Allison Leaver’s memories of her Southern Baptist church were all positive. The family’s social life revolved around church dinners, church services, summer camp, and social service projects. She remembers her youth group fondly as a place where kids could both have fun and make the world better in small ways. At college, she began to…
Sean Randol grew up in Kansas City, Missouri attending Roman Catholic Mass weekly with his family. Despite the strict sense of duty in the air, he described his family as joyful. Yes, there was his “hippy” high school teacher talking about world religions, but things would only change when he left home for a small,…
A lot of understanding Bev Abreu is understanding her upbringing. There was the spiritual space of her home Catholic church, a small 18-century chapel that felt a world apart, and emanated a sense of timelessness and sacred history. This laid the foundation for a spiritual quest that translated into a love of Buddhism and involvement…
If it were not for hormones, Ken Iobst might never have found Unitarian Universalism. The Moravian boy from Pennsylvania was in Hampton Roads, Virginia, in 1967 on a work study program, and he and his fellow student were having difficulty meeting anyone to date. His friend suggested going to the UU fellowship. On stage, he…
You might have seen Sean in church in the front row with his wife, Rosanne, and their two energetic children, Persephone and Castor. You might also remember that easy, incandescent smile just from the enjoyment of conversation. Well, you’d know some thing about Sean, but there is so much more. Sean grew up in the…
Natasha Barden came to the United States from Ukraine with her family in 1989 and settled in New York City. She attended NYC public schools through high school and then went on to college in upstate New York eventually settling in Silver Spring with her former husband. A coworker at GAO spoke glowingly of her Virginia UU church and how there was a time…
Jimmy Schreiber and Marcia Joiner met and became friends in a Young Religious Unitarian Universalist group when they were 16 and 14, respectively. They went off to separate colleges but became a couple living for a time in a DC hippie commune with future UUCSS member Carolyn Kirk Dutcher. Later, they bought a house in…
Sydney Alexander grew up in UUCSS. Or at least from age five on. Her family started out in the Lutheran Church but her parents were seeking a more humanistic spiritual philosophy. Sydney noticed that at UUCSS children were welcome in the sanctuary and the overall tone was more open and welcoming. During middle school, she…
Corita Waters grew up in Greenbelt, Md. on the same road that she, her wife Andrea, and children currently live on. Her parents were very active members of the Lutheran church on the University of Maryland campus and Corita remembers going to church multiple times per week. She was an acolyte and sang in the…
Jim Street grew up near Four Corners and never moved away, going to school at the University of Maryland and then becoming a teacher in the area. He did not set out to teach, but in his third year at UMd teaching seemed like a reasonable thing to do as he saw a way of…