Editor’s Apology: This article appeared in the Jul– Aug 2025 Unifier, but by mistake, it was not uploaded to the website at that time. The date on it should read Jul 25, 2025.
Unitarian Universalists Rhein–Main (UURM) held its final worship service on Sunday, June 2, 2025. The service was held on our regular first Sunday of the month at Unitarische Freie Religionsgemeinde (UFRG) Kirche in Frankfurt. Six members attended in person and one person on-line. We shared flowers in our traditional Flower Communion service as is the tradition in our fellowship to say goodbye for the summer. However, this time we said goodbye for the closing of our fellowship. We shared joys and concerns. We shared memories. We shared wishes for our future. Our mission was to serve those who desire a liberal religious home in central Germany, providing worship services, fellowship, cultural exchange, and opportunities for local and global social action. We lived our shared values through our fellowship, and now we remain hopeful and with open minds, loving hearts, and helping hands.
After years as Frankfurt Unitarian Universalists and Wiesbaden Unitarian Universalists, we decided, at a momentous meeting at the Zinks’ home in November 2018, to reorganize ourselves and become an official “Verein” as Unitarian Universalists Rhein–Main. Teresa and Michael Zink, Emily and Claudia Searle-White, Caitlin McGinn, Carolyn Burlingame-Goff, Darrel Moellendorf, Cappy Schupp, and Peter Benwitz attended that meeting. After John Keating and Elizabeth Malone had left Europe, it became clear that our path was taking a turn. We were meeting on the US Military Hainerberg base in Wiesbaden, but due to a change in rules about base access, together with a growing interest from the non-military community, we decided to look for a new location in Frankfurt. This required a name change because we would no longer be meeting in Wiesbaden.
For a few years after this, we rented space at Christ the King Church until Covid times, when we decided to move to a host community that was closer to our own spiritual and liberal beliefs: UFRG fit perfectly.
Though our fellowship doors have now closed, we still hold a seed of hope for future iterations of UU fellowships in our area of Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Rhein–Main. There’s cause for this hope, as we discussed in our service. In the past, EUU fellowships, including ones in our area, have closed their doors, but then years or even decades later, a group of motivated people searching for like-minded liberal religious thinkers have come together again to covenant in the UU faith. Like a creek that is drying up, the path waits for rain to come back and gives the water a path to flow. The groundwork is laid for future regeneration.
UUs in the Rhein–Main Area over the Years
Our Rhein–Main area has a long history of sustaining Unitarian Universalist communities over the last three-quarters of a century. Dudley Strasburg wrote in the March 2010 Unifier (also featured in the Historical Overview of EUU 30th Anniversary in 2010) about being an active member of the original Wiesbaden Unitarian fellowship. The group was introduced to him in the 1960’s by a friend and leading member, Joan Breen; it met in the American Library in downtown Wiesbaden. The group was led by lay individuals in the relatively small community, and after some years in the fellowship, Dudley was asked to lead the weekly Sunday meetings. This was during the Vietnam war era, and there was a great need for our type of values and beliefs. This led to a large influx of attendees coming from the American community.
After the war ended, attendance waned, but Wiesbaden became the “Cradle of EUU” and remained a vibrant fellowship until 1995. There were other groups that met in Frankfurt, such as the one Steve Crowley wrote of in an email to us after hearing news of the closing of UURM. It sounded like a great community of close-knit like-minded UU friends who met in people’s homes. They shared potluck meals and even ran a children’s RE program for their families.
It was less than a couple decades after Dudley Strasburg’s Wiesbaden UU shut down, that John Keating moved to Europe and rediscovered the rich history of Wiesbaden Unitarian Universalists. In 2013, John wrote a historic account about the revival of the Wiesbaden fellowship for the https://www.uurm.org
John and his wife, Elizabeth Malone, attended an EUU retreat, where he saw a familiar image on the EUU Banner. It was a retreat in Mittelwihr, Alsace, France, with Mark Morrison-Reed leading the Sunday service. John spotted a fountain on the EUU banner. It wasn’t just any fountain – it was the three-tiered special design that you find in front of the famous Wiesbaden, Germany landmark, the Kurhaus on the Bowling Green. As a result of that inspiration and part of their prior commitment to Unitarian Universalism as members of the Kaiserslautern EUU fellowship and then as EUU members-at-large when they lived in Vicenza, John and Elizabeth began the work of re-building the community of UU in Wiesbaden.
I looked all my life for my liberal spiritual community, and I’m glad that I found it in Wiesbaden Unitarian Universalists in 2014. I hope to be part of the community in the future if it finds a revival while I’m here.
It’s clear that there remains a need for UU communities – we regularly received inquiries about our fellowship right through the time of our final service. The type of group that will be needed in the future remains to be seen. Whether it’s a family-based home/potluck, social justice action, a group of people who desire a covenant of shared values, or any mix of needs, there will be a fertile ground waiting for those people to form a community. For now, members of our UURM pour their energy into other means of faith, justice, and interconnectedness.
What can we do to stay spiritually connected, now that we have said goodbye for now to our UURM fellowship?
A very fruitful focus of redirected energy is European Unitarian Universalists (EUU), which exists to support and network all our fellowships and has done so as fellowships come and go over the years. Even as a (former) Vice President of UURM, I volunteered to be the EUU Vice President beginning January 2025. Now I feel even more energy to dedicate toward the thriving community of EUU. Bonnie Friedmann, also a UURM member, has committed a lot of energy toward her new position of responsibility as EUU President. Jacob Houkes, (former UURM President), has taken on the grand task of planning an EUU retreat – a valued event each fall and spring that brings together our European UU community.
UURM was one of a number of member fellowships who are part of EUU all over Europe. EUU is the umbrella not only for fellowships in Europe, but for At-Large UUs who want to be in community but don’t live near a fellowship, or may want support starting a fellowship. Members of our UURM community are very welcome to join EUU as members at large and participate actively in the EUU community. Being a member of a fellowship does not give you automatic membership in EUU. They are two separate memberships – any member of a fellowship, as well as any at-large person, can join EUU. In addition to meeting in person, along with many people who are also in fellowships, at the all-EUU retreats twice a year, at-large members have their own monthly gatherings on Zoom, led by one or more members.
EUU also has other online activities for members and friends – the monthly book club as well as at least 5 other informal Zoom get-togethers each week. See https://www.europeanuu.
Many other (former) UURM members are filling their cups in other ways that are meaningful to them. A political avenue of redirection is joining the many groups working for democracy that express our UU values in the US and beyond, such as Votefromabroad.org. I myself joined the No Kings in America protest in Frankfurt, Germany. And whether your meaningful community-building work of living your UU values be raising children (your own, extended family members’, or the community’s), or joining social justice initiatives, CLF UU Worthy Now Prison Penpals, women’s circles, refugee integration work, or fulfilling your own lives through personal growth & self-care or in other spiritual/religious communities, I wish everyone peace.
Cappy Schupp