First Universalist Church of Rochester

About Us We are a mid-sized Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation of 147 members and many friends. Our church is at 150 South Clinton Avenue in Rochester, New York (map).

Our mission is to nurture the spirit and serve the community. We have programs for children, youth and adults. Child care is provided for adult programs upon request.

While we have no creed that all members must adopt as their own belief in order to belong to our church, we do have some commonly held views, including our 7 principles and 6 sources of spirituality, which are always subject to debate and change by a vote of the entire membership.

The 8-and-a-half minute YouTube video at left is titled "Unitarian Universalism: You're a Uni-What?" It covers some common misconceptions about our religion. (If you do not see a video box, you'll need to allow blocked or ActiveX content in order to see the video; we are not trying to access your computer.)

Both the Universalist and Unitarian religions are based in Christian tradition, with Unitarianism getting its start in the Reformation era and Universalism in early Christianity.

In 1961, the Unitarians and the Universalists decided they were more alike than different and voted to merge, forming the Unitarian Universalist religion. We now hold that Jesus was an important teacher but not God.

We govern ourselves by congregational polity, which means the members of First Universalist of Rochester vote on such things as staff hiring, budgets, mission statements and who represents us. We have a volunteer Board of Trustees who establishes long term goals, develops budget and policy and works with our minister and with our Ministries to keep our organization running.

First Universalist Church of Rochester is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (familiarly known as the UUA), a national organization which provides guidance and community to UU churches in the USA, but does not tell us what to do. Pictured at left is the logo of the UUA, a flaming chalice. A congregation may use this logo as their own or create their own.

First Universalist of Rochester's history started in 1819. Our church, designed by renowned architect Claude Bragdon in 1907, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, honoring our rich architectural history. We celebrated our building's centennial in 2007.