The Rev. Peggy Clarke, minister of the Fourth Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mohegan Lake. There’s an old joke that asks, “What do you get when you cross a Unitarian Universalist with a Jehovah’s Witness?” The answer: “Someone who goes from door to door for no apparent reason.” Unitarians, as they are called for short, have taken a lot of ribbing— and sometimes worse—over their faith’s apparent lack of specificity when it comes to doctrine.

The Rev. Peggy Clarke, minister of the Fourth Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mohegan Lake, says there’s plenty of specificity, just not the kind you might see in many of the world’s bigger religions.

“The reason people believe that is because we are creedless,” Clarke told the PCN&R; in fact, one of the central tenets of Unitarianism is that each person is empowered to explore his or her own spiritual path openly and honestly. No one is turned away because they accept or reject a particular line of spiritual thinking. “We are defined by relationship, which is grounded in a covenant,” Clarke said. “We are not committed to a particular truth because we understand that revelation is ongoing and that truth is always ongoing. We are committed to the possibility of being wrong. And therefore what holds us is the commitment to each other…a communal search for truth. … We completely respect that path so that we can have in one congregation people who are complete atheists and people who are absolute believers… and the only thing we can say that is absolutely not Unitarian is the insistence that something is true.”

The 4th Unitarian Fellowship sits in a small, wooded, residential area on Strawberry Road, just over the county line from Putnam Valley. Annie Chesnut On the other hand, you can’t be a Unitarian and be a Nazi sympathizer, or a racist, Clarke said, because Unitarians follow what are called the Seven Principles, first and foremost of which is “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Not surprisingly, there is a very robust and healthy ongoing national discussion about the focus and direction of the Unitarian faith in America.

Because of its emphasis on being welcoming and accepting, the Unitarian faith can be described as very liberal, probably the most liberal of modern established religions. Unitarian ministers, for example, have been at the forefront of the marriage equality movement and many other modern social justice causes.

The 4th Unitarian Fellowship sits in a small, wooded, residential area on Strawberry Road, just over the county line from Putnam Valley. The building is lined with French doors and windows and the small, bright, meeting space serves both as worship area and what other churches would call the parish hall; once the service is over, chairs are folded, a couple of long tables are erected, and people enjoy either coffee hour or a monthly bring-in-lunch. The fellowship boasts a list of members and friends who come from both Westchester and Putnam counties, and sometimes farther.

The congregation, founded in 1957, was proudly lay-led until about eight years ago, when a part-time consulting minister was assigned there. While some welcomed the new level of leadership, others who had grown comfortable with a lay-led environment had concerns. After seven years the relationship ended. Clarke came to the 4th UU (as it is known colloquially) as a consulting minister in 2010 and seems to have been warmly embraced there by many.

Still, on a recent Sunday after three members had given very different presentations on the topic, “This I Believe,” one longtime member remarked that this day had been clear evidence of the strength of the lay-leadership concept. In true Unitarian fashion, there are still probably as many opinions as there are people in the fellowship on whether having a professional minister is a good idea or not.

The PCN&R spoke with Clarke in mid-April at a pivotal time in her life, as well as that of the fellowship. Clarke, whose contract with the 4th UU will end on July 31, has been actively recruited by another fellowship in southern Westchester. On April 17 the congregation met to vote and confirm its intention to seek and call a new minister, first hiring an interim minister, who will help guide them through the process of calling another leader.

Clarke herself is a small, bright, and dynamic woman who began her ministerial career at Iona College, where she formally embraced Catholicism, working in various aspects of campus ministry, first discovering, and then refining, her gift for religious leadership.

Clarke was born in southern Westchester to Catholic and Jewish parents. As a young adult, she “really loved daily mass,” reveling in the quiet beauty of both the church and the liturgy. At Iona she encountered the themes of liberation theology that motivated her to take part in, and then lead, student programs serving people in need in diverse settings—a squatters’ village in Mexico, migrant workers in Florida, and closer to home, poor people in Yonkers. As she grew in her abilities and responsibilities in the Catholic college setting, she recognized in herself a gift, not just for ministry, but for leadership, and eventually embraced the recognition that for a woman in the Catholic Church, there is not just a “glass ceiling” but, as a wise priest friend told her, a “concrete ceiling,” through which she could never even see, let alone penetrate.

Peggy and her husband Graham moved to northern Westchester in 2002 and after a long period of mentally transitioning herself out, she left Iona in 2004. It was then that they began attending the Unitarian fellowship in Mt. Kisco. “We felt at home,” Clarke said. “I knew that I was a UU,” she said, and “I knew that I was a minister.” Because she already had completed significant undergraduate and master’s-level work in religious studies, she was able to negotiate the multistep process of becoming a Unitarian minister without returning to school full-time. “I’ve been a minister for 20 years,” she added, “but just in a different context.”

Clarke’s abilities are immediately evident in her warmth, her enthusiasm, and her ability to motivate people through her words. Her most recent Sunday sermon explained to the assembled congregation what ministry is, and what the fellowship needs to do to grow both in numbers and in commitment to the world around it. She was both tough and loving as she urged the group to move ahead, and essentially “grow up,” and in to a new stage of congregational life.

Sunday services at 4th UU, near the intersection of Foothill Street and Strawberry Road, are at 10:30am, September through June, and incorporate many elements that could be called Judeo- Christian: candle lighting, music, singing, readings, offerings, and food pantry collections, and—depending on the Sunday—sermons from the minister, or a presentation from a fellowship member or guest.

The fellowship has also hosted labyrinth walks on a portable canvas labyrinth similar to the one at the Cathedral of Chartres, a meditation group, films with social messages, an active youth group, family spaghetti and game nights, Halloween parties,Seders, Easter sunrise services, and discussions with members of the neighboring Islamic Community Center, to name just a few.

Members of the fellowship pledge to support the church, and through it, the larger national church, as well. The biggest fundraiser of the year is a fairly massive tag sale held on two weekends in June (June 18-20 and June 26-27, 2011). For more information visit fourthuu.org.