As Greenfield’s All Souls Church congregation gears up to celebrate its 200th anniversary with a day of worship and celebration, lunch and music on May 18, Chair of Worship Kate Mason and Membership and Heritage Committee member Russ Pirkot discussed the ever-changing role Unitarianism brought the for those wishing to break free from more restrictive religions.

Mason explained that the congregation is rumored to have formed in the 1820s when a churchgoer whose unbaptized son had recently died took offense to a preacher’s declaration that unbaptized babies were destined for hell. She said the congregation has since evolved to be a form of worship that allows its members to bring their own interpretations of spirituality without a governing dogma.

“I can tell you in two sentences what, what [Unitarianism] is to me, because that’s a big, big, big deal in our in our congregations – everybody brings a different meaning,” Mason said. “It’s not ‘do what the Pope says.’ It’s the way I feel faith, like a river ... you never step in the same river twice. Today the river is full of life, and the next day it’s running low.”

On Sunday, those who wish to join the church for its celebration of 200 years are invited to meet at the 399 Main St. church at 10:30 a.m. for an sermon from the Rev. Steve Wilson, followed by a noontime lunch served by Stone Soup Cafe and a Hope Community Church gospel concert at 2 p.m. The church will also sell copies of its recently published book “200 Years at All Souls,” documenting with photos and historical texts, the congregation’s two-century history in Greenfield.

Although the church’s first congregation began meeting in the 1820s, Pirkot said the church itself was built roughly 125 years ago. Early congregations, he said, met at the 15 Bank Row Building that now houses the Connecticut River Watershed.

Discussing his 28 year history with the All Souls church, Pirkot explained that he was raised in a Jewish household that was not very religious. Although he said he still identifies with Jewish culture and traditions, the Unitarian Universalist church spoke to him when he first moved to Greenfield in 1997.

“Even though I wasn’t raised religiously, I had my own thoughts and I wanted to seek out more people that I thought I had something in common with,” he said. “I was new to the area and I can I honestly cannot remember why I chose specifically to come to All Souls. Other than the little that I knew about Unitarian Universalism, they were open to virtually anybody.”

Mason said she gravitated toward Unitrarian Universalism because she appreciated the diversity of perspectives and preachers it accommodated. She added that she could not relate to or worship Christianity’s all-male Holy Trinity.

“It’s a liberal, individual personal belief system that is always changing … I come to church to be inspired by lots of different speakers, different perspectives,” Mason said. “I was Episcopalian and I basically rejected the Father, Son and Holy Ghost – the three guys. I didn’t want to worship three guys.”

Currently, the church has become a hub for secular community events, recently opening its doors to a number of community concerts, such as a Pete Seeger tribute concert April 5 that Mason said drew in a standing room only crowd. All Souls also recently hosted a “Building Beloved Community Beyond the Binary” seminar to discuss ways the Universalist unitarian church can better understand its nonbinary members.

Mason said the community soup kitchen Stone Soup Cafe, which began as a church program, has now grown to be larger and more popular than the congregation itself. She added that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the congregation has dwindled slightly and has cut some of its youth education programs.

“We have opened our building to all sorts of concerts and meetings and things like that as our birthday present to the community. One of our biggest goals is to become a hub for the Greenfield community,” Mason said. “It would be a shame if we weren’t here and available for anybody to come here, whether it be for service or a concert or a social justice event.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.