My boyfriend and I attended services here for about 2-3 months at the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013. I'm Protestant and he's Jewish, we're both very liberal, and we both felt comfortable here. But over time we began to feel uncomfortable for a couple of reasons, and resentful, and we stopped going.
First, let me say that Pastor Fred Small is really amazing. He's the real deal, has clearly been through his spiritual pain and come out the other side, and he's a great singer to boot. He often takes his guitar and leads the congregation in a song, and it's a fun thing rather than a hokey uncomfortable thing. It was an initial experience with Fred Small that kept me coming back. Unfortunately, he does not preach every Sunday.
The sanctuary itself is beautiful too. And one Sunday they had a mariachi band from Harvard that was out-of-this-world great, one of the best musical experiences I've ever had in a church. They played a mariachi version of J.S. Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring!! It was jaw-dropping raucous genius and I am forever grateful.
The reasons I left were:
1. The bizarre insistence on inserting Spanish into the service at any opportunity. This is obviously an initiative pushed by Pastor Lidia Cuervo, whose first language is Spanish, and who, as I learned from reading the front matter in the hymnal, was on the churchwide committee to publish a Spanish hymnal. Now don't get me wrong: I think a Spanish hymnal is a very smart thing for any church that hopes to survive in the 21st century, as the Latino population grows in this country. But if you look around the sanctuary at the people attending the service, there is hardly anyone who looks Latino. What the congregation is, at this prime location just across Mass Ave from Harvard Yard, is a whole lot of academics who have come here from all over the world to study or do research. They are all proficient in English or they couldn't come here to study. There are probably more native Korean speakers there, for example, than there are native Spanish speakers, but I did not see any attempts to include Korean or Russian or Arabic or Urdu or any other foreign language except Spanish the whole time I was attending.
Because there was no apparent reason to stuff the service with Spanish, I had to conclude that it was the initiative of a small faction that had decided that they had to put the Spanish into the service to show how inclusive and liberal they are. That made me uncomfortable. It did not make me feel like I was in an inclusive congregation. It had the opposite effect - it let me know that I was in a place run by a small group who were pushing their own agenda rather than responding to the congregation that was actually there.
A related issue is that Pastor Cuervo does not speak English very well, and every time she would preach it took serious effort to understand what she was saying.
2. I found the music selections irritating. I felt sorry for the choir that had to get up and deliver this junk. The ones I remember most are "Moving Right Along" from THE MUPPET MOVIE, and that Natalie Merchant song with that lyric "laughed as my body she lifted, no this child will be gifted, with love and patience and with grace, she'll make her way." Natalie Merchant delivered that song fine on the radio in the 90s, although I was never a fan, and I never quite understood what that song was about, but to be sitting in a church listening to a classically trained singer singing that whole song (it's long!) in an operatic style with piano accompaniment was super uncomfortable for me, as were the visions of Fozzie Bear and Kermit that are now forever associated in my mind with First Parish. The thought of having to endure more of this bizarre musical scrapbook from the choir director's golden years was the last straw.
In conclusion, let me say that I was extremely disappointed to realize that I would not be able to tolerate First Parish over the long term. The first time I heard Fred Small speak, I felt like I might have found a spiritual home in this city of cold intellectualism. I'd gone to First Parish in past years, and he just made the whole place seem an order of magnitude better than it had in the past. I just can't tolerate that other stuff. I guess that means I'm intolerant and I don't belong there anyway. read more