page_title: Unitarian Church of South Australia
section_title: Wakefield Street
hierarchical_section_title: Unitarian Church of South Australia / History / Wakefield Street
caption_attribution_description: English: Upper body portrait of the Reverend J. Crawford Woods, Unitarian minister.
context_page_description: The Unitarian Church of South Australia, Inc., is an independent and self-governed church affiliated with the worldwide Unitarian Universalist movement, a member of the Australia and New Zealand Unitarian Universalist Association, and an affiliate member of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It is a socially progressive and inclusive spiritual community, not covenanted by doctrine and dogma, but by liberal religious principles distilled from the essential values of all world religions, as well as the arts, humanities, and sciences.
context_section_description: On July 11, 1854 a group of people of the Unitarian Christian denomination met in Adelaide, South Australia and resolved to found their own church and seek a suitable minister from England. John Crawford Woods was selected and arrived on the Quito from London on 19 September 1855. Services were initially held in private houses until October of that year, when the first public service was held in King William Street, Adelaide.
  The congregation opened a church in Wakefield Street in 1857. Members of the congregation included prominent South Australians such as Premier of South Australia Sir Henry Ayers, industrialist Alfred Muller Simpson, newspaper editor John Howard Clark and librarian Robert Kay, who was active in the cause of popular education. Writer, teacher, politician, and suffragette Catherine Helen Spence joined the church in 1856, later preaching there occasionally. As a lay leader, she lobbied for greater opportunities for women in education, employment, and political participation. Membership peaked at around 750 in 1881.
  Woods resigned in 1887 but it was two years before a suitable replacement was found in the Rev. Robert Cooper Dendy  of Tenterden, Kent, and Woods continued serving until May 1889. Dendy left in 1893 and was replaced by Rev. Alexander Wilson, who resigned in 1902.
caption: The first minister of the church, J. Crawford Woods, c. 1865
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