The Chicago Tribune mentions a description of the Dunham's chosen church as "The Little Red Church on the Hill". According to its own website, East Shore Unitarian Church got that name because of, "Well-publicized debates and forums on such controversial subjects as the admission of ‘Red China' to the United Nations...." Mercer Island's John Stenhouse, according to his 2000 obituary, once served as church president possibly contributing to the ‘red' label.
it's a church in well-heeled bellevue, wa.
East Shore Unitarian Church began in 1948 when the Eddys, the Wensbergs, and the Farners decided that it was easier to establish a Unitarian Sunday School of their own than to pack up their young children on a Sunday morning and drive to University Church. What started as a very small group grew so much that they rented the Mercer Island South End School for Sunday classes.
The parents soon felt the need to have a program of their own while Sunday School was in progress and in January of 1949, the Mercer Island Fellowship was begun. In addition to the informal Sunday morning program, they met every other Sunday evening with the ministers of the Tacoma and University churches for a short service and a question-and-answer period for many newcomers.
The fledgling group soon needed more meeting space and leased the Chapel of Flowers, a funeral home located at the southeast corner of what is now Bellevue Square... On January 15, 1949, the Unitarian Association officially recognized the Fellowship of Mercer Island, and the Association and Lon Call were persuaded to send Lon out west to organize the eager new group. Lon and his wife, Lucy, arrived that summer after launching his ninth Unitarian church.
The congregation, which had continued to meet at the Chapel of Flowers, longed for a church home, and in the spring of 1953 voted to acquire property for a church. An initial drive raised $10,000 for the purpose. The site selected was a seven acre parcel of farm and orchard atop a hill"…way out in Factoria with almost nothing around it anywhere," in the words of one member.
Bob Garthwaite described the insular Eastside’s reaction to the appearance of a Unitarian congregation in its midst: "The only member of the local clergy to attend Chad’s installation was Dr. Vall-Spinosa of St. Thomas Episcopal Church." Chad was even kept out of the local ministerial society by the minister of the Congregational church. But when the new building was dedicated, the successor to that hostile minister was on the platform representing the Bellevue Ministerial Association,"…which by then had accepted Chad as a member."
From the beginning, East Shore members were determined to learn about and affect the world around them. Well-publicized debates and forums on such controversial subjects as the admission of "Red China" to the United Nations earned the new church the name, "The Little Red Church on the Hill." However, patience and persuasive ways of East Shore’s very proper New England minister eroded such criticism, and in the early 1960s East Shore members spearheaded formation of an Eastside conference on Religion and Race. That group of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish congregations promoted civil rights during those turbulent days. There were some stormy discussions at East Shore before this congregation voted in February, 1964 to support open-housing legislation in the county, the cities of Seattle and other municipalities. A bomb threat and abusive phone calls did not deter the congregation from its stand.
http://www.eastshoreunitarian.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82:east-shore-history&catid=51:about-us&Itemid=99
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