312 FILLMORE STREET, STATEN ISLAND, NY 10301    PHONE: 718-447-2204

a HISTORY OF leadership

The UCSI welcomes a variety of visiting ministers and guest speakers on issues of spiritual growth and social justice. Pictured is Rev. Darrell Berger, former consulting minister and occasional guest minister.

Current leadership team

In the absence of a resident minister, a cohesive leadership team is important to our congregational health, vitality, and purpose. Our leaders include:
The Worship Guild 
Our Staff
Our Board of Trustees
Our Program Committees
Each person plays a vital role in the shared ministry of our church.

THE WORSHIP GUILD
In the absence of a resident minister, while the UCSI Search Committee has been interviewing candidates, the five-member Worship Guild has been organizing and presenting Sunday Services. These services are led by guest ministers and lay members of the community with experience in various areas of social justice and spiritual practice. Informed by our Seven UUA Principles, the subjects for Sunday service include the history of African American Communities on Staten Island; The Life of  Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker; the Practice of Compassion in World Religions; Teaching Respect, Self-worth and Dignity at the PrideCenter of Staten Island; What We Can Learn from Anti-war Russians; Studying the Proposed 8th Principle, which examines racism in ourselves. Visiting clergy have addressed Christian Nationalism, Rev. Karen Pershing; Antisemitism Here and Now, Rabbi Michael Howald; The Transcendental Origins at the UCSI, Rev. Darrell Berger; The Birmingham Campaign of 1963, Rev. George McClain.

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OUR STAFF

Music Director, Dr. Carolyn Clark with her husband, Kevin Clark. Photo by Vivian Vassar

Director of Music, CAROLYN CLARK, D.M.A.,  (above) holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the Manhattan School of Music. As a French hornist, she has performed throughout the US and Canada. She is Executive Director of the Staten Island Philharmonic and a Staten Island Advance 2014 Women of Achievement award recipient.

Church Administrator, TBA 
Email at [email protected].

Building Superintendent, DEBRA MONTE

BOARD OF TRUSTEES 2024 - 2025
President  TBD 
Vice President  Benjamin Maxwell
Secretary  Carol Lodato
Treasurer  Susan Flynn
Trustees SallyJones, Bonnie Will-Almeleh, Randy Leason, Michael Esposito, Robin Locke Monda, David Michaels, Juliette Moore, Jim Franz

COMMITTEES
Committees form the backbone of our congregational life. You are warmly invited to participate in the committees, except as noted. For information about a committee and how to become a member, or to express a concern in a particular committee's area of interest, please contact us.
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The dedication of our Black Lives Matter banner on the steps of our church, May 22, 2016.

​A PROUD AND LIBERAL History

Since its founding by Transcendentalists almost a hundred and fifty years ago, our church has had a proud and liberal heritage.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the population of Staten Island numbered just over 15,000, with many newcomers from New England settling on the North Shore in Stapleton and New Brighton. On October 24, 1852, two congregations of liberal Christians, the New Brighton group known as the Congregational Church of the Evangelists and the United Independent Church of Stapleton, incorporated in what then became the Church of the Redeemer.

Both founding members, George Francis Shaw and George William Curtis, were New England Transcendentalists. They were influenced by the Boston Unitarian ministers, William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker. Channing and Parker were considered radical by contemporary New England Unitarians, yet the Transcendentalist values they embraced remain surprisingly modern: dedication to racial and gender equality, and social justice.

Our leaders and members have included civil rights activists, champions of women's suffrage and women's liberation; antiwar and antinuclear activists. In 2005, our membership voted unanimously to become a Welcoming Congregation, opening our hearts to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities.

The Unitarian Church of Staten Island is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. Unitarian Universalism is the result of the merger of two separate denominations: Unitarianism and Universalism.

Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment at the National Gallery of Art.

​founding men & women

Francis George Shaw, a Bostonian businessman turned philosopher and philanthropist, settled on Staten Island in West New Brighton with his wife Sarah Sturgis. Socially-conscious and deeply devoted to intellectual and spiritual pursuits, the Shaws became founding members of the new Unitarian church.

Robert Gould Shaw
The best known of their children, Robert Gould Shaw, and Anna and Josephine Shaw, were deeply influenced by their parents’ commitment to social justice. Robert, who famously led the 54th Massachusetts Regiment composed of freed slaves in the fateful Civil War attack on Battery Wagner, Morris Island, SC, was immortalized, along with his regiment, in the film Glory.

Anna Shaw Curtis
Anna was married at the Unitarian Church of the Redeemer to George William Curtis in 1856. Curtis, another New England transplant to Staten Island was an author, editor of Putnam’s Magazine, and columnist for Harper’s. He was an abolitionist and supporter of civil rights for African Americans and Native Americans.  He also advocated women’s suffrage, civil service reform, and public education. 

Josephine Shaw Lowell
Josephine married Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., in 1863 in the same little church where her sister was married. Lowell graduated from Harvard in 1854 at the head of his class but when the Civil war began he demanded a commission as his patriotic duty. Josephine joined him in Virginia to help care for the sick and wounded. He was fatally wounded in the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864 and was promoted brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers. He died on the next day at Middletown, Virginia, at the age of 29.  Josephine and her young daughter Carlotta, born one month after his death, returned to Staten Island to live with her parents. 

The Underground Railroad 
The Underground Railroad was in use during this time to help runaway slaves, and it is believed that the Curtises and the Shaws were very involved in this effort. The Shaw sisters and their mother, Sarah Sturgis, also spearheaded local efforts to help the war effort. George Curtis was targeted by Southern sympathizers and, during the draft riots in NYC during 1863, Anna and her three children left Staten Island temporarily for the safety of her grandparents’ home in Roxbury Massachusetts.

The Curtis and Shaw families, rooted as they were in the liberal soil of New England, counted among their close associates Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau.

This history was adapted from writings of UCSI Minister Emeritus Benjamin Bortin; Bradford Green, UCSI historian; and Susan McAnanama, long-time congregation member. To learn more about the church's history download this PDF.