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The Rev. Dick Weston-Jones

Consulting Minister to UUCH since 2006, the Rev. Dick Weston-Jones has served as parish minister to 10 UU churches in 5 states and Auckland, New Zealand. The UU Church of Ventura, California named him Minister Emeritus in 2000.

While serving the Ventura church, he developed WhaleCoast, a summer ecocultural program in Alaska that he and his wife Mary led from 1994 until 2007 with the help of 5 Alaskan UU congregations. Dick also founded La Vida Mexicana, an intercultural program in Mexico in the late 60s and 70s, during which he took hundreds of UUs to live and work with Mexicans in rural villages. The purpose was to introduce Americans to the life of people in a Third World culture. Dick brought back information about the Mexican “Day of the Dead” holiday that is now celebrated in early November in many UU churches. He also invented an annual “All Heretics Day” celebration that is followed in some churches.

A friend of novelist Ken Kesey, Dick was the Dean of a 1964 UU summer conference in Pacific Grove, California that was described in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Wolfe referred to him in the book as one of the “young Turks” of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Dick has taken an active role on social issues throughout his 4 decades of ministry. His church in Whittier, California was the site of one of the largest protests against the Vietnam War in the 60s, providing sanctuary for many war-resisting Marines and soldiers. His antiwar work was cited in Robert Sherrill’s book Military Justice is to Justice as Military Music is to Music. In 2002 during his ministry in New Zealand, he spoke to a large demonstration there, opposing the war in Iraq before it was started by the U.S.
Dick was arrested while participating with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 1964 civil rights demonstrations in Selma and again in Nevada in 1990 for protesting against atomic bomb testing. He also worked to support the farm workers led by Cesar Chavez, and wrote a book in 1974 about the grape workers’ strike against the Gallo Wine Co. During the 1994 uprising in Los Angeles, he organized a program to take food, clothing, and baby formula to families in south-central Los Angeles when most stores there were shut down.

A graduate of the University of Louisville and of Starr King School for the Ministry, Berkeley, Dick also holds a diploma from the Academia Hispano Americana in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Born a “Weston,” he married Mary Jones in 1976. They joined their names together in the wedding ceremony. Dick and Mary have 6 grown children from earlier marriages, 19 grandchildren, 1 great grandchild, and a grown Mexican foster child. They designed and built their home in Chatham County in 2004. Dick’s father, the Rev. Robert T. Weston, also was a UU minister for 48 years.