"Play the video" of Pastor Vicki being interviewed by Amherst Media at the end of the church service on Sunday, December 14, 2014.

First Church was organized in 1739, but it was not until 1759 that the area, formerly part of Hadley, became known as Amherst. Our current building, erected in 1868, is our fourth in Amherst. We were the only church in town (and church and town were one and the same) until the American Revolution when dissension developed between the Tories (most members of First Church) and a group of revolutionary patriots who split off to found Second Church. Nearly 200 years later, Second Church voted to dissolve, and the building was sold to the Jewish Community of Amherst.

Early in the nineteenth century First Church members and ministers played central roles in raising the funds for the founding of Amherst College, and groups of our members were dismissed to found regional churches: South Church (1824) and North Church (1826).

First Church has been forward-looking in its ministry and missions, serving both as a center for worship and also as a place to fulfill the needs of the greater community. It was a leader in the peace and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and it squarely embraced the women's movement, naming the first woman deacon in 1966, the first woman moderator in 1972, and calling, in 1980, the first woman minister in Amherst. It was also one of the first churches to be seriously concerned about inclusive language; one of our members, a retired UCC minister, compiled an inclusive language hymnal that has been used not only by First Church but by many others as well.

In the 1970s, First Church housed a food cooperative, our members helped to establish the Interfaith Housing Corporation, and organized the A Better Chance program in Amherst. In the 1980s, our ministries expanded to include a furniture exchange, an emergency housing program, and sponsorship of a Cambodian refugee family. Our former parsonage now shelters homeless women and children.

First Church was one of the very first UCC churches to become "open and affirming," welcoming people of all sexual orientations and family arrangements, and our status as a "Just Peace" church reflects our anti-war commitment. In addition, First Church has housed a pre-school for 50 years, and the Not Bread Alone soup kitchen for almost 25. We also provide meeting space for a Spanish-language church and numerous 12-step programs and community groups.

In recent years the church has adopted an Earth Covenant Resolution, and continues to work to reduce its impact on the environment. Other ongoing ministries include an increasing commitment to anti-racism work; support for and participation in the work of the Amherst Survival Center, the Northampton Cot Shelter, and Habitat for Humanity; participation in delegations to La Paz Centro, Nicaragua; and the provision of logistical and financial support to Amherst-area residents.

Our worship style is creative and informal, with varying, inspirational musical offerings. People from a range of traditions -- or no tradition -- feel at home here. We are explorers, and we find in the tradition of Christianity a solid base from which to live and ask our questions. We strive to translate the Gospel into action and the will of God into our common life.

For more information, see 250 Years at First Church in Amherst, 1739-1989 (1990) – available at the Jones Library, the First Church Lounge and for sale from the First Church office ($18 hardback/$10 paperback plus postage & handling – contact: 413-253-3456 or firstchurch_amherst@comcast.net).

G.McClung, 1/09

• On November 7, 1739 Amherst's founding Parish, First Congregational Church, was established in what was known as the Third Precinct of Hadley. Not until 1759 was the area around the church known as Amherst.
• In 1782 some members of First Church split off to create Second Congregational Church because of First Church’s Tory sympathies during the Revolutionary War.
• Noah Webster, creator of the American Dictionary of the English Language, framed the constitution for the first regular Sabbath School in Amherst at the First Congregational Church in 1820.
• Dr. David Parsons, Samuel Fowler Dickinson (Emily's grandfather) and Noah Webster, leaders of First Church, played a major role in the founding of Amherst College in 1821 as an institution of higher education for pious young men to become trained in the Trinitarian tradition for ministry and missionary work.
• Emily Dickinson attended First Congregational Church when she was a child with her family. She later became the church’s most famous non-member.
• Gloria Steinem was baptized in First Congregational Church in May 1945 when she was ten years old. She and her mother were visiting in Amherst while her sister was at Smith College.
• Martin Luther King Jr. came to First Church and spoke in the dining room on April 17, 1961. First Church has been a center for active support of the civil rights and other social justice movements throughout the decades since then.

 Lamet 1/09

Holding Fast, Pressing On

January 11, 2009
Foundation for the Future
(History Sunday, in collaboration
with events kicking off the celebration
of the 250th anniversary of Amherst)
Rev. Vicki Kemper

Philippians 3:12-16

One of my very favorite parts of the remarkable book on First Church’s first 250 years comes at the end of the third and final appendix, just before the index, at the bottom of page 321. There, at the conclusion of what is called “A First Church Chronology,” is a refreshingly candid note that reads:

These items are the selection of a single individual and are therefore limited and biased. Some dates were not readily available and others may well be in error. If you have corrections or suggestions, feel free to send them in writing to Compiler Robert F. Grose, in care of the church. ¹

Now I don’t know if Bob received any corrections or suggestions but, knowing this church, I would guess that he got a boatload of input both before and after the book came out in 1990. I also know of one key item that was somehow overlooked, because every time we need to know when it was that a young Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in the church dining room, we have to send the ever-efficient Jean Thompson out to her garage, where she apparently stores a lifetime’s worth of calendars. (Let the record show: Dr. King was the featured speaker at a church supper on April 17, 1961. It began at 6 o’clock. Thank you, Jean.)

My point is that as we take some time today to flaunt our own “we were here first” history at the kickoff to Amherst’s 250th anniversary celebration, my analysis of our history is also limited and biased. What strikes me as significant, amusing, troubling or admirable may say more about my views and values than a more informed, objective reading. But whether we are proud of our history or ashamed of it, whether history is that thing that tells us “we’ve always done it this way” or the license to do something completely different, there is one thing of which I am fairly sure: The past is past, and our still-speaking God, the God of new things, calls us to the future.

Even the apostle Paul, whose pre-Damascus religious credentials were impeccable, realized that following Jesus has nothing to do with where we’ve been and everything to do with where we’re going. “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,” he says, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” As the Rev. Martin B. Copenhaver says, this is because “the good old days—even when they were really good—are nothing compared to what God has in store for us. . . . The Christian gospel, though rooted in history, is always forward-leaning.” ² Peter Gomes is blunter still, saying, “You cannot carry the weight of the past into God’s future.” ³

We should not live in the past, and we must be wary of the temptation to live as if we have already arrived, but Paul also tells us to “hold fast to what we have attained.” Don’t forget what you’ve learned, he says, and always remember what God has done in you and for you, even as you trust in the truth that God isn’t finished with you yet.

The challenge, it seems to me, is figuring out what to leave behind and what to hold onto, what to learn from and which things will enable us to move forward into God’s future of healing and wholeness, justice and peace. My hope is that today’s look at our history will inspires us to leave it behind and move forward “with longing hearts toward God’s vision of the [world] to come.” ⁴

Of course, “forgetting what lies behind” is not so easy here in New England, where history is long, historical pride runs deep, and the temptation to embellish is hard to resist. We here at First Church are quick to brag about our connections to Emily Dickinson and her brother, Austin, for example, and we like to note our role in the founding of Amherst College. But when is the last time you heard someone tell a visitor, “And our founding pastor was a slaveholder and diehard supporter of King George who opposed the American Revolution”?

And what does our history say about our church’s faithfulness to the gospel of “extravagant grace and radical inclusion?” ⁵ As the establishment church back in the days when the establishment actually went to church, we often seemed to more accurately reflect the cultural values of the times than challenge them. Seating in the original meeting house was assigned according to “age, estate and qualifications”—wealth, in other words—with women separated from the men. Until 1918, both church finances and church status were based on a system of pew rentals. So entrenched was this custom that seven years later, a church committee voted to “urge the Members to experiment in sitting ‘wherever they may wish.’” ⁶ And, except for its support of Amherst College and foreign missions, much of the church’s first 200 or so years seemed devoted primarily to building up and maintaining itself as an institution—“redecorating” this sanctuary or remodeling or adding on to this building no fewer than seven times between 1898 and 1988.

And yet one cannot deny a clear correlation between increases in the church’s progressive mission focus and decreases in its membership. Did you know that in 1947 First Church had 841 members? In 1959, average Sunday School attendance—219—was a little higher than our total membership today. More important than the numbers, though, is this: Starting in the mid-1950s (about the time our own Thayer Greene was installed as pastor) and on through the late 1980s, First Church was either right in step with local, national and international social justice issues or actually ahead of the curve. By the mid-1960s, the church had voted to commit a full 25 percent of its income to missions.

Since then First Church has taken the gospel outside the church walls and into the world, working for fair housing (under the leadership of Deene Clark), adopting an anti-discrimination policy in church hiring and membership (1963), sending clergy and lay people to march for civil rights and peace, promoting women to lay leadership and clergy positions, and adopting and promoting the use of inclusive language. In addition, the church brought the needs of the world into our buildings, hosting a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, and numerous community groups.

And long before we formally committed ourselves to “every member ministry,” people like Mike DeSherbinen were doing peace work and leading the church’s sponsorship of a Cambodian refugee family and the establishment of the ABC House, while Marla Killough led an educational series that resulted in First Church become one of the first UCC churches in the country to declare itself—by unanimous vote—an Open and Affirming congregation.

Time prevents me from going on, but I should note that these faithful and courageous stands cost the church both members and income. And when the popular culture and the social ferment of the world were reflected in the style and content of worship services, dissension within the church only increased. In 1970 the best that could be said was that the church was “divided, but not generally bitter about the division.” ⁷

From what I can tell here is what “saved” the church in those days: Instead of going back to the “good ole days,” instead of hanging on to the past, it strained forward to what lay ahead; it pressed on for the goal—the mission to which it had been called, the witness for which it had been created, the transformation it had matured into. Writing in the 1968 Annual Report, the Rev. Rob Greene, said, “We must undergo renewal and move forward with the times or be left hopelessly behind. … We can be sure that God is where the action is and that [God] is far out ahead of us. Can we keep pace?” ⁸

For much of the 1970s and ‘80s it seems to me the church did keep pace—or set the pace—in faith-based social activism. In the ‘90s the church deepened its spirituality and created more lively and life-giving worship traditions. And in recent years, we have been blessed by a long, prayerful and deeply committed strategic-planning process. I would like to think that now we are bearing the fruit of that process, setting forth with new energy, refined vision and deepening love for God, our world and one another.

But, as is always true when we are in unfamiliar territory, the temptation to grasp for the past is strong. And so it seems to me the question we face today, and as we prepare for our annual meeting next month, is clear: Will we keep straining forward to what lies ahead? Will we keep pressing on toward the goal? Will we trust God enough and love our neighbor enough to hold fast to what we have attained and press on to something better?

As Peter Gomes says:

… for Paul “straining forward is not only confidence in the future; it is confidence … in the worthiness of the goal that is worth striving for. … [Paul] sees the upward call of Jesus as something that moves him forward toward it, that literally fuels him as he pursues that goal, and this is the point to be savored at the beginning of a new year: that which he seeks is in front of him, not behind him, and not beside him. Jesus remains in front of him to be followed, not to be dragged by him [as] a chain from the past. The only place for faith such as [this], and to which [we all] are invited, is in the future. That is where it is, and that is where it is going, and no other place will do. You will not find God in your mother’s faith or your father’s faith, or your childhood faith, or in yesterday’s faith; you will find God only in the future that awaits you … The living God is the God that goes before [us], and if [we] want that God, then that is where [we] have to be and go.” ⁹

Let us go there together. Let us go there in trust and in joy, holding on to one another in love and putting our hands into the hand of the God who is love.

Amen.

---

It was written first in 1989 and revised a bit in 2009.
Tune: Battle Hymn of the Republic
Words: Sabra MacLeod & Gale McClung

Twas two hundred seventy years ago
That Hadley farmers came
To an eastern territory
That did not yet have a name.
From a precinct it became a church,
Then Amherst, town of fame.
They all went marching on.

Chorus:
What a joyful congregation,
Gathered here in celebration.
Let us sing in jubilation
As we go marching on!

They fought the Revolution --
On the wrong side we have heard.
So the Patriots seceded
And a major split occurred.
Then they worked to found a college
That would help to spread God's word,
And they went marching on.
(Repeat chorus.)

Through the centuries of progress
Other meeting houses rose.
Last of all the granite structure
That our congregation knows.
Renovated for tomorrow
As our congregation grows.
Now we go marching on.
(Repeat chorus.)

Though our walls are made of granite
Faith cannot be cast in stone.
Peace and justice, Christian love we seek, To make more widely known.
In our care and understanding
By the grace of God we've grown,
And we go marching on.
(Repeat chorus.)

As we honor past and present
We can look ahead and say
There's a new sense of commitment
That will guide us on our way.
May God's glory shine upon us
As we celebrate today,
And we go marching on.
(Repeat chorus.)