First Church in Boston

First Church in Boston is a Unitarian Universalist Church (originally Christian Trinitarian) founded in 1630 by John Winthrop's original Puritan settlement in Boston, Massachusetts. The current building is on 66 Marlborough Street in Boston.

History

The church was created in 1630 when the settlers on the "Arbella" arrived in what is now Charlestown, Massachusetts. [Ellis, Arthur B. (1881). "History of the First Church in Boston, 1630-1880", pp. 1-3. Boston: Hall and Whiting.] Two years later they constructed a meeting house across the Charles River near what is now State Street in Boston. From 1633 to 1652 John Mather was a teaching elder at the church and helped to establish the foundation of the Congregationalist Church. In the 1700s, Charles Chauncy (1705-1787) was a minister at First Church for sixty years [Ellis (1881), p. 191.] and gained a reputation for opposing what he believed was emotionalism during the Great Awakening of Jonathan Edwards. [Ellis (1881), pp. 202-03.] The church eventually transformed into a theologically liberal Unitarian Universalist congregation by the mid-nineteenth century and moved to Back Bay in Boston.

After a fire in 1972, First Church and Second Church merged and built a new building in Back Bay. Second Church had previously broken off from First Church in 1649 [Bacon, Dolores (1906). "Old New England Churches and Their Children", pp. 27-28. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.] and was home to Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, and Samuel Mather from 1664 to 1741.

References

External links

* [http://www.firstchurchboston.org/ First Church in Boston website]
* [http://www.firstchurchboston.org/index.php?/history/item/141/ 1630 Christian Covenant of First Church in Boston]