“If you phone a Unitarian Church between the middle of June and Labor Day in September, the most you are apt to get is a recorded message,” Charles S. Slap said in his sermon at the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady, N.Y., on Sept. 8, 1985. “Our more orthodox friends never cease to be astounded by the contents of the message: ”˜This church is closed for the summer. If you are one of those people who actually need a church during the summer, try the Presbyterians.’ ”
Was he joking? Well, in part ”” Mr. Slap surely did not wish Presbyterianism on potential followers. But in the matter of his own church being closed for the summer, he was serious. “Indeed,” he added, “85 percent of Unitarian societies go into their strange ecclesiastical hibernation” in the summer months.
Ah ha, this is why our local Unitarian Church was deprecatingly referred to as “The Church of The Volleyball” when I was a kid. They would stop having services in the summer and would just have intermittent Sunday afternoon picnics and volleyball league games in their back yard (they met in an old mansion, rather than in an actual church building).