Vanessa Southern

Church volunteers wrote the names of fallen soldiers in recent foreign wars -- each name on a separate ribbon -- and the 4000+ ribbons hung outside the church for several years as a memorial and tribute to their sacrifice as well as a symbol of a hope for the wars to end. In May 2012, the ribbons were retired, and will later be buried as part of a memorial to honor the fallen soldiers. Photo: Vanessa Southern removing a ribbon in May 2012.

Vanessa Rush Southern (born 1968) is an American Unitarian minister in New Jersey notable for increasing church membership as well as being a progressive liberal advocate of issues such as reproductive health care options for women, diversity and racial tolerance, affordable housing including projects for Habitat for Humanity, human rights, and remembrance of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King. She is minister of the Unitarian Church in Summit and has presided over high-profile weddings as well as local community discussions on topics such as diversity and tolerance and the "achievement gap" between low–income and high–income families. Her father was the director of an acting school in New York City called the School for Film and Television and her mother was a hematology technologist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She was married in 1999 to Rohit Menzes. She wrote a book entitled, This Piece of Eden.

Ministry

Southern was minister of the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington from 1996 to 2001. During her years as minister in Summit, from 2001 to the present, congregation membership grew from 400 to 500 members, and children's education expanded to 200 members, according to a report in the Independent Press. The congregation supported relief efforts in Darfur, Haiti, New Orleans, Pakistan, Guatemala and elsewhere, as well as social action projects including tutoring sessions in an Irvington school, local food banks, a program entitled Summit Helping Its People, a transition program for homeless people called Homefirst, house-building efforts, and other charitable projects. In 2010, Southern's congregation was honored by the Unitarian national assembly as being one of four "breakthrough congregations" in North America for increases in membership and charitable activity. She was quoted in the Dallas News thanking utility workers from Texas who helped restore electric power in New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.