Land Acknowledgement: Second Unitarian resides on the traditional homelands of the Three Fires Confederacy: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. This region has long been a center for Indigenous people to gather, trade, and maintain kinship ties. Today, one of the largest urban American Indian communities in the United States resides in Chicago. We acknowledge that settler colonialism is not just an event of the past but an ongoing reality that we commit to learn about and challenge. For more information, visit the American Indian Center of Chicago.
While Unitarian Universalism is a congregation-based denomination, the history of 2U is closely linked with its ministers.
The church was founded as Unity Church in 1857, with Robert Collyer as its first minister. In his youth, Rev. Collyer was apprenticed to a blacksmith; his anvil remains a prominent feature of today’s 2U sanctuary. Rev. Collyer was a powerful speaker who drew large crowds. When the congregation built a church at the corner of Dearborn and Walton, they instructed the architect to make it larger—by at least a foot—than any other church in Chicago. That building was dedicated in 1869 and destroyed two years later by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It was rebuilt in 1873. After Collyer left in 1879, taking his charisma with him, the congregation struggled. By 1900, it was forced to sell the building.
Led by Rev. Fred Hawley, the congregation moved to the Lakeview neighborhood, where its present building at 656 W. Barry was erected in 1906. Rev. Hawley was remembered as good-natured, idealistic, and eloquent, with a “wonderful philosophy of life.” After serving the congregation for twenty-three years, Rev. Hawley was killed when he was hit by a truck. The next minister, Rev. George Allison, left the church when he decided that selling vacuum cleaners was more alluring than ministry.
Rev. John Heyworth arrived at Unity Church in 1931. During World War II, he and his wife moved into the loft, where they stayed while the congregation and building deteriorated around them. Finally, in 1965, two faculty members from Meadville Lombard Theological School, Ron Engle and Neil Shadle, began an effort to revive the church. They recruited Lyda Palmer, who had independently organized a group called the Near North Fellowship. With that group and the remnants of Unity’s congregation, Ms. Palmer gathered twenty people, including Esther and Seymour Fleishman, to be core members of the reborn church. The group revised the by-laws and changed the name from Unity to Second Unitarian Church.
When Rev. Bart Gould, the “hippie minister,” arrived at Second Unitarian Church in 1971, Rev. Heyworth was still a legendary figure and the congregation was very small. By the time Rev. Gould left in 1984, it had grown into a robust congregation of two hundred members.
Rev. Charlie Kast was 2U’s first openly gay minister, which drew local news teams to the church on Pride Sunday. Under Rev. Kast, the church flourished enough to undertake a major overhaul of the building—raising the sanctuary floor to create classroom and office space and reversing the direction of the sanctuary.
Rev. Lynn Ungar, 2U’s first female minister, arrived in 1996, bringing with her the gift of poetry. Rev. Jennifer O’Quill served 2U from 2002 to 2009. Rev. O’Quill’s tenure was turbulent; Rev. Adam Robersmith nurtured 2U through its aftermath. Rev. Robersmith moved on in 2017, and 2U’s current minister, Rev. Jason Lydon, was called by the congregation in 2019.
Many people beyond the ministers have contributed their gifts, talents, and hearts to the life of Second Unitarian Church. Some of their names can be found in various nooks and crannies around the church; others are unknown. But the story of the church is ultimately the story of people coming together with vision and hope, building a legacy for generations to come.