Fellowship adopts Chalice name


 

 

Members of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Conejo Valley marked their adoption of the name Chalice at a special Sunday service, with dozens of flaming chalices aglow to celebrate the transition to a more succinct way of describing who they are.

Members of the Newbury Park fellowship brought chalices from home and lit them from the flame of the congregation’s communal chalice.

A flame burning within a chalice is a primary symbol of the Unitarian Universalist faith.

Fellowship leaders say the chalice is lit in worship to create a reverent space for reflection, prayer, meditation and singing, and its flame glows at meetings and other events.

The Rev. Nica Eaton-Guinn, the congregation’s spiritual leader, tells the Chalice congregation each week that the flame symbolizes the light within each person, the light of hope and unity.

The congregation began a search last October for a shorthand name with symbolic importance. A series of votes by the congregation over months culminated in overwhelming approval of the name Chalice on June 9.

The official name is now Chalice Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Conejo Valley, with Chalice the succinct version used for most purposes.

The symbol’s roots go back to efforts by Unitarians to protect Jewish refugees from Nazi death camps. The flaming chalice symbol was created by Austrian refugee artist Hans Deutsch on the eve of World War II as an image for the Unitarian Service Committee, which used the symbol on forged travel documents to make them look more official to help German Jews escape Europe through the port of Lisbon.

The chalice design later formed the basis for the American Unitarian Association’s official logo. Varying versions evolved after the Unitarian and Universalist faiths merged in 1961.

The flaming chalice as an object used during Sunday services originated in the late 1970s, when children in religious education programs were encouraged to craft chalices from different media. Eventually, those chalices morphed into objects that could be lit.

The first documented uses of chalices in the main sanctuary are from Sundays when youths and children led worship and demonstrated their practice to adults.