The Rev. Dr. John H. Weston died on August 9, 2023, at the age of 77 (1945–2023). He was a provocative teacher, a dedicated institutional builder, and an effective mentor and pastoral counselor.
John was born on October 20, 1945, in New York to Norman B. Weston and Anne C. Weston. He was raised in the Birmingham (MI) Unitarian Church, the fellowship that his parents helped establish, which later grew into a thriving society. John attended grade and high school in Birmingham, graduating in 1963. In 1967, he received his A.B. degree in English literature from Dartmouth College NH, following which he earned his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University NY (1973).
John spoke proudly of the dramatic career changes over the course of the 40 years of his professional working life, changes that he said gave him different ways of experiencing the world and his place in it. In his 20s, he worked as a teacher and professor of English (1968–1977); in his 30s, he worked as a financial planner and estate planner (1977–1986). After ten financially successful but spiritually dry years, he decided to sell his business in order to attend Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago.
He graduated with his Master of Divinity in 1988 and was for the rest of his professional life called to his various ministries. Ordained by the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington VT on June 12, 1988, he then served as a chaplain at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago (1989–1990) and as an administrator and chief operating officer at Park Lane Nursing Center in Chicago (1990–1992).
In 1992, he accepted a call from All Souls UU Church, Kansas City MO, where he would serve until 1998. At All Souls, John helped the church develop a more cost-effective organizational structure and fostered the congregation’s mutual care among its members. He increased the per-pledge-unit giving and encouraged a successful fundraising campaign, raising $800,000 for a significant capital renovation.
In Kansas City, John was also very active as a community activist. He was a founder and board member of Clergy United for Justice, advocating equal rights for gays and lesbians, and a founder and president of Congregational Partners, an anti-racist community organization. He served on the ethics committees of two hospitals, on the Banking Committee of Concerned Clergy Coalition, a predominantly African American clergy group, and on the religious affairs committee of the local Planned Parenthood. He regularly served as an escort at the Planned Parenthood clinic, where his ability to engage calmly and diplomatically with angry protesters was a gift to everyone concerned.
In 1998, John was appointed as Transitions Director at the UUA, a position he held until his retirement in 2010. As Transitions Director, John sought to increase the transparency of the UUA’s search and settlement process, exploring avenues by which congregations and ministers could conduct their searches with more information about each other. Those changes are still in effect today, as is the important work he and his team performed in professionalizing the Interim Ministry Program, promoting the recognition of the importance of interim ministry to congregations in transition. John and his team created the Accredited Interim Ministry program and trained ministers in the specialized work of helping congregations navigate their transitions.
John served the denomination in other ways throughout his long career: as a member of the Steering Committee of the Society of the Larger Ministry (1989–1993); helped organize Missouri UUs Against Discrimination and secured a grant from the UUA Fund for Social Justice on behalf of gays and lesbians (1993–94); as president of the Prairie Star District Chapter, UUMA (1995–1997), then as Good Offices person (1997–98); and as chair of the UUMA Guidelines Committee (1996). He also served on the UUA Task Force on Community Ministry and the Panel on Theological Education (2002– 2010). In 2010, he was named Meadville/Lombard’s Alumnus of the Year.
In his retirement, John remained active on behalf of social justice causes, including reproductive rights and anti-racism. In his leisure time, John enjoyed music (opera, jazz, and rock), theatre, long-distance hiking (he hiked the Appalachian Trail from Mt Katahdin to the Delaware Water Gap), and canoeing. During the last decade of his life John became an avid bicyclist. He bicycled from his home in Providence RI to his 50th high school reunion in Birmingham MI, a distance of almost 900 miles on his old Schwinn bicycle. In 2017 he biked on the same aged Schwinn from Sioux Falls SD to Rochester NY. (He had intended to bike home to Providence, but felt tired and bored, so he called his wife to meet him in Rochester. She did and they had a lovely, relatively short drive home.)
No biography of John would be complete without mention of his wide-ranging reading of philosophy, theology, and world religions. In his 20s he was a Joseph Conrad scholar; later, he read widely in theology and philosophy. He became an avid student of Hinduism, working his way through the Ramayana and the multi-volume Mahabharata. Reporting appreciatively on his trip to India in 2016, he described the sudden outbursts of noisy, chaotic parades: “If I were a Hindu, I’d be a Shivite. In addition to giving credence to the chaotic cyclicality of being, they have the best parades and drummers.” Such a remark captures one dimension of his personality: cherishing the most recondite with the most mundane, finding the philosophical perspective couched in the street-specific nugget.
John is survived by his wife Susan (Brown) Weston, whom he met at Columbia University and married in 1968; his sons Stephen and Nathaniel Weston; his three siblings, Mike, Carol, and Mark Weston; as well as by his four teen-aged grandchildren.
A memorial service is being planned in early October for the residents of Cathedral Village, the life-plan community where John and Susan have lived since 2016. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
Notes of condolence can be sent to Susan Weston at susanbweston@gmail.com or 600 E. Cathedral Rd, # D–203, Philadelphia PA 19128.
