Scarsdale Congregational Church

At the January meeting of the General Board I gave an opening reflection, at the request of our Moderator, Bob Everett, on the early history of this congregation. At the February meeting I picked up where I had left off in January. Here follows some of what I said:

The ministry of the Rev. Henry MacPherson Dyckman, who died suddenly on August 26th, 1923, was followed by that of Rev. Theodore Merrell Shipherd. Soon after his arrival the congregation voted to approve the forming of an independent congregation--up to then it had been a unit within what was called the Westchester Congregational Church. In taking this vote, the congregation was anxious to make it altogether clear how grateful it was to the Westchester Congregational Church, of which it had been a part, for the support and assistance it had received over the years. But now it was ready to fly on its own. So it was that the congregation voted on October 22^nd, 1924 to form the Scarsdale Congregational Church and thereupon adopted its own constitution and by-laws.

Over the next three years the church grew considerably, so much so that by 1926 a committee was appointed to look into what would be involved in expanding its limited facilities. The Sunday School had expanded rapidly; attendance at worship, too. The committee reviewed the situation and recommended that in order to determine if the funds would be available, the congregation as a whole be canvassed. The Board of Officers, though in sympathy with this recommendation, was reluctant to canvass the congregation, and ultimately judged that there were too many inherent difficulties in carrying out such a program at that time. Given what was about to happen to the economy (within two years as it turned out), they were perspicacious. In any case, the canvass was postponed and plans to move toward the construction of a sanctuary were put on hold.

There were other realities ("inherent difficulties") that no doubt influenced this decision. Up to then there were but three churches in the general area of the train station and the village proper--IHM, St. James the Less, and SCC. The feeling all along had been that there was a mandate for SCC, almost by default, to serve as a community church. But that vision was deflated when, in the late 20s, the Scarsdale Community Baptist Church came into being. As the history of this church puts it: "A good percentage of the Congregational attendants who were Baptists rejoined their church."

What was becoming apparent was that you can only serve as a community church when the alternatives are relatively few. (For example, I grew up in a town in New Jersey somewhat smaller than Scarsdale. It had one Catholic Church and one Protestant Church--the Community Methodist Church. The Methodist Church, understandably, scooped up all the Protestants in one place. For lack of competition it could be a community church, and was.)