| Rev. Stephen Kendrick
Senior Minister
FIRST CHURCH OF BOSTON
A UU minister for nearly 25 years, Stephen came to Boston in 2001, successor to Rev. Rhys Williams’ 40 year ministry at First Church. Stephen’s hopes are to grow the congregation in spirit and warmth, and to make First Church a visible and strong progressive voice in Boston life.
He has served as minister at The Universalist Church of West Hartford, Connecticut; the Unitarian Universalist Society of Howard County (now named Columbia), Maryland; the Unitarian Church of York, Pennsylvania; and Unitarian chapels in the Midlands, England. His partner is Elizabeth Kendrick, a social worker, and he is the happy father of Paul, Anna, and Elizabeth.
Stephen is the author of Holy Clues and Night Watch (Pantheon) and most recently with his son Paul, Sarah’s Long Walk (Beacon Press).
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Sarah's Long Walk
Book Description
In the fall of 1848, a five-year-old
African American girl named Sarah Roberts walked past five white
schools to attend the poor and densely crowded all-black Abiel Smith
School on Boston's Beacon Hill. Her father, Benjamin Roberts, decided
to sue the city to end this injustice. The historic court case that
followed set the stage for over a century of struggle, culminating in
1954 with the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
About the Author
Stephen Kendrick is the
author of a novel, Night Watch, as well as Holy Clues: The Gospel
According to Sherlock Holmes. He is senior minister at First and Second
Church in Boston. Paul Kendrick has worked as a director of the
Democratic National Committee's grassroots campaign. He recently
graduated from George Washington University, where he was a
Presidential Arts Scholar and NAACP chapter president.
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Douglass and Lincoln
From Publishers Weekly
Paul Kendrick, assistant director of the Harlem Children's Zone, and his father, Stephen, a Boston minister (coauthors of Sarah's Long Walk,
about Boston's free blacks) give a thorough look at two unlikely
allies. Lincoln began as a white supremacist who saw Douglass as an
exception to the rule of black inferiority. What is more, his first
priority was the preservation of the Union. The onetime slave Douglass,
on the other hand, stood uncompromisingly for complete emancipation, to
be followed by full and equal citizenship. He further held that the
Civil War's massive carnage could only be redeemed by the annihilation
of the "peculiar institution." Despite their mutual respect, the two
men had only three face-to-face meetings, just two of these in private.
Thus, this study of Douglass, Lincoln and their "relationship" is
chiefly a discussion of evolving rhetoric, primarily Lincoln's on such
topics as emancipation, black service in the Union ranks and black
suffrage, and how his views initially contrasted with, but were
eventually influenced by, Douglass's fiery arguments in public speeches
and newspaper editorials. This is a workmanlike narrative of the same
story recently explored by James Oakes in his critically praised The Radical and the Republican.
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