Notable Events
The day after John Brown was executed his body was greeted by William Henry Furness in Philadelphia for a private vigil before heading to North Elba, New York where Brown is buried.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was a seminary student in nearby Chester, he attended a lecture about how Mohandas K. Gandhi integrated Henry David Thoreau's theory of non-violent civil disobedience that inspired King's non-violent protests for civil rights. This lecture is reputed to have taken place at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia.
In April 2006, the church officially became a Welcoming Congregation to the Bisexual, Transgender, Lesbian, and Gay community. In 2007, Nathan C. Walker became the first openly gay minister to be called to the serve the church.
In July 2006, executives from Monsanto visited the church to discuss the adoption of a code of ethics for the field of biotechnology, a sort of Hippocratic oath, akin to a doctor's pledge to 'do no harm.'
In December 2011, Palgrave Macmillan published "Whose God Rules?: Is the United States a Secular Nation or a Theolegal Democracy?", co-edited by Reverend Nathan C. Walker and congregational President Edwin J. Greenlee. The foreword was by former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair with additional contributions by Alan Dershowitz, Katie Ford, Robert P. George, Kent Greenawalt, Joseph K. Grieboski, Ted G. Jelen, Martha C. Nussbaum, Mark Rozell, William F. Schultz, and other scholars. The book was endorsed by Cornel West, the late Forrest Church, and Leslie Griffin.
Read more about this topic: First Unitarian Church Of Philadelphia
Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or events:
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)