By STEVEN JUPITER
WEST RUTLAND—The United Church of West Rutland (UCWR) is a small congregation with an outsize history. Originally known as West Parish, it’s the oldest Congregational church in Rutland County; services were held in a log cabin from 1773 to 1788. Moreover, from 1788 to 1818, the congregation was led by Lemuel Haynes, the first black man to be ordained as a minister in the United States.
However, with only 20-25 people at Sunday services each week, it’s often overshadowed by other congregations in the area. And the church building itself, for all its mid-Victorian beauty, is easy to miss, tucked away on a residential side street just steps from downtown West Rutland.
“It’s time for people to recognize this little community of faith here,” said George Valley, UCWR’s new pastor. Valley was voted in by the Board at UCWR on June 18, taking over from Reverend Peter Hults, who at 86 was ready to pass the pulpit to a successor.
Though raised Catholic—he was once even a seminarian—Valley is no stranger to Congregationalism, having spent the last several years serving short stints (“pulpit supply”) at local churches in the denomination: Brandon, Pittsford, Proctor, and Salisbury. But now he will be the permanent pastor at UCWR.
“Someone once described the Congregational Church as ‘town meeting with religion,’” laughed Valley as we sat outside the sanctuary of UCWR. There isn’t the kind of top-down governance one finds in, say, Catholicism, with its clerical hierarchy. Instead, Congregational churches decide for themselves how to function and how to conduct their services. The pastor is there to act as a guide—the title “pastor” comes from the Latin for “shepherd”—but the congregation is ultimately in charge.
Valley is originally from Vermont, born and raised in the Burlington area. He attended St. Michael’s in Colchester for his undergraduate degree and then got a Master of Divinity from the University of Toronto in Canada.
“The University of Toronto was a wonderful place,” he said. “The school did a very smart thing: they consolidated all the different denominations in one school. So even though I was in the Catholic program, I took classes with people from other denominations.” Valley enjoyed learning about other traditions, and that intellectual curiosity has carried throughout his entire life.
When Valley left Toronto in the 1970s and attempted to find a clerical post in Vermont, the conservative bishop of the Diocese of Burlington at the time, John Marshall, objected to the fact that Valley’s spiritual advisor in Toronto had been a nun and required Valley to attend seminary again in Boston. It was there, in 1981, that he met a fellow seminarian named Michael Dwyer, with whom he would spend his life.
Valley and Dwyer both left the seminary and moved from Boston to Vermont, where they embarked on careers in education. Valley worked at the College of St. Joseph in Rutland for several years, in Campus Ministry and teaching religious studies. A native speaker of French (his grandparents came to Vermont from Quebec, where his ancestors were governors and associates of Samuel de Champlain), he then taught French, Latin, and Spanish at Otter Valley and Mill River High Schools. He retired from Mill River in 2017.
THE UNITED CHURCH of West Rutland was founded in 1773. Its current building was erected in the 1860s.
During much of this time, Valley and Dwyer were active in St. Peter Catholic Church in Rutland. Valley organized adult education, was a communion minister, and a lector. Things changed for them at St. Peter when members of the congregation discovered that Valley and Dwyer had obtained a civil union under Vermont’s new law. A letter was sent to Bishop Angell, who was inclined to simply ignore the matter. The next bishop, Bishop Matano, however, informed Valley and Dwyer that they could no longer participate in services.
“It ruptured any sense of community,” said Valley. The couple spent a few years away from church but eventually began attending the Episcopal Trinity Church in Rutland, where for 10 years they were involved in adult education, sang, and even preached. It was clear, Valley said, that even though he and Dwyer may have left the Church, “the vocation never left” them.
Valley considered becoming ordained as an Episcopal priest, but when Pittsford Congregational Church needed “pulpit supply,” he and Dwyer took turns preaching there. Dwyer is now the permanent pastor of that congregation. After the aforementioned stints preaching at Brandon (3 months), Proctor (2.5 months), and Salisbury (6 months), Valley is now the permanent pastor at UCWR.
In an unusual coincidence, 4 of the Congregational churches in the area now have LGBT pastors: West Rutland, Pittsford, Brandon, and Proctor. And to amplify the uniqueness of that situation, these 4 churches are led by two married couples: Valley and Dwyer at West Rutland and Pittsford and Sara and Janei Rossigg at Brandon and Proctor, respectively.
Though West Rutland has a reputation as somewhat conservative, Valley has not experienced any reticence from his new congregation.
“People here are wonderful, warm, kind, and welcoming,” he said. “Someone I knew to be fairly conservative in the congregation recently approached me after services. She told me how happy she was to have me here. Her husband said, ‘Good job, as always.’ That’s the best compliment you can get, that people are happy.”
In addition to the pastoral aspects of his new role, Valley is keen to promote UCWR as a cultural and community resource for West Rutland and the surrounding area. To celebrate the church’s 250th birthday, the church organized a musical tribute and hymn sing back in March.
“We made 40 programs and 85 people showed up,” Valley said. “We can have wonderful things happen here.”
