1921
-Fritchman as a student at Wharton School
of Finance, University of Pennsylvania
Stephen Hole Fritchman was born in Cleveland, Ohio
on May 12, 1902 to Quaker parents of German-English
descent: Addison and Esther (Hole) Fritchman. In his
childhood home the Bible was read every morning before
breakfast. His schooling and early professional career
aligned him closely with religious and social orthodoxy.
After a year at the Wharton School of Finance and
Commerce, University of Pennsylvania, he attended
Ohio Wesleyan University, receiving his BA degree
in 1924. He remained there for a year as an instructor
of English Bible.
From 1925 to 1927 he was religious
news editor of the New York Herald Tribune.
In 1928-29 he was associate editor of the Methodist
Church School Journal. His first preaching was
in Methodist pulpits in New York state. He had received
his BD from Union Theological School in 1927 and an
MA from New York University in 1929. When he moved
to Boston, he was an associate professor of English
in the School of Religious Education at Boston University
from 1929 to 1932. At the same time he was a student
at Harvard Graduate School 1930-1932.
His formal connection with Methodism
terminated in 1930 when he began a two year pastorate
at the Unitarian Church in Petersham, Mass. He was
ordained in 1930 into the Unitarian ministry. After
Petersham, he spent six years at the Bangor Unitarian
Church in Maine. From there he entered the educational
and organizational work of the American Unitarian
Association in Boston. He was youth director for the
AUA from 1938 to 1947. In 1942 he also became editor
of the AUA journal, The Christian Register.
He
continued in his dual role until an eighteen-month
controversy developed over his editorial policies
and direction. Termed "the Fritchman Crisis," it sparked
charges and countercharges. Defenders held that he
had taken a dull, denominational house organ and transformed
it into a dynamic magazine, one that was timely, relevant,
and controversial. Opponents agreed on the controversial
part of that statement, but accused him of following
a Communist line, of supporting Soviet policies in
the denominational magazine. After a bitter ecclesiastical
fight, he resigned in 1947.
The following year he became minister
of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, CA,
and continued in that position until his retirement
in 1969. Under his leadership the church became a
center of resistance to the Cold War and entered creatively
into the conflicts of those years. It vigorously supported
liberal causes in the city and state. He himself was
active in many organizations concerned with peace
and civil liberties.
In his retirement he continued
active in the causes which had enlisted his support
all his life, as ever cheerful, energetic, and with
a finely tuned sense of humor. In 1976 at Claremont,
CA, he received the Annual Award of the UUA for Distinguished
Service to the Cause of Liberal Religion. The Unitarian
Universalist Service Committee, which he supported
all his life, named its annual award after him in
his honor.
His published works include Men
of Liberty, "Unitarianism Today," Young People
in the Liberal Church, and Heretic: A Partisan
Autobiography.
He
called himself a heretic and called the Unitarian
Universalist church a radical organization. Both friends
and critics would affirm that he was correct about
the first, and the kind of church he gathered around
him in Los Angeles made him right about the second.
In his earlier years he was frequently viewed as a
highly controversial figure because of his espousal
of radical causes. He focused his intellect, talents,
and energy on the great causes of our time—peace,
disarmament, racism, the ongoing struggle against
intolerance and hatred.
Some applauded his pursuit of justice;
others saw him moving with uncritical enthusiasm,
almost boyish impetuousness, after well meaning but
unthought out goals. His difficulties dramatize how
hard it is to be a citizen of one world when that
world is divided into a galaxy of competing nations.
He was nine years a denominational
leader but twenty-eight years a parish minister. It
is often overlooked that he was an excellent minister
with a strong sense of churchliness exemplified in
his attention to all the areas of church life, from
his worship services through his preaching to his
pastoral relationships—always he had a concerned
ear, a caring heart.
As his UUA Award citation said,
"there is little which has not felt your influence."
And he himself said in his address to the UUSC, "If
we truly believe that human beings are of supreme
importance, we will not be neutral." Nobody ever claimed
that Stephen Fritchman was neutral.
Unitarian Universalist Association
Directory, 1981-82
HONORING LINUS AND AVA
HELEN PAULING
What follows is from the concluding
selection in For the Sake of Clarity: Selected
Sermons and Addresses by Stephen H. Fritchman edited
by Betty Rottger and John Schaffer (Prometheus Books,
1992).
Linus
Pauling and Stephen Fritchman
Since tonight's celebration opens the first door for
the 1977 centenary of the founding of the First Unitarian
Church of Los Angeles by Caroline Severance and her
friends, we may appropriately indulge in a little
sectarian pride and comment on the participation of
our honored guests as members of this society of heretics
since 1962. Mrs. Pauling, besides speaking from our
pulpit and in the Severance Room, was a member of
the steering committee of our Unitarian Public Forum
in its most vibrant years, along with Janet Stevenson,
David Clavner, Elmer Mahoney, Madeline Borough, Gene
Stone, and Martin Hall. They all deserve laurels for
the energy dedicated to making the Unitarian Church
a center known across the nation where speakers appeared
when no lecture agency would handle them. Our Forum
was a dissenter's holy campground, a glorious center
for prophets and pariahs. Ava Helen spoke on women's
liberation around the world, as she also bore constant
witness to the primacy of peace, civil liberties,
and civil rights. Here tonight we salute her leadership
on these and other concerns, as manifested at our
Eighth Street citadel in those rugged days when subpoena-servers
lurked around every corner of what Art Seidenbaum
has called "our hot-bed of non-violence."
On May 15, 1957 Dr. Pauling wrote
and issued the now famous Scientists' Appeal to Stop
the Testing of Nuclear Bombs, following a lecture
at Washington University in St. Louis. In a week he
had twenty-six signatures; ten days later two thousand
American scientists had already signed it. Shortly
thereafter, he and Ava Helen sent out from their Pasadena
home, helped by a voluntary task force some of whom
were such sister Unitarians as Mary Clarke and Janet
Stevenson, letters asking for signatures from scientists
all over the world. Seventy-five hundred scientists
sent their signatures, including thirty-seven Nobel
Laureates. Fulton Lewis, Jr. surmised in his syndicated
column that some sinister organizations must have
invested at least $100,000 in this vast achievement.
Actually, Dr. Pauling noted in No More War,
the cost was $600, and that from his own purse. On
January 13, 1958, eight months after this first appeal,
Linus and Ava Helen Pauling in person presented the
petition to United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold
in New York. By that day the total number of signatures
was 11,021.
1976
- Interfaith Hunger Coalition Marches on Rockwell
International protesting the B-1 Bomber
Many of us in Los Angeles remember the marches and
demonstrations for peace led by the Paulings, in which
many local Unitarians walked with vast pride.
Those of us who were members of
First Church during the "dreadful fifties," when advocacy
of peace and nuclear disarmament was both necessary
and hazardous, remember gratefully that Linus Pauling
never declined a request to speak at our church, however
busy he was. His presence invariably filled the church.
Ava Helen, of course, was equally generous, and gave
us needed courage with first-hand news of the growing
peace forces around the world.
There are some subjects most of
us bypass in honoring these two cherished members
of our church. We do not go into detail about the
structure of crystals, the nature of the chemical
bond, and the structure of molecules. We do not find
ourselves explaining the Pauling resonance theory
of chemical valence, or the construction of the first
model of a benzine molecule, the brilliant scientific
breakthrough which won him a Nobel Laureate in chemistry.
1945
- Advisor, American Unitarian Youth and
Editor, The Christian Register
With great respect, we Unitarians and our friends
can honor a citizen-scientist even if we are without
his unique genius and have not shared his explorations
of what goes on within the atom or far away in
the stellar universe. Many of us can understand
the harassment he endured from the passport division
of the State Department, which sought to keep
him locked within his own land even when the British
Royal Society asked him to lecture in London on
the structure of proteins. Dr. Pauling managed
to open the lock with the golden key of a Nobel
Laureate (as Cedric Belfrage so well phrased it)
and, with an invitation to Oslo, received the
prize from the King of Sweden.
Linus Pauling taught many of
us how to stand firm before inquisitorial committees
of the state and federal thought police. It is
pleasant to recall his statement to a committee
in Washington, which wanted to be reassured one
more time that he was not part of a sinister organization
exercising thought control. In refusing to repeat
his denial, Linus finally declared: "Nobody tells
me what to think except Mrs. Pauling."
Ava Helen and Linus have helped
us at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles
and many others in this catastrophic era to escape
this oppression, a deliverance for which, above
all, we welcome them tonight. It is also true
that we love you deeply and wish you long life
and happiness and as many more Nobel prizes as
you both want.
He
continued in his dual role until an eighteen-month
controversy developed over his editorial policies
and direction. Termed "the Fritchman Crisis," it sparked
charges and countercharges. Defenders held that he
had taken a dull, denominational house organ and transformed
it into a dynamic magazine, one that was timely, relevant,
and controversial. Opponents agreed on the controversial
part of that statement, but accused him of following
a Communist line, of supporting Soviet policies in
the denominational magazine. After a bitter ecclesiastical
fight, he resigned in 1947. 
He
called himself a heretic and called the Unitarian
Universalist church a radical organization. Both friends
and critics would affirm that he was correct about
the first, and the kind of church he gathered around
him in Los Angeles made him right about the second.
In his earlier years he was frequently viewed as a
highly controversial figure because of his espousal
of radical causes. He focused his intellect, talents,
and energy on the great causes of our time—peace,
disarmament, racism, the ongoing struggle against
intolerance and hatred. 
