Loyal to the Truth: Rev. Egbert Ethelred Brown on Why He Became a Unitarian Minister

Editor’s Note: Honoring 200 Years of the American Unitarian Association

May 26, 2025, marks the 200th anniversary of the chartering of the American Unitarian Association, which played a key role in social justice movements, including abolition and women’s rights.

Theologically, the AUA was distinct from other Christian denominations for its unitarian—rather than trinitarian — understanding of God. And those who worked and worshipped as part of the AUA are the spiritual ancestors of Unitarian Universalists.

As we celebrate this milestone, we honor the AUA’s legacy of liberal faith and progressive values that live on through the Unitarian Universalist Association and in UU congregations. This book excerpt reflects that history and reminds us of the continued relevance of the struggle for collective liberation. 

Egbert Ethelred Brown (1875–1956) founded the Harlem Unitarian Church in 1920 and served it until his death in 1956. Born and raised in Jamaica, he was employed as an accountant until, following a mid-life crisis, he felt called to the Unitarian ministry. In 1912, after two years of preparation at Meadville Theological School he returned to Jamaica, but when the American Unitarian Association withdrew support for the mission he began anew in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Among the church’s founding members were prominent black Marxists and Socialists. In Harlem he served as chaplain for the African Blood Brotherhood, chair of the Jamaican Benevolent Association, president of the Jamaican Progressive League and vice president of the Federation of Jamaican Organizations. Notwithstanding, his relationship to the AUA was contentious from the beginning. AUA officials discouraged him from attending Meadville, then in 1929 withdrew his fellowship, refusing to reinstate it in 1931 when petitioned by a group, only to reverse course in 1935 under threat of a lawsuit. In 1939 his colleague in Brooklyn, John H. Lathrop, said “[He] carries the Unitarian flag with wide reaching influence … [and] would be easily worth supporting if he had no Sunday night of his own.”

—Mark D. Morrison-Reed

It has been truly stated that what we have been makes us what we are.

* * *

But why did I ultimately [choose] to be a Unitarian minister? I have to go back once more to the long ago. There were two characteristics I had from childhood. I do not refer to them on account of boastfulness at all. In fact they are inherited traits for which I am thankful. I was an inquisitive youngster and also a truthful boy. I liked to ask questions. Some of you have heard me tell how I question my teacher in Scripture class one day when the lesson was the fall of Jericho. You remember the story.

For six days the Israelites walked around Jericho each day and then on the seventh day they walked around seven times concluding the seventh round with a terrible shout—and then the walls fell flat. My innocent question was—Why was so much time wasted, why was not the wall shouted down on the first day?

* * *

Some of you have heard me tell how as a young man I left the Parish Church on Easter Sunday dissatisfied with the arithmetic of the Athanasian Creed, and how on that very day by a strange coincidence I was introduced to Unitarian literature which changed my whole theological attitude for all time. True there was an interim of 14 years when as organist of a Wesleyan Methodist Church I forgot all about theology in the practical services which I rendered in the words of Father Hall as a Minister of Music.

Then came 1907—the year of decision. Without tiring you with details which are not really relevant to our topic let me say that on a certain day in 1907 I received two letters from America,—the one from the Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church practically accepting me as a candidate for the ministry of that church, the other from the President of the Meadville Theological School, accepting as a student in the school, but frankly informing me that there was no colored Unitarian churches in America, and that as at that time no white church in America was likely to accept a colored man as its minister, the school could hold out no prospect of assignment after my graduation. Both letters were replies to letters of mine. I wrote the application to the A.M.E. Bishop on the serious suggestion of the local minister in charge of the A.M.E. mission just started in Jamaica. I had no sooner posted the letter than all the old doubts and rejections of orthodoxy teachings faced me as well as the acceptable doctrines of Unitarian to which I was introduced when I severed my connection with the Episcopal Church. I did not know anything of the Unitarian set-up here; in fact I was not sure if there were any so I took a chance and wrote the very next day after posting my application to the Bishop, a letter addressed to any Unitarian minister in New York. It had last the Secretary of the Fellowship Committee who referred it to the President of the Meadville Theological School. And so on one day I got two replies. In the one case I could start almost at once well as soon after ordination could be arranged to be a minister of the A.M.E. Church, in the other course I had to take a special course of two years at Meadville with the understanding that nothing may happen at the end of the course.

As you imagine it was a serious hour in my life—a vital decision hung in the balance. I decided to face the situation alone. It was a fierce but a short struggle. I said to myself,—“Brown you need not be a minister at all, but if you do decide to enter the ministry, then you must enter the church wherein you can be absolutely honest—honest with your people and honest with yourself.”

The same week I wrote the Bishop withdrawing my application, and I wrote the President of the Meadville Theological School, definitely asking to be booked as a special student to enter the school in the fall of 1908. And that is how and why I am a Unitarian instead of a Methodist minister.

* * *

Why then am I a Unitarian minister. Because I could not be enchained by the creeds and traditions of the orthodox churches which I had long since intellectually and ethically outgrown. I wished freedom—freedom to be my own self—to express my self as myself and I believed then as I believe now that a minister of religion must first of all be absolutely loyal to Truth. And no other church grants its minister that freedom but the Unitarian Church. We alone of all churches have in the truest sense a free pulpit in a free church. I am a Unitarian minister because I believe in sharing with my people new truths as I discover them for myself. Orthodox churches claim that all truths—at least all necessary truths—have already been proclaimed. Unitarian churches on the other hand are dedicated to the progressive transformation and enrichment of individual and social life through religion, in accordance with advancing knowledge and the growing vision of mankind.

It is something of inestimable value to be a free minister in a free pulpit in a free church of free men, presenting and interpreting religion not according to exploded and discredited theories but in accordance with advancing knowledge and the growing vision of mankind.

I am a happy man—free and untrammelled—not tempted to adopt subterfuges and tricky arguments but provoked by the set-up and environment and demands of my church to be honest.

Source: Egbert Ethelred Brown, “Why I Am What I Am,” Egbert Ethelred Brown papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

Excerpted with permission from A Documentary History of Unitarian Universalism Volume 2: From 1900 to the Present, edited by Dan McKanan (2017, Skinner House)