UU Lansing will be 175 years old in 2024! The First Universalist Church of Lansing formed on March 16, 1849 and initially met in the Senate Chamber of the State Capitol (not the current capitol).

Founder John H. Sanford, Universalist minister and newspaper publisher, came to Lansing in 1847 from Ann Arbor. He also published Lansing’s first newspaper, The Primitive Expounder.

In 1864, Rev. Augusta Jane Chapin was ordained. She was the second woman ordained in the Universalist Church and the first woman in the country to be awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree. Rev. Chapin was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 2010. She is the namesake of our Chapin meeting room.

During the 1940s, several Unitarian families moved to the Lansing area from Ann Arbor and founded the Unitarian Fellowship of East Lansing and Mason.

In 1957, Lansing-area Universalists and Unitarians merged, four years before the national merger took place, becoming the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing (UU Lansing).

We will hold a celebration on our church’s 175th Anniversary with live music, food, worship, historical education, and more.

You can reach UU Lansing’s 175th Anniversary planning team (Deb Feltz, Ed Busch, Deb Mosher, Marcus Cheatham, and Dan Dettweiler) at uulansing175@googlegroups.com.