The Reverend Dr. John Cummins—remembered for his wry humor and a 23-year ministry to the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis (1963–86), recognized for many more years as a local leader in liberal religious and social causes, and deeply venerated as a mentor to younger ministers and aspiring seminarians—died 11 December 2021, aged 95.
When the call rang out in 1965 to bear witness for justice in Selma, John Cummins showed up. As an opponent of the Vietnam war, he counseled more than 500 draft resisters and conscientious objectors. Preaching on the Watergate scandal, he titled his sermon, “Malice in Blunderland.”
John Cummins was born on 8 September 1926 to Alice E. (Grimm) and the Rev. Dr. Robert Cummins, who for many years was the General Superintendent of the Universalist Church of America and a leader in consolidating the Universalists and Unitarians in 1961. Enrolling at Bowdoin College (Brunswick ME), John joined a college fraternity but withdrew on discovering that they refused entry to Jews and Blacks. A screed, “Fraternity Without Brotherhood,” was John’s outraged response. He completed work for his B.A. in 1947, went on to graduate from Harvard Divinity School, and was ordained in 1950.
After parish settlements in Brunswick ME (1950–54) and Waltham MA (1954–63), the Rev’d Mr. Cummins took a call to First Universalist in Minneapolis, where he would remain until retirement and honored as emeritus thereafter. Members recall him as “prophetic, a caretaker, nurturer, and something of a poet,” helped perhaps by the editorial pencil of his spouse, Drusilla (“Dru”). “Your ideas soar like eagles,” she once told him, “but your grammar has webbed feet.”
In an interview at 90, John looked back, “I was naïve, an idealist, a dreamer, a humanist, a visionary, I guess, and I don’t regret any of it.”
John was preceded in death by spouse Dru and a son, Christopher. He is survived by daughter Carol and son Clyde. In a celebration of life at First Universalist Church of Minneapolis on 20 December 2021, no fewer than six colleagues offered tributes to John’s warmth, gentleness, humility, wit, and pastoral presence.