The Rev.\u00a0Natalie Fenimore put the needs of her congregation first and believed religion should\u00a0be welcoming to\u00a0people,\u00a0family and friends said.<\/p>\n
Fenimore, who joined the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock ministry in 2013, was contemplative and considerate of “balancing the needs of the community relative to what one imagines they would benefit from hearing,” said\u00a0the Rev.\u00a0Anne Bancroft, sabbatical minister at the First Parish Church in Weston,\u00a0Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
Her\u00a0core tenets, including not carrying grudges and being eager to forgive, were shaped by storefront Baptist churches she observed\u00a0while growing up in Detroit,\u00a0said her husband, Charles Fenimore.<\/p>\n
“She was sort of respectful of what her choice would mean for how she lived her faith and how she observed the people around her professionally and in the congregations, being invited to live that faith as well,” said Bancroft, who\u00a0met Fenimore\u00a0about\u00a025 years ago while they served on the board of the Liberal Religious Educators Association.<\/p>\n
The Rev.\u00a0Natalie Fenimore, lead minister and minister of religious education\u00a0at\u00a0Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, died on April 15 at the Mary Ann Tully Hospice Inn in Melville. She was 68.<\/p>\n
Faith From a Young Age<\/p>\n
Natalie was born in Alabama on Feb.\u00a020, 1958, but grew up in a racially tense Detroit, where she found herself drawn to those storefront churches.<\/p>\n
“She and her sister were going around to these places to discover there was a rich cultural heritage there, and I think she sort of found that a great inspiration, and the message of loving one another,” her husband said.<\/p>\n
“And I think that the message of these Black churches appealed to her very much in terms of loving the world,” he said.<\/p>\n
Charles Fenimore met her in 1978; he was\u00a0impressed by her knowledge of classic poems, he said.<\/p>\n
“I was giving [the] end of semester exam, and was quoting from the poem Ulysses …\u2018How dull it is to pause to make an end,\u2019 and she completed the couplet, \u2018To rust unburnish\u2019d, not to shine in use!\u2019\u2009” Charles said.<\/p>\n
“And I said \u2018oh, there\u2019s something there,\u2019\u2009” he said.<\/p>\n
Four years later, the two married.\u00a0They had two\u00a0children, and\u00a0Natalie became\u00a0a stepmother to Charles\u2019 two children from a\u00a0previous marriage.<\/p>\n
Although\u00a0Natalie\u2019s faith had been a part of her life since she was a child, the couple\u00a0did not raise their children overtly Christian. The only church the children attended regularly was\u00a0a Unitarian congregation in Rockville, Maryland.<\/p>\n
“There was no mention of \u2018you are a Christian,\u2019 but … the teachings of Jesus were certainly present,” Charles said.<\/p>\n
“So it was the matter of being kind to other people, treating others as you wish to be treated, that certainly was part of their upbringing,” he said of their children.<\/p>\n
A thoughtful reverend<\/p>\n
Charles and Natalie moved to Roslyn from Maryland in 2013 after\u00a0she accepted her position at Shelter Rock as the minister for religious education. She\u00a0had a vision of a\u00a0religion “that could speak and welcome people regardless of all the barriers we have in this world, including the racial barriers,” her husband said.<\/p>\n
Fenimore, who received her doctor of ministry from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.,\u00a0in 2018, was a contributor to Newsday\u2019s Ask The Clergy column, where she tackled hard-hitting issues and ideas related to faith.<\/p>\n
“Whether she was commenting on a hot-button issue like climate change, or a lighter topic like the role of the arts in religion, Reverend Fenimore regularly provided really thoughtful, meaningful answers to our questions,” said Ask The Clergy writer\u00a0Jim Merritt in an email.<\/p>\n
“She was a word magician who could weave together a knowledge of history, the arts and her faith in an emotionally impactful essay,” he said.<\/p>\n
Along with her husband, she\u00a0is survived by their children\u00a0John and Helen;\u00a0stepchildren\u00a0Paul and Rachel;\u00a0step grandchildren and her sister, Hermanetta Smith.<\/p>\n
A celebration of life and memorial service will be on May 30 at 1 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock,\u00a048 Shelter Rock Rd., Manhasset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rev.\u00a0Natalie Fenimore put the needs of her congregation first and believed religion should\u00a0be welcoming to\u00a0people,\u00a0family and friends…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,322,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-218310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-obituaries","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}