Considered the founder of Religious Humanism, John Dietrich's addresses and writings figure prominently in Unitarianism and the Humanist movement. Ongoing work by Chair Gretchen Clemence of the FUS Archive Committee at First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis and members Ray Sheurers and George Greene have created what we believe to be the largest online archive of Dietrich's addresses and other works. Special thanks to Rev Todd Eklof, Senior Minister Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane Washington (dietrich was minister there before FUS) and Rev. Jay Atkinson Reverend Emeritus, UU Church of Studio City California, Research Scholar, Starr King School for the Ministry for their perspectives and suggestions for this project.
The addresses of Carl Storm, another Humanist pioneer and long term FUS minister, are included here as well as photos and other historic documents important in the history of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, which remains the flagship of rational humanism within the UUA.
About the content
PDF/A files were chosen for final output, as PDF/A is the standard recommended by most major archives and libraries as being most likely to be readable into the future. The "/A" designation specifies that all assets of the document, including fonts and other resources, are contained within the document itself (not necessarily the case in standard PDF files). The standard Adobe Reader does read PDF/A.
Consult the Tips page for helpful suggestions on reading and downloading the documents.
The PDFs were made from high resolution photos captured on a custom copy stand. The documents you read will be photographs of the original pages, however Level 1 optical character recognition (the lowest and most error prone OCR) was performed and allows for some text searching within the document and the ability to copy text for inclusion in other documents. To copy, simply highlight the words in the photo and copy. You will likely need to proofread.
Detailed information on the production process, crew and apparatus can be found on the Production Notes page.
If you are interested in funding further archiving work please contact George Greene, First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, unclegeo@bstock.com, 763-560-3292.
Sermons for this project were digitized by The Archive Factory, www.thearchivefactory.com. The Archive Factory specializes in the digitization of historic, scientific, medical and other "special handling" documents and images. (763) 560-3292, unclegeo@bstock.com.