This respect for individual particularity and openness to diverse sources of wisdom means our community is packed with a wide array of perspectives and beliefs.

"[6] The church's mission statement is: "Creating connection by listening to our deepest selves, opening to life's gifts and serving needs greater than our own - every day!

Through this system, the church sponsors projects that provide classroom support for Rochester schools, temporary shelter within the church for homeless families, free Sunday suppers at a Catholic Worker program, improvements to the quality of life in a small township in Honduras, and other projects that focus on such issues as peace, reproductive rights, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender concerns.

[15] The city of Rochester, located in western New York, was a young frontier boom town at the time, having been incorporated in 1817 and boosted by the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825.

[18] Membership grew partly as a result of the Finney revival movement, which generated a wave of religious enthusiasm so strong in western New York that the area was sometimes called the "burned-over district."

When objections were raised to abolitionist activities, about 200 people withdrew from the regional Hicksite Quaker body in 1848 and formed an organization called the Congregational Friends.

[24] This group soon changed its name to the Friends of Human Progress and ceased to operate as a religious body, focusing instead on organizing annual meetings in Waterloo, New York[25] that welcomed anyone interested in social reform, including "Christians, Jews, Mahammedans, and Pagans".

Several members of this circle had participated in the Seneca Falls convention, including Mary Hallowell, Catherine Fish Stebbins, and Amy Post, who convened the meeting at First Unitarian.

[32]: 104  In 1857 she served as clerk of the Friends of Human Progress, the social reform group created by dissident Quakers[36] and also became upstate New York agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

[37] Anthony's reform work, especially in the national campaign for women's right to vote, led her to spend most of her subsequent years on the road until advancing age required her to cut back on traveling and settle once again in Rochester.

[15] A history of the church written in 1881 notes that some of its members during that period "were persons of extreme and pronounced opinions, sharply opposed to each other on political and social questions," with slavery a key item of contention.

[32]: 110 Channing wrote a brief inspirational text that has become known as "Channing's Symphony," which reads: "To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common – this is my symphony.

Mann discussed the religious significance of Charles Darwin's recently published book on evolution in a sermon delivered in Cincinnati just before the Civil War which, according to the Rochester History journal, was the first such sermon in the U.S.[46]: 14  In 1872 Mann initiated the first public controversy over evolution in Rochester by inviting a professor to give a series of lectures on that topic at First Unitarian, which were extensively reported.

[51] In 1884 Landsberg occupied the pulpit at First Unitarian for seven weeks while Mann was ill, attracting visitors from other denominations and, according to an early Rochester history, leading to speculation about the development of a universal church.

[48] In 1872 Susan B. Anthony convinced the election inspectors in her ward in Rochester that the recently enacted Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection to all citizens, implicitly gave women the right to vote.

[56] William Channing Gannett himself had gained prominence as a leader of the successful movement within the denomination to end the practice of binding it by a formal creed, thereby opening its membership to non-Christians and even to non-theists.

By 1893 the Home had a paid superintendent and was teaching classes in manual arts and drawing, and by 1898 its offerings had expanded to include such subjects as current events, zoology, literature and journalism.

With as many as a hundred members, it was divided into small classes under the tutelage of the Gannetts for the intensive study of such thinkers as Thoreau, Hawthorne, George Eliot, and the Fabians.

During the statewide drive that year for the right of women to vote in New York elections, the Anthony home was converted into campaign headquarters, with public offices in the parlor and other activities throughout the rest of the house.

The Democrat and Chronicle, a local newspaper, writing several years after the event, said that next to Susan B. Anthony, Mary Gannett was chiefly responsible for the success of this campaign.

Determined to succeed, Susan B. Anthony, at the age of 81, rode the next morning in a carriage in a last-minute push to close the funding gap, which she accomplished by raising the entire amount from members of First Unitarian, including herself and her sister Mary.

[30] From 1910 to 1914 Rumball edited The Common Good,[70] which "emerged as Rochester's leading journal of progressive reform" according to Affirming the Covenant: A History of Temple B'rith Kodesh by Peter Eisenstadt.

Mary Gannett created a stir by inviting two African American men to sit with her in the balcony who later joined the club as regular members.

[15] He served as president of the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice, advocated Soviet-American cooperation, promoted the American Civil Liberties Union and supported several national legal defense campaigns.

[74] In 1933 Williams became one of the 34 signers of the Humanist Manifesto, which, among other things, declared the universe to be self-existing and not created, rejected the duality between mind and body, and called for religion to be reformed in light of the scientific spirit.

When Margaret Sanger, a national leader of the family planning movement, spoke at Temple B'rith Kodesh in 1932, she was arrested for answering a question from the audience about where birth control devices could be obtained.

[77] In 1940 Time magazine gave the church national publicity with an article about its ordination of James Ziglar Hanner as a Unitarian minister in an unusual ceremony that included two rabbis.

[15] In 1963 the church's Social Action Committee played the key role in creating Community Interests, Inc, an organization that provided minority families with housing loans.

[48] In 1983 Gilbert published the first of three volumes of Building Your Own Theology, a guidebook for examining and clarifying personal values and beliefs in a group setting.

[89] In 2009 the church's Reproductive Rights Task Force began the process of establishing a talk line to offer "support without judgment" to women who have had abortions.