr. A. Powell Davies 1902-1957 “Born in England in 1902 and ordained as a Methodist, Davies moved to the United States in 1928 and soon became a Unitarian, crowning his career as minister of All Souls Church in Washington, D.C., from 1944 until his death in 1957. Citing him as one of America's outstanding clergymen, Time magazine said that in Washington, "where many talk but few listen . Davies is a man who is heard," while the Washington Post described him as "militantly in the forefront of every assault upon intolerance and racial discrimination and injustice.” His eloquence and courage were matched by keen insights into national and world affairs. In 1942 Davies wrote: "Not by design, but by necessity, the American people are moving towards world ascendancy." The prediction was no boast, but rather one of many calls to the conscience of the nation never to compromise its support of freedom. To Davies, a commitment to freedom was both a political and a religious principle. In fact, they were one and the same. "We believe that freedom grows from free religion," he said, and "that only a free religion can be universal." This conviction led him to preach passionate sermons denouncing both Communist tyranny and Congressional persecution— this at the high- water period of Senator Joseph McCarthy's power. Equally, he denounced all manner of injustice and led the All Souls congregation in protesting segregation in restaurants, sponsoring the city's first integrated boys club, and collecting school supplies for the children of Hiroshima.”1 Davies and the congregation became involved with the children of Hiroshima after one of Davies controversial sermons made national news. It began when a photo of an atomic war cake was published in the Washington Post. The cake had been made for a party honoring the dissolution of the Army-Navy task force that conducted atomic tests on the Bikini Atoll. The tests not only led to the expulsion of an entire indigenous population, but cleared the way for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Davies centered his sermon five days later on the photograph and the gross insensitivity the cake displayed. He said, “The naval officers concerned should apologize to the armed service of which they are a part, and to the American people. No apology would be sufficient to efface what it may mean to the people of the world.”2 Dr. Howard Bell, an official in the provisional government in Japan wrote to Davies and suggested American children could collect school supplies for the children of Hiroshima. The children of the congregation did collect a half a ton of paper, pencils, crayons and more. They were sent to Japan and distributed to schools. In response the children of Hiroshima sent drawings of their lives and interests. Some surround the portrait of Davies. 1 https://www.uuworld.org/articles/a.-powell-davies-preacher-the-nation Warren R. Ross, 2002 2 http://conelrad.blogspot.come/2010/09/atomic-cake-controversy-or-1946. html Bela Bartok 1881-1945 Béla Bartók, the greatest Hungarian composer, was one of the most significant musicians of the twentieth century. His music was invigorated by the themes, modes, and rhythmic patterns of the Hungarian and other folk music traditions he studied, which he synthesized with influences from his contemporaries into his own distinctive style.”1 A talented musician at an early age, when Bartok graduated from the Academy of Music in Budapest he became a concert pianist, performing in 620 concerts over his lifetime. He continued the lifelong pursuit of composition, and when in 1904 he was introduced to Hungarian folk music he began to weave that music into his compositions. “While in Transylvania studying folk music, Bartok was introduced to the Unitarian Church. "By the time I had completed my 22nd year," he later wrote, "I was a new man—an atheist." In a letter written in 1905 Bartók claimed to be a follower of Nietzsche and expressed his skepticism about religious teachings: "It is odd that the Bible says, 'God created man,' whereas it is the other way round: man has created God. It is odd that the Bible says, 'The body is mortal, the soul is immortal,' whereas even here the contrary is true: the body (its matter) is eternal; the soul (the form of the body) is transitory.” …In 1909 Bartók married Márta Ziegler. Their son, Béla Jr., was born in 1910. In the presence of his son Bartók declared his conversion to Unitarianism on July 25, 1916, and joined the Mission House Congregation of the Unitarian Church in Budapest in 1917. Formal church affiliation enhanced Bartók's prospects for additional employment and enabled his son to avoid otherwise mandatory Catholic religious instruction. Father and son attended the Unitarian Church regularly. His two violin sonatas, 1921 and 1922, and the Dance Suite, written in 1923 for the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of the city of Budapest, helped to establish him as an important modern composer. In 1926 he composed a series of major works for piano, including the first of his three piano concertos. His third and fourth string quartets, from 1927 and 1928, in Bartók's most abstract and concentrated style, are among the works most often cited as masterpieces by music critics. As the European political situation worsened, Bartók was increasingly tempted to flee Hungary. Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, in 1940 Bartók sailed for America with his wife. Péter Bartók joined them in 1942 and later enlisted in the United States Navy. Béla Bartók, Jr. remained in Hungary. Although he became an American citizen in 1945, Bartók thought of his stay in the U.S. less as emigration than exile. One attraction of the U.S. for him was the opportunity to study a collection of Serbo-Croatian folk music at Columbia University in New York City.”2 1https://uudb.org/articles/belabartok.html 2ibid Charles Dickens 1812-1870 Charles Dickens’s famous novel about Ebenezer Scrooge changed the celebration of Christmas into what we think of as traditional today: an occasion to give to those less fortunate and to gather family and friends around laden dinner tables and Christmas trees filled with lights, decorations, and toys. Written shortly after Dickens joined a Unitarian church, A Christmas Carol became his most famous novel—and the one most representative of his Unitarian beliefs. Born and baptized into the Anglican Church, Dickens turned to Unitarianism in his thirties. His letters, speeches, and novels all show that he hated dogma: “The Church’s hand is at its own throat because of the doctrinal wranglings of the various parties: Here, more Popery, there, more Methodism—many forms of consignment to eternal damnation, these things cannot last,” he once wrote to a correspondent. …In 1842 Dickens traveled to America and chronicled his disillusionment with the country’s institutions, especially slavery, in his American Notes. Yet Dickens praised his visit to Boston, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Ellery Channing, the leading figure of American Unitarianism. On returning home, Dickens took a pew at the Little Portland Street chapel in London and became close friends with its minister, Edward Tagart. …Dickens wrote in a letter, “I have carried into effect an old idea of mine, and joined the Unitarians, who would do something for human improvement, if they could; and who practice Charity and Toleration.” Dickens himself worked tirelessly for a wide range of charitable causes, raising funds for soup kitchens, emigration schemes, housing associations, prison reform, hospitals, adult education, and disabled artists. He also believed that through his fiction he could promote moral solutions to social ills and could change society for the better. All Dickens’s novels reflect the central ideas of nineteenth-century Unitarianism: the belief that Jesus was a human being who exemplified a truly religious life; the rejection of materialism and the doctrine of necessity; the rejection of a God of stern judgment; a disdain of theological controversy; the rejection of dogma; an inclusive rather than an exclusive religion; and an emphasis on doing good works. In A Christmas Carol, without once mentioning Jesus, Dickens shows it is possible to experience a conversion—not necessarily based on a specific religious experience—but a personal regeneration that leads one to help others. With Scrooge’s transformative change of heart, Dickens illustrates that his readers, too, can be converted from a harsh, complacent, selfish worldview to one of love, hope, and charity and, like Scrooge, can again become part of the human community. For Dickens, that was the true meaning of Christmas. …To the end Dickens maintained his admiration and friendship with his Unitarian friends and colleagues, and they responded with equal enthusiasm. At the time of his death in 1870, almost idolatrous eulogies were heard all over New England. “Every Unitarian pulpit in 0F Boston,” one writer observed, “sent him to heaven immediately.”1 1adapted from: Timkko, Michael https://www.uuworld.org/articles/scrooges-conversion Daniel Chester French 1850-1931 At the age of 17, French entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1867. Science, however, was not his forte—he failed chemistry, algebra, and physics and was back at work on the family farm the following summer. French’s career began in an almost offhand way with the help of May Alcott (1840–1879), the sister of Louisa May Alcott and the model for Amy in Little Women.

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