DONALD
SZANTHO HARRINGTON: THE COMMUNITY CHURCH OF NEW YORK 1914-2005
by Bruce Southworth
Senior Minister of the Community Church of New York
Donald
Szantho Harrington has offered one of the most distinguished
and far ranging ministries of the 20th century. His leadership
as preacher, activist, pastor, institution-builder, and
theologian, as well as his service to the denomination
and wider community, reflects his devotion to liberal religion
and to social justice. From 1944 to 1982 and thereafter
as Minister Emeritus of The Community Church of New York,
he has built upon and expanded the visionary ministry
of John Haynes
Holmes. One of the foremost legacies of Don
Harrington’s ministry was the continued and expanding
racial and economic diversity of The Community Church
congregation with its vision to embody the Beloved Community
and the Church Universal.
During his service at Community, he oversaw the completion
of a new, modern church building and the acquisition of
adjacent buildings with meeting spaces for an expanded
Sunday school, adult religious educational offerings,
and community programs and groups. In 1952, he was among
the co-founders and first co-chairs with A. Philip Randolph
of the American Committee on Africa, whose support for
the African National Congress and leadership with economic
sanctions helped to make possible the election of Nelson
Mandela as President of the Republic of South Africa in
1994. His social justice work has been far ranging and
included leadership in the civil rights movement, early
opposition to the Vietnam War, and progressive politics.
The Unitarian Universalist Association recognized him
with the Holmes-Weatherly Award in 1983. He was also a
significant leader in the merger of the American Unitarian
Association and the Universalist Church of America, and
he prepared the service of union and offered the sermon
in 1960 at Boston’s Symphony Hall.
As a theologian, Harrington has promoted the thought of
Henry Nelson
Wieman and was a co-founder of CASIRAS, the
Center for the Advanced Study In Religion and Science.
In addition to his own contributions in elaborating a
scientific theology, beginning in the 1950’s Harrington
also pioneered in celebrations of the Church Universal
as part of the worship year at Community Church. These
interfaith services not only continue as part of that
worship calendar, but also influenced worship life in
UU congregations across the continent.
During his retirement ministry since 1982, Dr. Harrington
has been especially active with economic development projects
and publications that assist the Unitarian and other villages
in the Transylvania area of Romania.
Early
Years
Born
on July 11, 1914, in Newton, Massachusetts, Donald Harrington
came from an old New England family whose forebears were
among the earliest settlers in Watertown, Massachusetts,
founded in 1630. As a child, he attended the Unitarian
Church, where his mother was especially active. Having
decided upon ministry during high school, he first attended
Antioch College because of the presence and progressive
vision of its president, Arthur
E. Morgan.
After three years, he transferred to the University of
Chicago where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree
in 1936. He then entered Meadville Lombard Theological
School and began a two-year student ministry in Hobart,
Indiana. Upon graduation in 1938 with a Bachelor of Divinity
degree, he received the Cruft Traveling Fellowship that
permitted him to study at the University of Leyden in
Holland. While in Europe he traveled widely and visited
the universities at Marburg, Kolozsvar, Oxford, and Cambridge.
Ordained in 1939, he first served the People’s Liberal
Church in Englewood, Illinois—on Chicago’s South
Side. During his final years of seminary, he met fellow
student Vilma Szantho, who had completed her theological
studies in Transylvania and was a postgraduate student
at Manchester College, Oxford University. Vilma was the
first woman to be ordained to the ministry in Central
Europe. The couple married in 1939 with the Bishop of
the Hungarian Unitarian Church officiating.
In 1942 Don, Vilma, and their congregation founded the
Unitarian church in the Chicago suburb of Beverly Hills.
During their Chicago years, from 1939 to 1944, they had
two children, Ilonka Vilma & Francis David Harrington,
and shared in the ministry of both congregations.
Junior
Colleague to Dr. Holmes
In
June of 1944, Donald Harrington accepted the invitation
of the Community Church of New York to serve as Junior
Colleague with Dr. Holmes in the ministry of the church.
In addition to joining Dr. Holmes in the preaching ministry
at Town Hall, where the congregation had been meeting
for almost a decade, Harrington focused on institutional
life, religious education, and pastoral care. One of his
primary responsibilities was guiding the fund raising
for completion of the new church building, whose cornerstone
had been laid in 1940. The unfinished basement offered
modest meeting space, but further construction had to
be delayed until after the end of World War II.
With the new building and Harrington’s leadership,
an active congregation flourished with revitalized programs
in children’s religious education, adult forums,
classes and fellowship opportunities, as well as social
outreach programs, including the Community Nursery for
working parents. He helped to organize the second oldest
Funeral/Memorial Society in 1947, as well as an active
chapter of the United World Federalists, for which Harrington
would eventually assume national leadership.
In
1949, the year following the dedication of the new building,
Dr. Holmes retired, and the congregation called the Reverend
Donald Harrington as its Senior Minister. Institutionally,
the church continued to expand programs and began to purchase
adjacent brownstones in order to have space for its activities.
In addition to housing the American Committee on Africa
(the earliest and most effective anti-apartheid organization
in the United States), the church has provided offices
and space for the African National Congress, the American
Indian Community House, Theater Off Park (off-off Broadway),
the African Services Committee, the Unitarian Universalist
Service Committee, Rissho Kosei-Kai’s Horin Center,
a nightly shelter for homeless men, and The Community
Art Gallery. In 1960 in a unique display of interfaith
cooperation, the newly formed Metropolitan Synagogue began
to meet at Community and continues to do so, forty years
later.
Embracing
a vision of the Church Universal, Harrington began special
worship celebrations to honor the insights, spirit and
wisdom of various major religions. These included a High
Holy Day Sunday (during the Jewish Days of Awe) plus a
Seder with universal Haggadah; a Good Friday Tenebrae
service adapted from Christian traditions; Hinduism’s
Divali Festival of Lights; and Buddhism’s Wesak that
commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of the
Buddha. The Community News, the church’s newsletter,
and the Community Pulpit sermon series helped to promote
these as they went to a wide mailing list of congregations
and ministers.
Beginning in the 1960s, Harrington’s preaching reached
tens of thousands of New Yorkers through the live broadcast
of Community Church worship services over WQXR, the radio
station of the New York Times. Harrington also
served as a columnist for and as a member of the Board
of the Saturday Review/World, a magazine edited
by Norman Cousins. He was also the author of numerous
articles in various journals and periodicals.
During
his ministry, Harrington helped to bring the congregation
into greater contact and collaboration with the American
Unitarian Association. Dr. Holmes, who had resigned his
ministerial fellowship in 1918, resumed his Unitarian
affiliation in 1952. The congregation once again sent
delegates to the annual meetings and became active with
the AUA. It also began providing building loans to UU
congregations in the 1960s, provided scholarships to UU
theological students, and endowed the Sophia Lyon Fahs
Center for Religious Education at Meadville Lombard Theological
School.
Denominationally,
Harrington served on the last Board of Trustees of the
American Unitarian Association and the first Board of
the Unitarian Universalist Association. His sermon, “Unitarian
Universalism—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,”
at the service of merger in 1960, articulated an inclusive
vision of the Church Universal. Although controversial
at the time for some of the Humanists and Christian Unitarian
Universalists who expressed concern about a syncretistic
approach, this inclusive theological stance received wide
embrace in the following thirty years.
For the 1963 Free Church in a Changing World study,
Harrington chaired the Commission on Ethics and Social
Action. He is the author of As We Remember Him—The
Jewish Jesus, Religion in an Age of Science, Outstretched
Wings of the Spirit —a UUA Meditation Manual
(drawing upon the writings of Henry Nelson Wieman), and
Modern Humanity in Search of a Myth. In addition,
he served as a member of the Boards of the Unitarian Service
Committee, the Universalist Service Committee and the
UU Service Committee. Another lifelong commitment has
been to the International Association for Religious Freedom,
whose magazine for young adult members he founded and
edited in 1938.
In 1968, with co-leadership of his Black Chairman of the
Board of Trustees of The Community Church and others across
the continent, Harrington helped to found BAWA, (Black
and White Action), to support those in the association
who wished to have racially integrated programming and
activities. The Community Church had been racially inclusive
during the ministry of John Haynes Holmes, and upholding
the value and vision of racial integration was deep-seated
within the congregation. Notwithstanding that history,
guest speakers included diverse points of view, such as
the debate between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin in 1962.
In 1974, Harrington was also a co-founder of Unitarian
Universalist Advance that has held a series of conferences
and published study papers on UU theology, denominational
life, and social action. While a member of the Board of
the Meadville Lombard Theological School, he was instrumental
in supporting the work of the Institute for Religion in
an Age of Science at Star Island and CASIRAS, the Center
for Advanced Study in Religion and Science led by Ralph
Burhoe, who was to receive the Templeton Award for his
pioneering work in religion and science.
Bruce
Southworth and Don Harrington
Don
Harrington has three honorary degrees: a Doctorate in
Sacred Theology from the Starr King School for the Ministry,
a Doctor of Divinity from the Meadville Lombard Theological
School, and a Doctor of Divinity Honoris Causa
from the Ecumenical Theological Faculty of the University
of Cluj-Kolzsvar in Romania. He has also received many
other honors, including recognition from the Association
of Asian Indians in North America for his many contributions
to the well being of Asian Indians in this country and
his longtime concern for the independence and progressive
development of the Indian sub-continent.
In addition to being a co-founder and first Chairperson
of the American Committee on Africa, Harrington was Chair
of the Planning Committee of the Commission to Study the
Organization of Peace and served on the Policy Committee
of the American Association for the United Nations. He
was Chairman of the Council on International and Public
Affairs, and for one year served as the executive secretary
of the American chapter of the World Conference on Religion
and Peace, on whose Board he also served. Other leadership
responsibilities included the Citizens’ Committee
on Police Practices and the Committee on Quality Integrated
Education. His long-standing commitment to civil rights
included marches and voter registration action in Alabama
and Mississippi. In 1961 with the Ministers’ Vietnam
Committee, he led the first anti-Vietnam War picket line
outside the White House in Washington, DC during the Kennedy
Presidency.
Long believing in the importance of democratic, political
action for a better society and for lasting human progress,
Harrington was active in politics from the beginning of
his ministry. An admirer of Norman Thomas and active with
his Socialist Party from his days in Chicago, Harrington
gave the Presidential nominating speech for Thomas in
1948. He became a member of the Liberal Party when he
moved to New York and rose to the position of State Chairman
serving in that capacity for twenty years, during its
period of greatest accomplishment. He ran for Lt. Governor
with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. as the party’s
choice for Governor. In addition, he was elected delegate-at-large
on the NY State Constitutional Convention and is credited
with helping preserve the strict provision of separation
of church and state.
Retirement
Ministry
Don
and Vilma at the banquet held at the Waldorf Astoria
to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his ministry,
in September 1969. There Joseph Clark presented him
with the Publius Award of the United World Federalist
and Mabel Gaidzik and Helen Schindler presentedhim
with a leather bound book containing 360 letters of
greetings from members of the congregation.
Dr.
Harrington retired as Senior Minister of The Community
Church in 1982 and became Minister Emeritus. His wife
of 43 years, the Reverend Vilma Szantho Harrington, whose
ministry included exceptional service with him on the
ministerial staff of Community Church, died that October.
In 1984, he married Aniko Szantho, the niece of Vilma.
With her completion of theological studies and ordination
in 1990 to the Unitarian Universalist ministry, she began
service to several village congregations in Transylvania,
and Dr. Harrington embarked on innovative economic development
projects to assist the rural Unitarian villagers. In addition,
he has arranged numerous pilgrimage tours for North American
Unitarian Universalists and expanded awareness of the
historic connections to these liberal religious forebears.
Under Rev. Aniko’s leadership, they have developed
an extensive religious publication program in English
and Hungarian languages.
In the mid-1980’s, Dr. Harrington as Minister Emeritus,
provided invaluable support in The Community Church’s
efforts to overcome homophobia in the congregation, a
painful chapter in that church’s history. He continues
to spend much of the year in Romania, working with younger
generations of Unitarians on education and publishing
projects. When in the United States, his spiritual insight,
prophetic power, and vision remain evident when he preaches—at
least annually—at The Community Church.
One of the most dynamic ministers of the last half of
the 20th century, Donald Szantho Harrington’s prophetic
voice and his leadership in worship, theology, and the
wider community have helped to shape the liberal religious
path and institutions of today. Sometimes controversial
because of his strong stands, he has exemplified a life
of religious commitment, spiritual growth, intellectual
inquiry, and social action with an exceptional depth and
breadth in his ministry, and with few peers in our history.
-Photos
courtesy of The Community Church of New York
Denominationally,
Harrington served on the last Board of Trustees of the
American Unitarian Association and the first Board of
the Unitarian Universalist Association. His sermon, “Unitarian
Universalism—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,”
at the service of merger in 1960, articulated an inclusive
vision of the Church Universal. Although controversial
at the time for some of the Humanists and Christian Unitarian
Universalists who expressed concern about a syncretistic
approach, this inclusive theological stance received wide
embrace in the following thirty years.
