AMHERST — One of the first United Church of Christ congregations in the United States to declare itself open and affirming, First Church Amherst has regularly been at the forefront of faith-based social justice causes.
Whether helping the LGBTQIA+ community to the full life of the church or ensuring rights for immigrants, promoting environmental protections and combating climate change or speaking out against both racial injustice and gun violence, the “Just Peace” church since 1987 has seen its progressive Christian witness elevated under Rev. Vicki Kemper’s pastorship.
“Part of our faith, in living it out, is to work for justice and peace,” says Kemper. “We believe our faith, that if we’re following Jesus, the two most important commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor. That is not a feeling, it’s an action.”
As the pastor for the past 18½ years, and the longest serving at the 287-year-old church since the 1930s, emotions will be running high when Kemper leads her last service from the 165 Main St. church Sunday at 10:30 a.m.
Set to depart soon afterward, and already cleaning out her office, Kemper said she and others have been shedding “lots and lots of tears” after seeing the congregation through births, deaths, illnesses, health and cancer struggles, weddings, funerals, baptisms and coming outs.
“The separation is hard on them and it’s really brutal on the pastor,” Kemper said.
Over the years, First Church became a sanctuary church for an undocumented immigrant father of three at risk of deportation. It also established an anti-racism covenant and ministry to help neighbors of color affected by racism — and still displays a Black Lives Matter banner over the main entrance. The church led an interfaith prayer vigil when schoolchildren in Connecticut were killed by a shooter and participated in No Kings rallies, one of which fell on Palm Sunday and opposed rhetoric against immigrants and people of color.
The church’s welcome and love have been exhibited in Kemper’s “Blessings to Go,” a staple of Northampton Pride since 2013 and for the past two years at Amherst’s Pride event and the Amherst Block Party.
“The basic message is that you are a beloved child of God, it’s a free gift and it’s always there,” Kemper said of the practice. “If we can begin to internalize that original blessing, it will make all the difference.”
“One thing we hear from people at Pride and Block Party is they didn’t know a church like this existed,” Kemper adds. “They appreciate we’re here and what we do.”
First Church is what Kemper calls a very active and engaged congregation with some 80 to 85 people in the pews each week, another 65 to 70 viewing the streaming, either live or after broadcast, and an even larger number on the membership rolls, including four welcomed earlier this month, reflecting its active presence in the community.
“This is an amazing congregation, full of truly remarkable people who care deeply about the world, its people and their connections to it,” Kemper said.
During her time, the church has been changing, growing and developing. “The great blessing of that is we’ve been able to do that together, we’ve been through major things together, accomplished a lot, deepened our faith together and community building,” Kemper said.
“When we experience deep love by God, that will go out to the world and relate to the world and how we love our own neighbors,” she said.
Coming to Amherst
Kemper arrived at the church in 2007 as the result of a search-and-call process. She was one of 107 individuals interested in becoming the First Church minister, though her only familiarity with Amherst came from a leaf-peeping trip years earlier, and the church at the time had a basic website.
But even as she was called by a second church at the same time, she wanted to be in Amherst.
“I’m really glad I chose Amherst; it’s felt like a very good fit,” Kemper said.
Kemper was based in Washington, D.C., where she had been a journalist for 23 years, the last seven of which were in a bureau for the Los Angeles Times.
With a lot happening in the world, in her life and in her house church, she made what she called a “scary decision” to go to seminary. The day after applying, the newspaper offered her a buyout.
“I wanted to be more directly involved in serving people and making the world a better place,” Kemper said, quoting clergyman and peace activist William Sloane Coffin’s line that “first you leap, and then you grow wings.”
“It felt like I leapt and I grew wings at that point,” Kemper said.
She soon joined the United Church of Christ, which she saw as an open and progressive faith, and then served three years as a full-time chaplain in a hospital while doing pastoral care for her home church as full-time ministry.
First Church formed 20 years before the town’s 1759 founding and is now in its fourth meetinghouse, located close to the Emily Dickinson Museum. During the town’s 250th celebrations, the church proclaimed “here at the start, still at the heart.” In 2014, the congregation undertook a capital campaign to improve physical accessibility to the historic building.
Lucio Perez in sanctuary
The sanctuary for Lucio Perez became a defining moment for the church, though Kemper said this was not something the church had intended, even though immigration justice was critical when Donald Trump became president in 2017.
That June, the church adopted a covenant to be an immigrant-welcoming church and when members learned about Perez’s plight three months later — facing imminent removal from the country — they intervened.
“After a lot of prayerful conversations, airing of hopes and feelings and concerns, we invited Lucio to take sanctuary,” Kemper said. He accepted after he and wife Dora prayed, understanding this would be best for their being present for their three children.
“He made the painful, courageous decision to live in a basement room,” Kemper said, observing he was surrounded by mostly white people who knew no Spanish.
The sanctuary was a broadened community effort, with Pioneer Valley Workers Center and other faith communities and community members helping out, visiting and providing meals. Perez taught Spanish classes during monthly potlucks, and members made trips to federal offices to get stays on his removal. Finally, in March 2021 under President Joe Biden, Perez’s removal was rescinded.
Russ Vernon-Jones of Amherst, a former church moderator and longtime member, praises Kemper’s ministry for allowing the congregation to help Perez and his family.
“Vicki has consistently led us to consider the relationship between love and justice and encouraged us to consider being active for justice in the world,” Vernon-Jones said. “Her whole-hearted involvement in every aspect of our church providing sanctuary to an undocumented Guatemalan man to protect him from an unjust deportation is an example of her deep, spirit-filled faith in action.”
Kemper receives similar praise from Melanie Blood, a member from Holyoke who has attended First Church for 16 years, describing Kemper’s ministry as being about the radical love of Jesus.
“She has led us in worship that meets us in the quiet, community that stands together in public, and a faith that continually calls us to action in the world,” Blood said.
COVID and beyond
The sanctuary overlapped with the COVID pandemic. Kemper said she is proud of how seriously the church took responsibility to keep people safe during the challenging, frustrating and sad time.
“I fully believe we rose to the occasion,” Kemper said. The church supported local businesses with $10,000 in donations and a similar amount was provide for medical aid to low income people of color.
But it also highlighted the need to have a way to bring the worship service into people’s homes who are unable to be physically present.
“That’s been a real blessing,” Kemper said, adding that beyond people in and around Amherst, now people from other parts of the country can watch the livestream. She has heard from people in other parts of the country that the church’s message gives them hope.
The church has been generous in its budget, with $30,000 to $40,000 annually going to support programs like Amherst A Better Chance program, Amherst Survival Center and Habitat for Humanity. The church also provides space to the Not Bread Alone soup kitchen.
Beyond the local events and being on the Main Street sidewalk, once in front of Black Sheep Deli, Kemper has taken her Blessings to Go abroad and “to offer God’s love to people in places of conflict and division.”
Visiting Jerusalem was super intense, she said, with some objecting to her presence, and back in the nation’s capital, she was at the Pentagon, the Vietnam War Memorial and near the Supreme Court. “People were very open and enthusiastic about it,” Kemper said.
Outside the church, Kemper can often be found early in the morning on the Connecticut River as part of Northampton Community Rowing. She said she loves the pace of life, the feel of the region.
In retirement her new calling is starting a program in spiritual direction, helping people on a more personalized, one-to-one basis.
“I’m leaving now because the church is in an excellent place, has good lay leadership and they’re in a phase where they handle the transition,” Kemper said.
She points to the recently written purpose statement, “creating sacred community for the sake of the world,” which will continue to sharpen the mission of the church, she said.
Kemper adds,”Jesus calls us to be in the world, loving our neighbors and our enemies, finding community across lines of difference and doing things together that can’t be done alone.”
She is confident that First Church will continue this.
“We trust that the community we create here will continue to have ripple effects out in the world,” Kemper said.
