The Flaming Chalice symbolizes the flame of truth, the warmth of community and the fire of commitment.

We open our Sunday service with a “Chalice Reading” as the coordinator lights the chalice candle:

We light this chalice, it is our symbol.

It represents all of the important things

Which make us who we are

And which hold us together.

The chalice and flame as a symbol of our Unitarian Universalist faith reaches back to 1940.  During World War II, the Boston-based Unitarian Service Committee (USC) was founded to help Unitarians, Jews, and other religious liberal refugees escape Nazi persecution.  The committee needed a symbol to identify itself as it worked its way through the Allied underground in Nazi Germany. The flaming chalice was designed by Austrian artist Hans Deutsch who had begun working for USC because he admired the Unitarian practical philosophy doing active, social work. The design appeared in many circumstances:  a seal for papers, a badge for agents moving refugees, a symbol scratched in the dirt to identify safe houses.  Thus, countless lives were saved by the chalice design.  Today the flaming chalice is a well-known symbol of our Unitarian Universalist denomination, uniting our members and symbolizing the spirit of our work.