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A LONG LITANY OF THANKSGIVING, CONFESSION,
AND CELEBRATION
THANKSGIVING
1 Now in this hour of recollection, we give thanks
for the river of faith whose flow has brought us to this day.
Women For the patriarchs of legend, Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob;
Men For the matriarchs of endurance, Sarah and Hagar,
Rebekah, Leah and Rachel;
2 For the prophets, for those who cast judgment
on Godless injustice, and those who shared visions of God-conscious
community;
People For the psalmists, and all who've made music
and song to give voice to our mourning, our longing, our aspiration and
our faith;
1 For proverbs and preachers and story-tellers and
all conveyers of wisdom from generation to generation;
2 For all the drama and passion, the wisdom and
poetry of the Hebrew scriptures, and for their dialogue with the Divine;
People We give thanks.
1 For the One who walked among us, interrupting
history by giving word and flesh to holy love;
People For the angels who said, "Do not be afraid;"
2 For the mustard seed church, disciples and apostles,
male and female, Jew and gentile, slave and free;
People We give thanks.
1 For the church which took root, and shook the
earth;
2 For theological Mothers and Fathers;
People For monastic preservers of learning;
2 For Reformers and martyrs;
People For mystics and missionaries;
2 For all who ran the race that was set before them,
all the saints of God;
People We give thanks.
1 For our small but beautiful branch of the church,
the Congregational Way;
2 Born of the recovered concept of faith commitment
not coerced, but freely given,
1 Of personal response to the leading of the
Spirit,
2 Of chosen covenant as the tie that binds us in
the community of the gathered church;
Left For Pilgrim saints and Puritan magistrates;
2 For Revolutionary heroes and social reformers;
Right For college founders and frontier preachers;
1 For that egalitarian nerve in Congregationalism
which first gave women colleges of their own, voice in the church, and
voice in the pulpit;
2 For that liberating nerve which fueled the Abolition
Movement and the drive to educate those freed from slavery;
1 For that evangelizing nerve which carried a compassionate
Gospel across the seas and across the continent to these western shores,
to California;
People For this our goodly heritage, the sweet flowering
of our branch of the Vine, We give thanks.
CONFESSION
1 Yet we confess and own the shadow side of that
heritage in this province and this state:
Men Militarism and territorial aggression and vigilante
"justice;"
2 Exploitation;
Women Contempt for indigenous Americans, and arrogance
toward Mexican culture and people;
1 Homophobia;
People Sexism, classism and denial;
2 Greater pursuit of personal profit than of the
common good;
People The plunder and pollution of this majestic
portion of the Earth.
1 In these expressions of evil, that Congregational
pioneers in California had hand,
2 And from the advantages thereby gained,
that we have benefited,
People We do confess.
CELEBRATION
1 But we lift our eyes beyond such human failings
to all that Providence has blessed for good in the story of our people
in this place.
2 In 1846, William Colton, a Congregational minister,
was appointed the first United States governor of the Province of California,
serving until 1848.
People We celebrate the influence of Congregationalism,
its spirit of participatory government and its members elected and appointed
to serve the people, on the forms and history of the governance of
this State.
1 In 1848, Joseph Augustine Benton, soon to found
the first Protestant church in Sacramento, preached in Sutter's Fort.
In the congregation were future industrialists Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford,
and C.P.Huntington.
People We celebrate the influence of Congregationalism,
its spirit of optimism and its encouragement of individual excellence,
on the industrial and commercial development of California, and on an ethic
of public philanthropy.
2 That same year, Timothy Dwight Hunt arrived in
San Francisco from Hawaii to serve as chaplain to the American community
and provide the first Protestant worship. When in 1849, agents of
other denominations organized separate churches, Hunt gathered the First
Congregational Church. From eight charter members, the church grew
to be for many decades the premier pulpit in the city, and to endure as
a caring community.
People We celebrate the influence of Congregationalism
and of this Church, on the lives of all who have worshipped within its
walls and been nurtured by its ministry, and on the lives of all who have
been touched by its daughter churches
across the state.
1 In 1855, four Congregational ministers, Joseph
Benton, Samuel Hopkins, Henry Durant and Benjamin Willey, founded the College
of California, with Durant as first president. Under Willey's presidency,
the College became the University of California and relocated from Oakland
to Berkeley.
People We celebrate the influence of Congregationalism,
with its tradition of learning, and its insistence on God's gift of reason
in the life of faith, on the development of education in the common life
of the people of this state.
2 In 1866, the ministers who founded the University
of California established the Congregational Seminary of the Pacific, the
first theological school west of the Mississippi. In time, the seminary
became interdenominational, changing its name to the
Pacific School of Religion, expressing not only its openness to ecumenical
Christianity, but to the spiritual richness of all peoples of the Pacific
Rim.
People We celebrate the ecumenical and interfaith
spirit of Congregationalism, and pray we may sustain that spirit in the
United Church of Christ.
1 In 1873, Congregational mission work began among
the Chinese community in San Francisco, and in 1904, the Chinese Congregational
Church was organized, followed by churches in Oakland and Berkeley.
Similar work produced Japanese-American churches, and for a time, Finnish,
Swedish, Norwegian, Italian and Spanish speaking Congregational churches
in Northern California.
2 Congregational mission work in Armenia led to
the formation of numerous Armenian Congregational Churches as Armenians
fled the terrors of the Ottoman Empire in their homeland and settled in
California.
1 And German-speaking people, expelled from their
homes in the Volga River Valley to which they had migrated at the invitation
of the Russian Czarina 200 years before, found a spiritual kinship in Congregationalism
and organized churches as they settled in and around Fresno.
2 In more recent years, Samoan Islanders,
touched by the work of English and American Congregational missionaries,
have gathered new churches the length of the state.
1 Today, new church starts are underway for
Korean-speaking and Filipino-American communities.
2 And we are enriched by the racial inclusiveness
of older congregations in transitional neighborhoods, and new congregations
built around themes of healing and liberation.
People We celebrate the wonderful diversity and
the spirit-enhancing variety of the people who walk with us in the Congregational
Way, and in the Nevada-Northern California Conference of the United Church
of Christ.
1 When in 1972, the Golden Gate Association approved
William Johnson for the ministry, it authorized the first ordination of
an openly gay person by any major American denomination, and redefined
the debate over human sexuality in the Christian world.
People We celebrate the progressive impulse in the
Congregational experience, helping to move society forward in expanding
the boundaries of human possibility and fulfillment.
2 And throughout these 150 years, woven among these
bright threads of great moment and rich diversity, we trace the steady
threads of daily mission and service, innovation and compassion;
Women Of dock-side mission and Night Ministry, of
hospital chaplaincy and AIDS Ministry;
Men Of Sunday schools and sewing circles, of rummage
sales and street evangelism, of men's groups and child-care givers;
People Of choir members and board members, of church
treasurers, and custodians and secretaries;
1 Of all the tasks by which this gathered people
has sought to serve and to build up the body of the Church,
People The Body of Christ;
2 By whom we are called,
1 In whom we are invited to be pilgrims;
All To be pilgrims,
2 And pioneers,
All And pioneers,
1 And people of faithful purpose,
All And people of faithful purpose, in this new
day, in the century before us, and in the life of God, which has no end. Amen.
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FIRST
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
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