MAX
D. GAEBLER: MINISTER IN MADISON AND BEYOND 1921-
Born
in 1921 in Watertown, Wisconsin, midway between Madison
and Milwaukee, Gaebler attended Harvard College and the
Harvard Divinity School. Ordained by the historic First
Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in March, 1944, and
installed as minister to students, he developed a focus
on campus ministry which remained high among his priorities
throughout his career.
Following three years as minister of the First Parish
Church United, Westford, Massachusetts, and four years
as minister of the Unitarian Church of Davenport, Iowa,
Mr. Gaebler was called by the First Unitarian Society
of Madison in 1952. He served as minister there for 35
years, retiring in 1987. As minister emeritus of
that congregation he and his wife, the former Carolyn
Farr, continue to live in Madison.
When Mr. Gaebler was invited to accept the Madison ministry,
that congregation was still in the process of settling
into its new meeting house, designed by its own member,
the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Indeed Mr.
Wright himself sprang from a Welsh Unitarian family, and
his own parents had been among the organizers of the Madison
congregation. His father, William Wright, had served as
secretary of the congregation when it was organized in
1879.
The meeting house opened in 1951. By the summer of 1952,
when the Gaeblers arrived, visitors were swarming in and
around the building to an extent that made it difficult
for the congregation to carry on the appointed functions.
As the congregation grew into its world famous new meeting
house, Mr. Gaebler notes that its location in a residential
neighborhood near the campus drew many students and young
families with children, while the architectural distinction
of the building appealed to many because of its intrinsic
aesthetic values. The congregation grew rapidly, and under
the ministry of Mr. Gaebler's successor, the Rev. Michael
Schuler, it has become one of the three or four largest
churches in the denomination.
Max
Gaebler making a presentation to the Dane County Jewish
Social Services Board, c. 1990. His experience with
Vatican II inspired Gaebler to involvement in broad
ecumenical efforts.
During the years of his Madison ministry Max played many
important roles in the wider life of the denomination.
He served at various times as president of the Unitarian
Ministers Association, as secretary of the Joint Commission
on Ministry at the time of Unitarian Universalist merger,
and as first president of the Midwest Unitarian Universalist
Conference. In this last named capacity he presided over
the then controversial establishment of the UUA Districts
which today represent congregations in the entire mid-continent
area. Later he served seven years as a trustee of the
Meadville Theological School in Chicago. Following his
retirement he served as president of the then still quite
new organization of Retired Unitarian Universalist Ministers
and Partners.
Perhaps his most important denominational service, however,
was his leadership in enlarging and structuring the relationships
of the Unitarian Universalist Association with religious
liberals all around the world. During a year's leave of
absence from the Madison congregation, he joined the UUA
staff in Boston, organizing a Department of Overseas and
Interfaith Relations. As director of that office he accompanied
UUA President Dana Greeley on visits to liberal religious
groups in Japan, the Philippines, India, and Europe. Their
visit to the Unitarian Union of the Khasi Hills in the
northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya (then still part
of Assam) led to the development of a close and very fruitful
relationship with this indigenous liberal movement. Their
visit to Tokyo included the very first contact between
American Unitarian Universalists and the Rissho kosei-kai
(Buddhist).
On that same trip Gaebler and Greeley spent a week in
Rome as guests of the Vatican during the early days of
the second session of the Vatican Council. Relationships
forged during that visit led Gaebler to an enduring involvement
in broad ecumenical efforts, an involvement he continues
vigorously through his activity in the Greater Madison
Interfaith Association. In the course of that year he
also represented the UUA in working with the secretariat
of the International Association for Religious Freedom
(IARF) on plans for that organization's triennial Congress
the following summer in the Netherlands.
These international activities led to his being invited
to spend another year's leave of absence from Madison
a decade later as an exchange minister with the Free Religious
Congregations of Baden in southwestern Germany, a group
whose origins are rooted in the German revolution of 1848.
After the collapse of that 1848 effort to establish a
liberal democratic regime in German, no fewer than one
eighth of the total population of Baden emigrated to America.
Some of them settled in Sauk City, Wisconsin, a scant
25 miles from Madison. There they founded a German Free
Congregation which survives to this day, the only one
remaining of the once widespread movement among the German
"forty-eighters," who came to America seeking
political and religious freedom. Mr. Gaebler has maintained
a close relationship with the Sauk City congregation,
which did him the honor of inviting him to serve as their
speaker, the term that congregation had applied to its
only previous professional leader, Eduard Schroeter, who
occupied that position for many years in the late nineteenth
century. Following his retirement from the Madison ministry,
Max served for a year as interim minister of the Unitarian
Church of South Australia in Adelaide. Later he held similar
positions for three months with the Unitarian Church of
Auckland, New Zealand, and for a year with the Unitarian
Church of Vancouver, British Columbia.
The
celebration of the 50th anniverary of Max Gaebler's
ordination. From left to right: Michael Schuler, Madison
minister; John Buerens, UUA president; Max Gaebler,
Madison minister emeritus.
Yet another area of denominational life in which Max Gaebler
played a central role arose out of the conflict engendered
by the outbreak of the Black Power movement in 1968. Confronted
by a Unitarian Universalist Black Caucus at its General
Assembly in Cleveland that June, that UUA gathering was
thrown into turmoil by the Black Caucus and its white
support group. Reeling under the pressures of this highly
charged situation, opponents of the separatist approach
among both black and white delegates organized a biracial
group committed to sustaining the denomination's traditional
commitment to integration. The organization which emerged
was called Black and White Action (BAWA). Mr. Gaebler
was chosen on the spot as cochair of BAWA, serving jointly
with Dr. Glover Barnes, an African-American scientist
who was at that time a professor at the University of
Buffalo. This organization, which won recognition at the
UUA General Assembly in Boston the following year, continued
to carry a torch for racial justice in Unitarian Universalist
circles for more than a decade. BAWA and the cause it
represented became a central and defining element in Dr.
Gaebler's denominational activity.
Max
Gaebler presiding over one of some 2000 marriages.
These
activities, however, were not the reason why Isthmus,
the Madison weekly newspaper, chose him as one of Madison’s
most influential citizens of the 20th century. Rather
it was the magnitude and depth of his public ministry
facilitated in large measure by the radio program sponsored
by the congregation on Madison’s NBC station. The
program had been initiated nine years before Gaebler’s
arrival and had built a considerable following in those
days before the advent of television. Broadcast at ten
o’clock every Sunday morning, it provided a wide
audience. He became a familiar voice, speaking not only
on religious themes but on issues of current importance
on the University of Wisconsin campus, in the Madison
community, at the State Capitol, and on the national and
international scene. He also interviewed important and
interesting visitors, among them Wade McCree, one-time
the UUA vice-moderator, who was then solicitor general
of the United States; James T. Farrell, the well-known
author of the Studs Lonigan novels; Norman Thomas; and
both Hubert Humphrey and John Kennedy during the 1960
primary season.
During
the turbulence on the University campus during the 1960’s
Mr. Gaebler became a widely recognized and, at least in
some quarters, much appreciated voice favoring open and
inclusive debate while deploring and condemning organized
efforts to prevent unpopular voices from being heard.
On one occasion, when local campus disorders were attracting
national media attention, the university’s radio
station (now an important link in the PBS network) invited
Mr. Gaebler to preside at an open mike for two hours of
comment by any who wished to voice their opinions.
Gaebler strongly supported student efforts in the 1950’s
(efforts that were ultimately successful) to abolish compulsory
ROTC. Interestingly, when a group of students twenty years
later sought to persuade the University Regents to abolish
ROTC altogether, Mr. Gaebler appeared before the Regents
to support the continuing presence of the ROTC as a voluntary
option.
Max
Gaebler kneading chimney cake dough in the Nagy Aita
parsonage, Transylvania
The
Civil Rights movement, issues of University governance,
the role of intercollegiate athletics in university life,
and many other themes appeared on “Religion for Today.”
For many years Gaebler devoted the last Sunday in December
to speaking against capital punishment, a practice Wisconsin
had rejected soon after achieving statehood and has never
reinstated.
“Religion
for Today” also provided an opportunity to give wider
voice to his interest in religious ecumenism. He honored
important anniversary celebrations of Lutherans and Moravians,
and he spoke often of the deep impact of Vatican II on
his own religious outlook.
These broad concerns were evident in Gaebler’s deep
involvement in many community issues. He was president
of the Wisconsin Association for Mental Health when that
organization was deeply involved in the ultimately successful
effort to launch a children’s treatment center as
part of the state’s mental health program. And over
the years he devoted a great deal of time and attention
to a wide range of community agencies and organizations.
Among them were such groups as the Dane County Social
Planning Agency, the Madison Community Welfare Council,
the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, and
the Ethics Committee at the University Hospital.
Max Gaebler has been honored by both Unitarian Universalist
theological schools, having been awarded an S.T.D. degree
by the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley,
California, in 1968 and a D.D. degree by Meadville/Lombard
Theological School in Chicago in 1975.
