- Unitarian Church of All Souls
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For the congregation in Washington, D.C., see All Souls Church, Unitarian (Washington, D.C.). For other congregations named "All Souls", see All Souls Church (disambiguation).
Unitarian Church of All Souls 
Partial south elevation and steeple, 2008
Basic information Location Upper East Side, New York, NY, USA Geographic coordinates Coordinates: 40°46′32″N 73°57′30″W / 40.7755°N 73.9584°W Affiliation Unitarian Universalism Year consecrated 1819 Architectural description Direction of façade west Specifications Materials Brick and wood The Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City was the first Unitarian Universalist church in New York City.[1] It is one of the largest and most influential congregations in the United States. It has provided a pulpit for some of the movement's leading theologians and has also recorded many eminent persons in its membership.
Contents
History
All Souls was the first Unitarian congregation to be organized in New York and originated in 1819 when Lucy Channing Russel invited forty friends and neighbors into her Lower Manhattan home, to listen to an address by her brother, William Ellery Channing, the minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston. Channing was making a stop in New York while traveling to Baltimore to preach the famous sermon in which he would articulate the distinctive tenets of Unitarian Christianity, the most salient of which were the rejection of the Trinity in favor of absolute Monotheism, and the imperative to interpret the Bible through reason. In New York, the enthusiasm aroused by Channing culminated in the formation of the First Congregational Church (Unitarian), which proceeded to erect its first building, on Chambers Street between Broadway and Church Street, before it had even found a minister. The task of recruitment was difficult since few ministers could be persuaded to venture away from the stability of the Unitarian heartland in New England and risk their careers in new congregations beyond. Finally, on December 18, 1821, William Ware was installed as the first minister.
In 1844, the congregation moved to a new building at 548 Broadway and renamed itself the Church of the Divine Unity the following year. In 1855, the present name, All Souls, was taken by an American church for the first time when the congregation dedicated its third building at 249 Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South) at 20th Street. The address was conversely listed as 249 4th Avenue.[2] In partnership with minister Henry Whitney Bellows, who served for over four decades from 1839 to 1882, All Souls grew to include some of the leading social reformers and cultural figures of the city, such as Peter Cooper, Herman Melville, and others listed at the end of this article.
Church seen from Lexington and 79th Street
One famous member was the novelist Catharine Sedgwick, who remarked upon the diverse backgrounds of the people who were attracted to the freedom of ethical inquiry which All Souls offered: "strangers from inland and outland, English radicals and daughters of Erin, Germans and Hollanders, philosophic gentiles and unbelieving Jews . . . In this, our ass'n, there is at least one of every sort." In evolving from its roots in Unitarian Christianity, All Souls has embraced an enlarging religious pluralism that continues to this day.
All Souls relocated to its current building on the Upper East Side at 1157 Lexington Avenue at 80th Street in 1932. The prolific author and theologian, the late Forrest Church served as Senior Minister for almost thirty years until the beginning of 2007, when, due to terminal cancer, he was succeeded by Galen Guengerich and assumed the less strenuous duties of Minister of Public Theology.
Notable members
- George Fisher Baker, financier, philanthropist
- William Cullen Bryant, poet, journalist
- Peter Cooper industrialist, philanthropist (founder of Cooper Union)
- Nathaniel Currier, lithographer, co-founder of Currier and Ives
- Dorman Bridgeman Eaton, lawyer, civil service reformer
- Caroline Kirkland, writer
- Herman Melville, writer
- Louisa Lee Schuyler, Sanitary Commission organizer, founder of America's first nursing school at Bellevue Hospital
- Catharine Sedgwick, writer
References
- ^ "All Souls' Church Animates One With the Spirit of the Boston 'Liberals.'". New York Times. September 14, 1924. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00A16FF3C5B12738DDDAD0994D1405B848EF1D3. Retrieved 2011-05-01. "First Unitarian Church Here. All Souls' was the first Unitarian Church foundation in New York. The Unitarian Society was incorporated in 1818 ..."
- ^ The World Almanac 1892 and Book of Facts (New York: Press Publishing, 1892), p.390.
Further reading
- American Guild of Organists, New York City chapter. "All Souls Unitarian Church". http://www.allsoulsnyc.org/whoweare/history/historymain.htm. Retrieved 2007-03-30.
- Church, Forrest (October 31, 1999). "All Souls Day". http://www.allsoulsnyc.org/publications/sermons/fcsermons/all-souls-day.html. Retrieved 2007-03-30.
- Edington, Stephen D. (April 2007). "Reflections and Ruminations". Nashua UU News: pp. 2. http://www.uunashua.org/newsltrs/current.shtml
- Holst, Mary Ella. "All Souls History". http://www.allsoulsnyc.org/whoweare/history/historymain.htm. Retrieved 2007-03-30.
- Kring, Walter Donald. History of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City in 3 vols.
- Liberals Among the Orthodox: Unitarian Beginnings in New York City, 1819-1839 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974)
- Henry Whitney Bellows (Boston: Skinner House, 1979)
- Safely Onward (New York: Unitarian Church of All Souls, 1991)
External links
Categories:- Churches in Manhattan
- Unitarian Universalist churches in New York
- Religious organizations established in 1819
- Religious buildings completed in 1932
- 20th-century Unitarian Universalist church buildings
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