singer of life: rev. dr. vincent silliman rev. dr. richard speck · 2019. 4. 21. · singer of...

Singer of Life: Rev. Dr. Vincent Silliman Rev. Dr. Richard Speck

March 31, 2019 (0PENING QUOTE PUT ON CHANCEL SCREENS)

“Always religion unites the individual with that which is greater than the self; always the truest selfhood is attained in self‐forgetting; always personal religion is a reaching out.”

Vincent Silliman

I want to start by thanking Rev. Scott Alexander for inviting me back to preach in this pulpit. The last time I was here was to preach the installation sermon for Scott. I see that it took. I’m also grateful to Scott for his gracious hospitality while Janet Tillman, my wife, and I have been here. It has been joyous to see old friends and make new ones. I last served as minister of this congregation in 2000 when I was called to become the District Executive of the Joseph Priestley District. (QUOTE COMES DOWN AND IS REPLACED BY PICTURE OF VINCENT SILLIMAN 1950S)

This congregation granted me a sabbatical in 1998 and it was then that I began the adventure of discovering the life and ministry of Vincent Brown Silliman. I had encountered his collected papers in the archives of Meadville Lombard Theological School when I was the part time archivist after graduating with my doctorate in ministry in 1990. His widow had donated twenty two boxes of sermons, journals, and various other writings from his life and career and I had the joy of cataloging and sorting them.

This aroused my curiosity about a man I only knew through the blue hymnal called Hymns for the Celebration of Life. I learned enough about him that I thought I’d like to go deeper. But my ministry called me here to Vero Beach. And as a solo minister of a small congregation, there was too much to do to think about Vincent. I had to wait until that sabbatical to really get to know him.

Here is what I discovered about Vincent and why I was grateful to tell his story. Vincent was born in 1894 and grew up in Hudson, WI, the only child of his father and second wife. He had several older half‐brothers and one half‐sister from his father’s first marriage. He grew up Baptist and his mother played the organ in church. From an early age Vincent was exposed to music and learned to play the piano.

Singer of Life: Rev. Dr. Vincent Silliman Rev. Dr. Richard Speck March 31, 2019

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After graduating from high school his oldest step‐brother financed his college degree at the University of Minnesota but was very strict in the amount of funds Vincent had. His father was a retired country doctor with no savings to help out. Vincent scraped by with odd jobs and patching his clothes and getting hand‐me‐downs from his family.

During college Vincent became a Unitarian in 1914. Before he even finished his college degree, he decided he wanted to become a Unitarian minister. He convinced the president of the Meadville Theological School in Meadville, PA, to advance him the money to begin his studies there in 1915.

(SILLIMAN COMES DOWN AND IS REPLACED BY PICTURE OF MEADVILLE)

But after two years of coursework, Vincent felt that he had to provide for his mother

since she had a paralytic stroke that year. So, he applied and was called to the St. Cloud, MN, Unitarian church in 1917 and ordained to the Unitarian ministry. He lasted only one year and felt a failure. He joined the army that summer and was training for the war in Europe when the armistice was declared. He missed being considered a veteran by just a few weeks. His father died in 1919 when Vincent was 24.

He continued his theological work off and on for the next several years while working at various jobs. He assumed the care for his mother. He served the Iowa City Unitarian church for 1919 and placed his mother in the state hospital there where she could receive better care than he could give. She died in 1921 when he was only 26 years old.

His first solid ministry was as assistant minister at the First Unitarian Church, Brooklyn, NY starting in 1921 with Rev. John Howland Lathrop. Vincent was in charge of the Willow Place Chapel, the mission church for the immigrant community near First Unitarian. He worked with parents and children there for three years.

(MEADVILLE PICTURE COMES DOWN AND PICTURE OF VINCENT 1924 IS PUT UP)


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During this time Vincent continued to finish his education. He took fourteen years to complete his BA from the University of Minnesota and ten years to earn his degree from Meadville. He graduate from both in 1925. He moved as assistant minister of the First Unitarian Congregational Society of Buffalo in 1924 for two years before being called to the First Parish, Portland Maine in 1926. He served this congregation for twelve years.

(VINCENT 1924 PICTURE COMES DOWN AND REPLACED BY VINCENT 1931)

It was here that Vincent’s role in hymnody came to be known. In 1934 the American Unitarian association was trying to produce a hymn and service book for use in church schools. The first attempt in the prior two years had resulted in a poor manuscript. Vincent was asked to take over and eventually became chair of a small committee that advised him. He did the work spending summers and every available minute crafting the contents. He was consumed by this project for the next two years writing letters to other members of the committee, sifting through numerous hymnals for appropriate tunes, adapting words from poets to new tunes, and corresponding with holders of copyrights for permission to use the material in the new hymnal. He was intentional about including material from more humanistic sources. This was the first hymnal to include humanist hymns and readings. It was published in 1936 and widely adopted by Unitarian congregations.


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(SILLIMAN 1931 COMES DOWN AND PICTURE OF BEACON SONG AND SERVICE HYMNAL PUT UP)

The hymnal work took its toll on Vincent’s ministry. People had suffered through the

depression, the church membership was down, and Vincent’s salary had been reduced severely. He had grown more liberal in a conservative church. Many of the members were dissatisfied with Vincent’s ministry. He resigned in 1937 but the congregation voted to ask him to stay. This lasted just one more year when he resigned again in 1938 and no one objected.

While in Portland, Vincent befriended a young Methodist minister from Wales who was serving a church in Portland in 1929. This young man was Arthur Powell Davies who became an influential Unitarian minister in Washington, DC just a decade later. They were life‐long friends along with their wives.

Vincent met the love of his life, Elizabeth Pettengill, that same year and married her in October. Their marriage would last forty two years until his death. In doing my research, I was privileged to know Elizabeth until her death in 2001 at 97 years of age. She provided me the connections to understand this ministry and this man.

In 1938 with no church, Vincent and Elizabeth were offered the opportunity to go as representatives of the Unitarian Service Committee to work with war refugees in Czechoslovakia. Vincent and Elizabeth turned it down because they feared that he would not find another church quickly if he went and they had no financial reserves to fall back on. “We feel enormously honored in that the committee placed sufficient confidence in us to ask us to go to Czechoslovakia, though we have had plenty of doubts as to our capacity to measure up to so indefinite an opportunity for service.” The mission went to Waitsill and Martha Sharp who went on to glory in Unitarian Universalist history. Vincent explained to Fred Eliot, president of the AUA, why he turned down the Czechoslovakia opportunity. “The consideration that brought us to our decision was our terror at the thought of coming back to America jobless after a harrowing experience in Europe. . . It did not seem to us to make sense to go to Europe to help the afflicted and then come back to America to join the army of the unemployed ourselves.”


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The Hollis Unitarian Church called Vincent in 1939 and he served there for fifteen years through World War II and beyond until 1953. Elizabeth took on the religious education director role while Vincent served as minister. They struggled throughout that time as he served faithfully.

(REPLACE BEACON SONG BOOK WITH PICTURE OF HOLLIS CHURCH)

During his Hollis ministry, Vincent continued to collect and modify hymn tunes and lyrics for the church. He used the congregation as a test site for new hymns and readings. He submitted material that was included in the Unitarian Fellowship Hymn and Service Book published by Beacon Press in 1949. Some of this material would show up in a later hymnal that he would create. He had been approached by the American Ethical Union to create a hymnal for them. He began working on this in the early 1950s.

Vincent was asked to create a service of recognition for new ministers and those who had died at the May Meetings of the AUA in 1948. It was well received and he was asked to do it again in the following year. He titled this ceremony as the Service of the Living Tradition and this has become one of the most meaningful events that occur at our present General Assemblies. It has now been celebrated for seventy years to honor new ministers, ministers receiving full fellowship, those retiring, and those who have died. It now also recognizes religious educators and musicians.

(REPLACE HOLLIS CHURCH WITH PICTURE OF SERVICE OF LIVING TRADITION)


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Life as a parish minister in the first two thirds of the 20th century usually meant toiling in poor paying, relatively small congregations. The Hollis church paid him $1,800 a year for six year straight. Vincent and Elizabeth survived on only his salary since she worked with him as an unpaid director of religious education. They never had much money for trips or special events. During World War II, Vincent worked as a carpenter in a Maine shipyard in the summers for extra pay. During this era, most Unitarian churches closed after May and resumed after Labor Day. During the summer, the minister wasn’t paid.

Vincent and Elizabeth left Hollis, NY for the Beverly Unitarian Church in Chicago in 1954. He would serve here until 1963. During this ministry Vincent created and published the hymnal, We Sing of Life, in 1955. He worked with Irving Lowens, an air traffic controller and musician from the Washington area who didn’t belong to any church or synagogue. They created a hymnal that was wildly successful within Unitarian, Universalist, and Ethical Culture societies. For this work Vincent and Irving were paid the princely sum of $500 split between them.

(REPLACE SERVICE OF LIVING TRADITION WITH PICTURE OF WE SING OF LIFE)

Vincent had a pantheist understanding that “Either God is in and through all that we know and think, or there is no God worth mentioning. God is a name which represents experience of heart and mind, and faiths based on it. If this is so you are naming God when you put this experience into words. God does not cease to be — or to be recognized — because on any occasion some one of his names is not used. To know God you must share the experience: This is the important matter.” He was humanist as well and this quote expresses his theology of personal experience as a foundation of religion.

While serving the Beverly church, Vincent was asked to be on a new hymnbook commission to produce a hymnal for the joint merger of Unitarians and Universalists. He took on this labor with his usual thoroughness. They would meet for two weeks in the summer and work from 8 in the morning until 10 at night. Then Vincent would continue throughout the year


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with letters and phone calls to a wide variety of people for copyright permissions, solicitations of new material, and arguing with other members over particular choices of tunes and lyrics.

After working on this project for eight years, the new hymnal was finished. It was called “Hymns for the Celebration of Life” and published in 1964.

(REPLACE WE SING OF LIFE WITH PICTURE OF HYMNS FOR THE CELEBRATION OF LIFE)

The vast majority of the work was done by Vincent. In his collected papers are mockups

of this hymnal with all sorts of notations in his handwriting. The hymnal was wildly successful and went into a second printing almost immediately. It was used for thirty years before being supplanted by the grey hymnal which most Unitarian Universalist churches use today.

Vincent left the Beverly church in 1963 and was called to the First Universalist Church of Yarmouth, Maine. He was 69 years old and had no savings for retirement. He was receiving a modest amount in Social Security and support from the UUA. Elizabeth was ten years younger and not qualifying for benefits. They had to keep working just to survive.

Even in his later years, Vincent continued to produce liturgical material for ministers and congregations such as a Handbook of Special Services, The Celebration of Marriage, and A Selection of Services for Special Occasions. I have used each of these publications in my ministry and continue to seek wisdom from them. He would continue serving this congregation until December, 1978 when he resigned due to old age. He had a serious infection and contracted pneumonia. After four weeks in the hospital, Vincent died on February 1, 1979. He was almost 84 years old.

(REPLACE HYMNS FOR CELEBRATION WITH PICTURE OF VINCENT 1970S)


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Vincent Silliman was a man who lived through three fourths of the Twentieth Century.

He was an active liberal minister for sixty‐two years. He served eight different Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist churches with most of them never being very large or well known. He toiled in relative obscurity and never had a huge salary. His wife worked side by side as a religious educator for forty years. Yet, Vincent had a profound effect upon Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist liturgy and hymnody that continues to be felt in the first quarter of the Twenty‐first Century.

From his pen came responsive readings, children’s festivals, hymn tunes, speaking choruses, services for special occasions, and thousands of sermons which were appreciated by the members of the congregations that he served.

He was an early proponent of audio‐visual aids in religious education. He understood the melding of church architecture with the form and function of worship. He knew the importance of creating a deeply moving liturgy that touched the modern era of the liberalism of his time. He understood worship as a profoundly corporate act that needed an overarching thematic presence in order to move the participants at a deeply religious level.

In sum, Vincent Brown Silliman helped shape and change Unitarian Universalism in profound ways. When we conduct the Service of the Living Tradition, there is Vincent. When we sing from our more current hymnals, there is Vincent. When Rev. Scott and I attend meetings of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, there is Vincent.

I, for one, am grateful that Vincent Silliman was a Unitarian Universalist minister who poured his heart and soul into this faith. We are all richer for his having lived among us. May his legacy live on every time we sing one of his hymns. Amen.

singer of life: rev. dr. vincent silliman rev. dr. richard speck · 2019. 4. 21. · singer of...

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