Religion in Brief BANGOR: MARKING A MILESTONE

The city’s Unitarian Universalist Society will mark its 10th anniversary with a special service at 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 11. A decade ago the Unitarian Church on Union Street and the First Universalist Church on Park Street merged. The Unitarians’ building is now the Union Street Brick Church. Merger of the two churches in Bangor came 34 years after the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America consolidated as the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961. The Unitarian church was founded in 1818 by a group of local Congregationalists dissatisfied with what they saw as the “uncharitable, intolerant and oppressive” atmosphere of traditional Christianity. The Universalist church was founded in 1833. Its pastors were staunch abolitionists. As the congregation begins the new decade it will implement a Unitarian Universalist program to help the church be more welcoming to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. (Judy Harrison, BDN)