Augustus Reccord

From Philosopedia.org

Reccord, Augustus Phineas (1870 - 1946)

Reccord, who was born in Acushnet, Massachusetts, graduated from Brown University and the Harvard Divinity School. He then served in Chelsea, Massachusetts; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Newport, Rhode Island; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Detroit, Michigan. Active as a Unitarian minister, he served informally with a Montreal parish and was Minister Emeritus at parishes in Grosse Point and Detroit.

Reccord wrote Who Are the Unitarians? (1920). During World War II, and after his retirement, he served as a minister of the Louisville (Kentucky) Unitarian Society. An early publicist for Unitarianism, he once wrote:

• Much of the prevalent indifference to the church is because of the impression that it demands that we make a choice between an unintelligent faith and an irreligious culture.

Soldiers who heard his lectures could have heard his “Good Men in Hell,” a lecture in which he explained why all good Unitarians should aim not for Heaven but for Hell; he then cited Mark Twain, Emerson, Diderot, and all the other good company who would be found there. In short, Reccord made it clear that he believed not in Heaven or Hell but in heaven and hell: in purely intellectual entities.

One Iowa Methodist who visited as a soldier from nearby Fort Knox, Warren Allen Smith, was nonplussed upon seeing the septuagenarian Bostonian, during his Kentucky church’s fair, plunk down a quarter at a “kissing booth” in order to raise money for the war effort. Smith had previously avoided his church’s services because he complained they “missionaried” him. Asking Reccord how and if he might join the Unitarians quickly before leaving for battle, Reccord’s response, quite shocking to the Methodist whose church continually campaigns for new members, was, “Goodness, I have no idea!” With a little research, however, he located a membership book, and, with no further proselytizing, the soldier was allowed the following Sunday to join the non-Christian Unitarian church, after which he had his Army identification tag changed to list his religion as “None.” In a short time, Reccord received a postcard from that soldier in France who had led his company up the hill at Omaha Beach: “Greetings and love, from an atheist in his foxhole!”

Reccord served in the Unitarian ministry for over 44 years.

{WAS, conversations}