Source: The Times-Picayune
On April 10, 2003 The Times-Picayune reported that "members of First Unitarian Universalist Church are celebrating their congregation's 170th year in New Orleans as a small bastion of spiritual liberalism embedded in conservative New Orleans... Continuing a recent tradition, members of the congregation of 100 or so ended a regular Sunday service March 23 by laying a wreath on the grave of the Rev. Theodore Clapp, a robust, colorful figure who in 1833 founded what would become First Unitarian Universalist after being expelled as a heretic by his fellow Presbyterians... Unitarian Universalists gathered for Sunday service may include pagans pursuing an earth-centered spirituality, individuals following a customized personal amalgam of Christianity, Buddhism and New Age spirituality, even agnostics or atheists seeking a humane community in which to cultivate civic virtue."