The Story of Our Church
First Universalist Church of Minneapolis is a church founded by people who brought their brand of liberal Christianity to the frontier town that was Minneapolis in 1859. Many of the early leaders of the city were members of this congregation.
Names like Washburn, Pillsbury, Lowry, Crosby, Loring, King and Morrison. They were not only founders of the Minneapolis flour and lumber industries; they helped found many of Minneapolis’ institutions, from Lakewood Cemetery to the parks and library system, the city’s early transportation system, the Washburn Orphan Home, Unity House, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and General Mills. They found inspiration in the sermons of the Reverends Keyes, Tuttle and Shutter as they fueled the progressive ground-building programs that put Minneapolis on the map.
First Universalist is a church whose ministers debated both sides of the evolution question, founded the first settlement house in the city of Minneapolis and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a congregation that went from being a downtown church in the 1880s with a sanctuary that held 1,000 people, to a congregation of 40 that met in a house during the 1940s, to a congregation that in the 1990s moved to a building with a sanctuary that held 900. It is a congregation that believes in “the supreme worth of every personality,” and that “love is the doctrine of this church.”
Click on these links to get the deeper story:
The Early Years: 1859-1891 (Reverends Keyes and Tuttle in Downtown Minneapolis)
Beginning in rental halls only 16 years after Europeans in Minneapolis first built a house, a small group met at the Cataract House on the corner of what is now Washington and Portland Avenues in downtown Minneapolis to create the First Universalist Society of Minneapolis on October 24, 1859. Rev. Joseph Willard Keyes was the first settled minister. Minneapolis was a new frontier town in a one-year-old state. In 1866, under the leadership of the church’s second settled minister, Rev. James Harvey Tuttle, the first building was built at 5th Street and 4th Avenue South where the Hennepin County Government ramp now stands. Continue reading…
Additional reading: Editorial bemoaning fraternization with Universalists (1859)
The Middle Years: 1891-1963, (Reverends Shutter and Olson, Decline and Revival)
Dr. Marion Daniel Shutter, Tuttle’s assistant and understudy, replaced Tuttle at the Church of the Redeemer. Continue reading…
Additional reading:
Shutter sermon: The Increasing Purpose
Shutter sermon: Progressive Changes in Universalist Thought
Shutter sermon excerpts
Olson sermon excerpts
The Equal Rights Years: 1963-1986, Cummins, from Selma to Sanctuary
Cummins sermon: The Truth About Universalism
Cummins sermon excerpts
1972 Cummins sermon, “Ten Years in a Free Pulpit” (also available as a reading on the February 12, 2012 podcast)
The Contemporary Years: 1986-2009, Sweetser/Milnor and Rivas, social justice and reflection
Rev. Justin Schroeder, Senior (and Co-Senior) Minister 2009–2021
Rev. Kate Tucker, Associate Minister 1997-2012
Our Legacy in Religious Education
These history compilations provided from work done by John Addington, Carol Jackson, Larry LaVercombe, Mikki Morrissette, and Jessica Wicks.