11th Southern Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches
Southern Conference. The eleventh annual session of the Southern Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches was held in Louisville, Ky., April 28-30. The work was well arranged at the meeting of the officers and directors on Tuesday evening; and the keynote of the occasion was nobly struck on Wednesday morning by Rev. J. H. Heywood, the veteran pastor emeritus of the Louisville church.
Wednesday afternoon was devoted to the annual meeting of the Southern Associate Alliance. Mrs. George L. Chaney, president of that Alliance, presided; and addresses were made by Mrs. R. H. Davis of New York, Mrs. Theodore Stanwood and Miss Field of Cincinnati, Mrs. Charles T. Catlin of Brooklyn, and Mrs. Priscilla C. Goodwyn of Montgomery.
At the close of the meeting, on motion of Mrs. Bowser of Louisville, a new Branch of the Women’s Alliance was formed; and thirty-two members were at once enrolled.
This completes the roster of the active Southern societies, each one of which is now provided with a local alliance of its women.
The meeting was deeply interesting from beginning to end, full of earnestness and evident proficiency in administration, an object-lesson indeed to us all in the difficult problem how to do it, or how to so conduct our church-extension work as to secure the benefits of executive concentration and legislative representation.
The same evening very suggestive addresses were given by Rev. Messrs. Weld on “The Duty of the Church to itself and the World,” Thayer on “How to increase the Influence of our Churches in the Community in which they are placed,” and W. C. Peirce on “Weekday Ministries of the Church.”
In the absence of Mr. Snyder, Mrs. P. C. Goodwyn of Alabama repeated by general request her address on “The Calling of Unitarian Christianity to the Scattered Believers or Unbelievers of the South.” Of these addresses the Louisville papers, which reported all the meetings at generous length and in appreciative style, gave excellent reports.
On Thursday forenoon the following subjects were debated in a meeting open to the participation of all: “Circuit Work from Present Church Centres,” “Our Church Organs and Literature,” “Co-operation with the American Unitarian Association,” “Conference Consolidation and Efficiency,” “New Methods of Church Work.”
The following resolution was passed:
“The Southern Conference of Unitarian Churches hereby puts upon record its regret that it is to lose the services of its most competent and devoted superintendent of missions, Rev. George L. Chaney. He has been the organizing head and the inspiring energy of the conference gatherings; and in the performance of the more specific duties of his office be has borne the message of our larger hope to the waiting communities of the New South with a wisdom whose best fruits, like all seed meant for enduring beauty and use, will appear to his successors in the harvest field. Since he is not one, but two, in sharing the counsel of a cultivated and judicious woman, his wife, the debt of such successors may be grammatically as well as sentimentally expressed in the Scripture, ‘Others have labored, and ye have entered into their labors.'”
Source: The Unitarian found in Google Books Jun 2 1896, Volume 11, Page 286 – 287