Meet Rev. Barbara Fast

The Rev. Barbara Fast is the candidate for the UUCD's next settled minister.  She will be here with us for Candidate Week from April 9th through April 18th.  The week will be full of opportunities for everyone to meet and talk with Barbara (see Candidate Week Meetings Schedule).  The vote to call her to ministry at the UUCD will take place at a congregational meeting at 12:00 noon on April 18.

The Rev. Barbara Fast

It is spring. The birds are singing. The search is over and, yes, I am your candidate! I am looking forward to our getting to know each other better. Meanwhile, let me tell you a few things about myself as a way of introduction.

I am inspired by our Unitarian heritage: its loyal witness to religious freedom, its embrace of reason and science, its optimistic faith in the human capacity to grow in wisdom, and, its summons to seek justice.  The legacy and call of Unitarianism gives me hope for the future and courage to do what can be done to create a sustainable world.  Our work is to wisely choose how to live our values in the world.

I bring a Universalist heart to my well developed Unitarian head. I am especially enthusiastic about sharing a ministry with you that affirms and promotes our first principle:  the Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Human Being.  Universalism’s imperative calls us to work for "liberty & justice for all".  It invites us to create conditions in this world that affirm and celebrate the full humanity of every person. Its optimistic faith in the power and possibilities of forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration of what has been broken within and between people and the world sustains me.  I celebrate its promise, from the Winchester Profession of Faith, that: "Holiness and true happiness are inseparable".

Buddhist teachings and a practice of meditation (Zazen) center, sustain and remind me to keep life and calling in perspective and to be joyful to be alive now.

Barbara is currently serving as Senior Minister at the Westminster Unitarian Church in East Greenwich, RI, where she has been since 2006. Westminster is a congregation of 190 members. During her years there, Westminster has had a hugely successful capital campaign slated for a new (green) parish house. Her ministerial presence at Westminster added great enthusiasm for this courageous campaign. Her outgoing style, inspirational preaching and pastoral presence have gotten her rave reviews from both her current congregation and her previous work at theUnitarian Church in Westport. At Westport she served as Associate Minister, Assistant Minister, and DRE (where the religious school membership increased by 60%). She left Westport in 2005 after 5 years as associate to take on her solo ministry at Westminster.

Barbara has also served as a summer minister at Martha’s Vineyard and provided chaplaincy care (CPE) at Bridgeport Hospital.

Barbara is a graduate of Yale Divinity School. She also earned a law degree from GeorgetownUniversity and served as Assistant DA in Manhattan. She has taught   law at the University of Bridgeport School of Law ( now Bridgeport School of Law at Quinnipiac College).

For the past 26 years Barbara has been married to Jonathan Fast, a professor of social work atYeshiva University in NYC, where his specialty is studies in human violence. He is also a writer who has had 8 published novels in his writing career. Jonathan is also an avid musician. Their son Ben, writes in LA, and a younger son, Dan is currently a senior at Williams College. Barbara has one married stepdaughter, Molly, who lives in Manhattan with her husband and three young children. Rounding out the family is their standard poodle (aka Louie.)

Barbara grew up in a mixed-faith family, her father being Irish Catholic her mother of Finnish descent with a Protestant heritage. As a result she seeks to engage in interfaith dialogue and coalition building.

In answer to the question: what is your dominant theology, Barbara answers:  I am more interested in how we behave than what we say we believe.  If I must name my theology, I would say that I am a Universalist Unitarian Buddhist. 

“I make my liberal religious claim to use the language of faith. I will not cede meanings to the religionists on the right. I invite you to join me and wrestle with the big ideas beneath the words and bring to them a meaning that nourishes your whole life.”

Barbara brings many gifts to her ministry: She loves worship, is an engaging storyteller and has directed worship drama.  She shares ministry and has developed small group ministry programs, mothers’ groups, family spirituality programs, an ethical eating study group, shawl ministry programs and she facilitated a social action visioning process. She is known for her enthusiasm, intelligence, compassionate warmth and humor.

Her work has been published in UUA’s Anti Racism sermon collection. She led a weeklong workshop at Star Island RE week and presented at the 2002 GA closing plenary.  She has served on the UUA Family Matters Task Force. For years she has worked for marriage equality with Love Makes a Family CT, and MERI (Marriage Equality RI) and performed same sex marriages in New Paltz, NY as well as offered testimony for marriage equality in Hartford and Providence. She organized a bus to the March for Women’s lives in 2003 and has been an escort at the Summit Women’s Clinic in Bridgeport. She was honored as Principal for a Day at the Beardsley School inBridgeport. This past January she went to New Orleans to help rebuild a house.

At UUCD Barbara hopes to stay active on behalf of environmental issues. At Westminster, she organized an interfaith forum, Keeping Faith with Creation, in 2008; led a workshop at a RI -IPL conference in 2010; hosted the first Carbon Audit educational process in RI with RI IPL; and she spoke at a 350.org rally in Providence in 2009. 

Barbara enjoys her children and grand children, good cooking, theater, movies, swimming, yoga, tai chi and meditation.

Barbara was enthused about the vision this church carries with its move back to the city of Danbury and she is eager to help us bring that vision to life. Being in Danbury will also enable her to be in closer proximity to her family and lifetime friends as she and Jonathan are planning to relocate to this area.

The UUCD Search Committee is very proud to present Rev. Barbara Fast to you and we urge you to come meet with her and hear her speak during Candidating Week.

As Barbara says: It is said that, “a calling is where your greatest love meets the world’s greatest need.” Mary Oliver writes: “There is only one question: how to love this world.” Congregational life calls us to love one another and the world into greatest life.