Religion may 30 - Dictafter Philasaphy We returned from Europe in the fall of 1878, after a stay of four years. That autumn we came down to Bar Harbor and chose the site for our Oldfarm Home upon land my father had already purchased and planned upon our return to build upon. A new life began for us all, centering round this home out of which sprang the National Park and much besides. Living for four years abroad in the midst of historio scenes and reading much with my father about the human interests connected with them, I came back with a mind full of questions as to the whys and wherefores and bent toward the study of philosophy. But my aim was practical; not the study of dielectics and past systems of thought leading nowhere but to get light on human hature and the problems of existance. Reading along these lines, I become ID member of the Harvert Alumni Visiting Committee on the department of touch philosophy which brought me into/with the work that was being done there and the men who were doing it. William James's father had been an old family friend and William and Henry had been familiar figures at our house while I was growing up; John Fisko I know through my aunt, my-father's sister, who had sent abroad when I was a boy to get a first hand knowledge of Herbert Spencer and the new philosophy; and Josiah Royee was giving lectures on Spinosa and I arranged to read with him privately and talk Spinosa system over which had raised many questions in IF mind and led me for back into the Middle Ages for its origin. The Visiting Committee on philosophy at the time I went an it wk8 an interesting one, no less than the Faculty. Brooks Adams, younger brother of Charles Frances and Henry, was its chairman and its members all were really interesting both in the subject and the work. I stayed on the Visiting Committee for years and presently became its Chairman, taking part as such in the raising a fund for experimental xx psychology, a new subject then, and ultimately in the building of a hall for philosophy, which hitherto had been housed about the yard as space could be found for it and lecture hours fitted in with lectures upon other subjects. Education, a new subject then in Academic circles, ***/ was given place by President E11.1ot till independent standing could be gigen it, in the department of philosophy. And this brought me into contact with the work that was boing done to raise Emerson Hall 3. its standard and with its teacher, Prof. Hanus, who had many troubles. One evening in , Prof. Rojoo came in to see me at our home in Boston to tell me of difficulties he had got into over the building of ID new house on land he had purchased alongside of William James on Irving place, part of the old Norton property at Shady Hill which had been recently opened for development. The building of the house then well under way was oosting much more than he anticipated and he had no funds to meet the additional expense. What Xid was he to do about it. I took it under consideration and told my mother, who offered 10 very practical solution: seb she would organisw some lectures for him on the history of philosophy, it: mon and problems, to be given in different private houses in Boston, the spônsoring by whose owners of them would give them standing and commend attention. It was an admirable scheme providing means if it succeeded for Prof. Royoo to meet its obligations without borrowing and the burden of an idebtedness hanging over him. For a brief moment he questioned; could he give such a course of lectures and make them popular without lowering the dignity of his subject Philosophy. The houses The houses were obtained, the tickets cold, Royce wrote his lectures and the whole went off with much ocal. Another course was organized for the following autumn, followed by yet another in New York. The lectures were put into book form and published, and the book was dedicated gratefully to my mother, she had solved his problem. After that he used to come down and stay with us at oldfarm with other friends each summer that he could get away, having long talks with my mother and widening his horizon. Professor Royce, a born philosopher, was a remarkable man. Born in a mining town among the mountains of California,he worked his way along through the University of California, were Prof. LaConto befriended him and thence went out to Germany to study philosophy, getting a place as instructor at Harvard on his retunn, had a quaint and homely personality. no had a head like Socrates, & slow, drawling speech, and A gift of humor all his can. His memory WAR remarkable. I remember one night when we were returning home, after dining out, in my little open buckboard and were passing a meadow lit by a misty, waning moon, he started in his slow drawling utterance quoting what I had 5. what I had never ohanced to have read or heard before, Edgar Allen Poe's poom Walnine which just fitted the hour and the scene and which he quoted from beginning to end without the loss of a word f-- (find the poem) Mr. Dorr make quotation. I rember his once telling me speaking of the limitation to the imagination to things one has seen or experienced, that born as he was in the little mining town among the mountains of California and knowing no other scene he had road of the ocean and longed to see it. Ho dreamed of it but never in his dreams could ho picture it as other than a big miner's pond. Big he could make it but it had to be no other than what he knew. He loved musio of the symphonic type, understanding how it was built up, and he loved Browning who combined poetry with religion and philosophic speculation. One morning, when our house was full at Oldfarm, he came down to breakfast from the cottage on the hill where we kept rooms open always to overflow into, complained bitterly that Dr. Hodgdon, in a boisterous and mood, and had made themselves so disagreeable about - I forget precisely what now -- some favorite poem of poet of his that be was going home. He would not stand it! But breakfast over he was feeling better and by noon had forgotten it -- which shows philosophers too are but human after all. Re had a very interesting group of younger people -- friends of I own - who came to stay with us every summer in those days, climbing the mountains and going off on all-day tramps, with older people mingled and ever enchanging group, bringing now thought and interests. And we.kept open house without formerityl/ no dinner parties but teas and support only and no dress seft, no as yet, nor electric lights, my mother still the center of : e11 unt!? the 1est, interested in the younger generation, interested in people. that her face was turned always to the sunrise, hot to the cetting My father had passed on the winter following our return from , along with Bishop Brooks, the greatest preacher I have ever heard who left all dootrine behind to go to the heart of things, And our friend and neighbor, Col. John Markoe of Philadelphia, 18ap a very gallent gentleman and soldier of the Civil Wtr. Those were the closing years of a period that went back with little outward change to the end of the Civil the water was flowing fast the while beneath the bridge and a new world was in the making. In 1897 or thereabouts I got a pamphlet from a younger friend of mine at Harvard, Thoodore William Richards, a chemist of the now school which mingled experimental higher px11 older/chemistry with/mathematics, outlining a new idea of his, a continuously pulsiting Atomewhich I read, so far as I could following/ it with interest and went to talk it over with him. It had won him famo, I learned, and the offer of a chair one of the Bamous old Universities of Germany which he was at that time considering the acceptance of though Harvard hold him, but the offer of a full professorship the atom of the older schoolof ohemists had always boon a mystery to me and I was interested. His atom I Bound was a certain portion of space defined by the possesssion of certain characteristic energy -- for this was still the time when men conceived the world as made op of distinot, indestructible elements, What makes your atom expand?, I said, 'The self- repulsion of the space within it', he answered. "And what makes it contract?", I asked. 'The kick-back of external space, he answered, resisting the expansion. Then somewhere in space, I said, there must be a point of resistance equal to the force of expansion 'Yes, I he said, 'but that you can place as far off as you will. "It means however, that a stream of energy, incaluably straight, is always going out into space and never returning. " 'It does, I he said, I but that dows not enter into my calculation. For them all I need is mathematical space, space that I can deal with after the method of geometry Frankly, I have no use for matter. I I cannot imagine it in itself but only by its action upon other similar source-points of energy. Give me a point to work from, lines for measurement and an equation and I have all I want.' This, cradely stated, was the substance of his theody and it was a theory that worked so well that it brought him honor and advancement but it was not long afterward that the new roantgen rays were discovered and stop by stop the old atomic theory gave way before now theories of matter, equally incom- prehensible reducced all to motion but cannot toll what it is that moves, or why or how. This is now nearly forty years ago and the mystery only deepens. More 9. than over it is wise xp not to dog netage Our knowledge is founded on our senses and our senses tell us only about things that have been useful to man, his preservation and development to the point he has now obtained. We are in the presence of forces that we cannot estimate, and of others which doubtless we are yet unconsoious of / Nonetheless make part of ourselves and our environment. Faith, the evidence of things unseen, tells us nothing surely about facts; about principals I feel it does tell st us of eternal truth and that on it we can surely build, 10/11/2016 XFINITY Connect XFINITY Connect eppster2@comcast.net + Font Size - Re: quick question? From : Ronald Epp Tue, Oct 11, 2016 08:30 PM Subject : Re: quick question? To : Maureen Fournier Dear Maureen, While it is true that that Dorr's funeral was held at St. Saviour (though his body was down in Cambridge being cremated), it is my opinion that his religious affiliation with the Episcopalian church was a mere formality. This was the religion of his parents, the one he affirmed in 1874 on his graduation from Harvard, but after that date his belief system appears to be greatly influenced by the empiricism of his friend, philosophy-psychologist William James. On his father's death in 1893, he seems more affected by the loss at the same time of Episcopal Rector Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) whom Dorr describes as the greatest religious speaker he has known. There is also a suggestion that the Dorr family may have been drawn to the Unitarian (later Universalist) orientation so dominant in the Eliot family. And his mother's great interest in spiritualism is well explained in my book as well as Dorr's sustained interest in the largely debunking activities of the American Society for Psychical Research. I contacted St. Saviour a decade ago regarding membership data and was told that records prior to the mid-20th century had been lost. Perhaps I was misinformed so it is worth another shot if you or Anne want to pursue. Overshadowing all of this is a key principle that he articulated in his memoirs: " it is wise not to be dogmatic. Our knowledge is founded on our senses and our senses tell us only about things that have been useful to man, his preservation and development we are in the presence of forces we cannot estimate and others that we yet unconscious of which nonetheless make [up] part of ourselves and our environment. Faith, the evidence of things unseen, tells us nothing surely about facts; about principals[sic] II feel it does tell us of eternal truth and that on it we can surely build.' " Best, Ron All the Best, Ron From: "Maureen Fournier" To: "Ronald Epp" Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 4:55:32 PM Subject: quick question? Dear Ron: I wonder if you would favor me with a quick answer to a fellow ranger's question. Anne Warner has been capably leading the Missing Mansion program for a few years now she is a wonderful interpreter and visitors love her passion and enthusiasm for history (and Mr. Dorr)! She asked me today if I knew where Mr. Dorr attended church service, a question posed by one of her program participants. My immediate first somewhat educated guess was St. Savior, as I remember him attending special services there, funerals for example. But I am unsure if he was a regular attendant there. Can you give an answer to this so that Anne can respond to the visitor? Thanks in advance! Fondly, Maureen https://web.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/h/printmessage?id=392780&tz=America/New_York&xim=1 1/2 10/1/2016 XFINITY Connect XFINITY Connect eppster2@comcast.net + Font Size Re: George Dorr From : Ronald Epp Sat, Oct 01, 2016 12:38 PM Subject : Re: George Dorr To : GENE WALKER Dear Gene, Glad to hear of your interest in Mr. Dorr. You raise an interesting question, one that I pursued with considerable interest since I had spent many years in the classroom teaching the philosophy of religion. The evidence is slight. He declares that he is an Episcopalian on a statement written on his 1874 graduation from Harvard (I can send this to you if you provide me with contact information). Later he wrote of his great admiration for Trinity Church Episcopal Rector Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) who died within days of Dorr's father. While I have not been able to find documentation for church membership, it is notable that his funeral in August 1944 was held at St. Saviours Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor. Then there is the matter of his mother's interest in spiritualism, especially her reliance on mediums to "reach" her elder son following his death in 1876. Her son George later became a member of the American Society for Psychical Research, an alliance cultivated with William James. Overshadowing this formal affiliation is a principle that he articulated. Influenced by his friendship with the philosopher James, he affirmed that "it is wise not to [be] dogmatic. Our knowledge is founded on our senses and our senses tell us only about things that have been useful to man, his preservation and development.. we are in the presence of forces we cannot estimate and others that we are yet unconscious of which nonetheless make [up] part of ourselves and our environment. Faith, the evidence of things unseen, tells is nothing surely about facts; about principals [sic] I feel it does tell us of eternal truth and that on it we can surely build." (Memoirs, "Philosophy") I hope that this is helpful. I encourage you to consult Creating Acadia National Park for the larger context. All the Best, https://web.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/h/printmessage?id=390726&tz=America/New_York&xim=1 1/2 10/1/2016 XFINITY Connect Ronald Epp From: "GENE WALKER" To: "Ronald Epp" Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2016 3:20:59 PM Subject: George Dorr Steve Holmes gave me your email. I hope you don't mind. I have a son deeply interested in conservation. He and I have been studying the backgrounds of some important pioneers in the conservation movement. We have looked at some family and ethical factors that might have contributed to the importance conservation had for these people. Did George Orr have any professed or announced religious affiliation? You may have mentioned this in your new book but I have not had a chance to see it yet. Thank you. Gene C Walker HBS 1960 https://web.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/h/printmessage?id=390726&tz=America/New_York&xim= 2/2 12/3/2015 Trinity Church, Boston (Summer Street) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Coordinates: 42°21'17.86"N 71°3'35.07"W Trinity Church, Boston (Summer Street) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Trinity Church (1735-1872) was an Episcopal church in Boston, Massachusetts, located on Summer Street. [1] It housed Boston's third Anglican congregation. The Great Fire of 1872 destroyed the church building, and by 1877 the congregation moved into a new building in Back Bay. [2][3] Contents 1 History 1.1 1728-1827 1.2 1828-1872 Trinity Church on Summer St., 19th century 1.3 Ministers 2 See also 3 References 4 Image gallery 5 Further reading 6 External links Detail of 1743 map of Boston, History showing location of Trinity Church at corner of Summer St. and Bishops 1728-1827 Alley When Boston's King's Chapel became overcrowded, some members of the congregation organized a new church beginning in 1728. The newly constructed Trinity Church opened in 1735. The wood building "was 90 feet long, and 60 broad, without any external adornment. It had neither tower nor steeple, nor windows in the lower story of the front. There were 3 entrances in front unprotected by porches. The interior was composed of an arch resting upon Corinthian pillars with handsomely carved and gilded capitals. In the chancel were some paintings, considered very beautiful in their day. "[4] Ministers included Addington Davenport (1740-1746); William Hooper (1747-1767); William Walter (1767-1776); Samuel Parker (1779-1804); John Sylvester John Gardiner (1805-1830). [1][4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Church,_Boston_(Summer_Street) 1/4 12/3/2015 Trinity Church, Boston (Summer Street) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Parishioners included Peter Faneuil, Charles Apthorp, Philip Dumaresq, William Coffin, Thomas Aston Coffin, Leonard Vassall, Samuel Hale Parker. In 1789 George Washington worshipped at the church. [4][5][6] 1828-1872 George W. Brimmer designed the second Trinity Church building on Summer Street, completed in 1829. One writer described it as a "massive temple of rough-hewn granite and ponderous square front tower"[7] The "Gothic Revival-style church served as a prototype for many of the earliest New England churches in the Gothic Revival style. "[8] Ministers included George Washington Doane (1830-1833); Jonathan Wainwright (1833-1838); Manton Eastburn (1843-1869); Phillips Brooks (1869-1891). [6] After the fire of 1872 swept through downtown Boston, Trinity Church fell to ruins: "its broken tower and partly crumbled walls presenting the most picturesque ruin of all in that costly conflagration. "[7] By 1877, the congregation moved into its new Trinity Church building in Copley Square. Ministers Addington Davenport (1740-1746) William Hooper (1747-1767) William Walter (1768-1776) Samuel Parker (1779-1804) John Sylvester John Gardiner (1805-1830) George Washington Doane (1831-1832) Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright (1833-1838) Manton Eastburn (1842-1868) [9] Phillips Brooks (1869-1891) See also Trinity Church, Boston References 1. Boston Directory (http://books.google.com/books?id=nY4vAAAAYAAJ).1823. 2. Edwin Monroe Bacon. Boston: a guide book to the city and vicinity. 1922. 3. The new building in Back Bay was designed by H.H. Richardson and is now a National Historic Landmark. 4. Samuel Adams Drake. Old landmarks and historic personages of Boston. 1873. 5. Justin Winsor. The memorial history of Boston. 1886. 6. Bacon's dictionary of Boston. 1886. 7. Edwin M Bacon. Washington Street, old and new : a history in narrative form of the changes which this ancient street has undergone since the settlement of Boston. Boston : Macullar Parker Co., 1913. 8. Roger G. Reed. Building Victorian Boston: the architecture of Gridley J.F. Bryant. Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2007; p.20. 9. "Boston Pulpit". Gleasons Pictorial (Boston, Mass.) 5. 1853. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Church,_Boston_(Summer_Stre 2/4 Arlington Street Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 1 Coordinates: 42°20'0"N71°2'30"W Arlington Street Church From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Arlington Street Church is a Unitarian Universalist church located in Boston, Massachusetts. The congregation was Arlington Street Church founded in 1729 as the "Church of the Presbyterian U.S. National Register of Historic Places Strangers", becoming independent in 1787, taking on a Congregational model. The congregation's building on Arlington Street in Back Bay was built in 1861; they were previously located in downtown Boston in Federal Street Church (Boston). The Second Universalist Church of Boston merged its assets with Arlington Street Church in 1967. In SO doing, Arlington Street Church inherited the thinking of two great liberal theologians, Hosea Ballou, called "father of American Universalism," and William Ellery Channing, called "father of American Unitarianism." On May 17, 2004, the Arlington Street Church was the site of the first state-sanctioned same- sex marriage in the United States. Contents 1 The present church building Arlington St. Church, ca. 1862. Photo by J.J. 2 The church interior Hawes 3 Governance and association 4 Gallery 5 See also 6 References 7 External links The present church building As the population of Boston grew and land became scarce, Location: Arlington and landfills were created in the North End, South End, and Boylston Sts., Boston, finally the Back Bay during the 1850s. When the area around Massachusetts Federal Street became commercial, the congregation adventurously voted to move to the Back Bay. Arlington Coordinates: 42°20'0"N 71°2'30"W Street Church was the first public building to be constructed Area: 0.5 acres (0.20 ha) on the newly filled land. The present building was begun in Built: 1861 1859 and dedicated in 1861. Designed by Arthur Gilman and Gridley James Fox Bryant, architects for the Old Boston City Architectural style: Other, 18th Century Hall, its exterior was inspired by St. Martin-in-the-Fields, English London. The building is supported by 999 wooden pilings Governing body: Private driven into the mud of Back Bay, and brownstone for its NRHP Reference#: 73000313 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington_Street_Church 8/11/2012 Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 1 Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Emmanuel Episcopal Church is a historic church at 15 Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts The church was founded in 1860 as part of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Designed by architect Alexander Rice Esty and constructed in 1861, it was the first building completed on Newbury Street in Boston's newly filled Back Bay. In 1899, Frederic Crowninshield designed its sanctuary's centerpiece window, in which Piety points the way to Emmanuel's Land. The Leslie Lindsey Memorial Chapel, consecrated in 1924, is considered one of the architectural gems of Boston. The work is an all-encompassing product of and testimony to Ninian Comper's design capability, comprising the entire decorative scheme of the chapel designed by the architectural firm of Allen & Collins. Comper designed its altar, altar screen, pulpit, lectern, dozens of statues, all its furnishings and appointments, and most notably the stained glass windows. For all the other work the finest Gothic-revival style craftsmen were engaged, the project under the direction of Campbell, Aldrich and Nulty of Boston. The chapel memorializes Leslie Lindsey and Stewart Mason, her husband of ten days, who were married at Emmanuel Church and Emmanuel's Land Window depicts a perished when the Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915. scene from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Its outreach program in the early twentieth century, known as the Emmanuel Movement, was influential in the development of self -help groups for mental health, particularly for alcoholism. The church is known for hosting Emmanuel Music, which performs Bach Cantatas in their intended liturgical setting, coordinated with the Lectionary. It currently has a cooperative, interfaith partnership with the Jewish community Boston Jewish Spirit. The clergy from the two congregations regularly offer sermons for each other's congregations, and members are invited to attend the other congregation's services. Clergy Frederic Dan Huntington, founder The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz, Rector Rabbi Howard Berman, of Boston Jewish Spirit, rabbi-in-residence External links Emmanuel Church, Boston Website (http://www.emmanuel-boston.org/) History of the Lindsey Chapel (http://www.emmanuel-boston.org/LindseyChapel/LChistory.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Episcopal_Church,_Boston 8/11/2012 The Pluralism Project -- Christianity in the Boston Area Page 1 of 6 N Religious Centers Internet Links Religious Centers If the Puritan founders of Boston could return today for a Sunday morning tour of some of Boston's churches, they would be astounded by the variety of Christian forms and traditions. At an African- American Pentecostal church on Highland Avenue in Somerville, women in hats and white gloves greet worshippers for a service that lasts at least two hours and includes an altar call and perhaps a baptism with full immersion. At the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church on Brattle Street in Cambridge, the Divine Liturgy is conducted by three Orthodox priests wearing brocaded vestments in a large, elegant church built by Armenian immigrants. At the Park Street Church in downtown Boston, worshippers and tourists stream up the stairs into the vestibule and on up to the second-floor sanctuary for a traditional Protestant Sunday morning worship service. In the afternoon, Park Street's Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian Christian fellowship groups meet in the church. In Chinatown, the Chinese Evangelical Church has an early service with old-fashioned Protestant hymns sung in Cantonese and a second service in English with new Christian "soft-rock" music and instrumentation. At St. Paul's, the Episcopal cathedral church facing Boston Common, an African-American woman bishop leads the service. And Arlington Street Church, at the other end of the Common, has a thriving lesbian and gay ministry. Our Puritan visitors would be hard pressed to find a single church that closely resembles the traditions of worship they brought to the shores of New England more than 350 years ago. The Christian tradition has 2,000 years of history and many streams of tradition. In terms of church families, there are the Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox traditions, all of which have a firm presence in the Boston area. In cultural terms, Christianity is found in every part of the world and now, in the late twentieth century, there are more Christians in the Southern Hemisphere, with the burgeoning churches of Latin America and Africa, than in the Northern. Some of Christianity's cultural diversity has also become visible in the Boston area. There are Chinese churches, like the Chinese Evangelical Church and St. James Catholic Church, both in Chinatown. The Roman Catholic church also has Italian, Irish, Mexican, and Vietnamese congregations. There are African-American churches, like the vibrant Twelfth Baptist in Roxbury and St. Paul's African-American Methodist Church in Cambridge. Iglésia Bautista Central in Cambridge is one of more than forty Hispanic Pentecostal churches in the Boston area. Boston's Orthodox churches include Coptic, Ethiopian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, and Armenian Orthodox congregations. Among the most recent Christian communities are Indian immigrant congregations. A Syrian Orthodox church of Indian immigrants bought a building in Maynard. The Mar Thoma Church, a reform group that broke away from India's Syrian Orthodox in the nineteenth century, has a congregation that meets in an Episcopal church in Burlington, while a congregation of the Church of South India meets in the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Waban. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/98wrb/chri itr.htm 8/31/2005 The Pluralism Project -- Christianity in the Boston Area Page 2 of 6 For all the Christian diversity we see in the late twentieth century, it was a very particular group of Protestants, the Puritans, who first settled this part of the New England coast. The Pilgrims, a smaller "separatist" group that had broken with the Church of England, landed in 1620 and established Plymouth Colony. But it was John Winthrop and the Puritans, SO named because of their original intention not to separate from but to purify the Church of England, who settled in 1630 on the site of what became Boston. They were dissidents and reformers in England; in New England, they became the Christian "establishment." In 1629 in Salem the first congregational body was called into being by covenant. The First Congregational Society of Salem, today a Unitarian-Universalist church, stands on that site. In 1636 Harvard College was founded at Newtown, now Cambridge. The well-known words from New England's First Fruits describe the priorities of the first sixteen years and the purpose for which the college was envisioned: "After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." The oldest endowed chair at Harvard is the Hollis professor of Divinity and half of those who graduated from the college in the 17th century did indeed become ministers. Biblical languages and daily prayers were required until well into the 19th century. Though not required today, the tradition of daily morning prayers continues at Harvard's Memorial Church, and is considered the oldest regularly-meeting prayer service in North America. It is important to remember that these early Puritans envisioned a new world in which Christianity would decisively shape a whole civilization. They spoke of a "Biblical Commonwealth" in which church and state would be one, working together with zeal and discipline to the glory of God. Religion --and that meant Puritan Christianity --pervaded every aspect of life. The idea that the state and the church should be entirely separate was still unheard of in Europe. It was no different in New England except that the "established religion" was not the Church of England, as in England or in Virginia, but the Puritan Standing Order, with its particular congregationalist polity. The Cambridge Platform of 1648 spelled out some of the implications of the vision of a new Zion in America. While it was not quite a theocracy, the civil authorities were to rule by the law of the Bible. "Blasphemy, Heresie open contempt of the Word preached, Profanation of the Lord's Day" were deemed punishable civil offenses. There were early dissenters, however, including people of non-established churches as well as people who did not believe in the establishment of religion. Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 for his critique of Governor Winthrop's colony and his views on freedom of belief. He then settled in what is now Providence, Rhode Island. In 1637, Anne Hutchinson was found to be "disrupting the peace of the Commonwealth and the churches," and was tried for the heresy of a radical "covenant of grace" over and above any reliance on "works" and for having the audacity to teach her views, quote the Bible to support them, and claim divine inspiration. She was banished from Boston and took refuge in Rhode Island. Her friend Mary Dyer, a Quaker, was also run out of the Bay Colony as a dissenter. Refusing to accept expulsion, she returned repeatedly to press for her religious freedom until she was finally hung on Boston Common in 1660. The 1700s brought a change in spirit in two distinct ways. First, the rationalism and humanism of the Enlightenment began to influence the "natural religion" of public Deist leaders such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who spoke of a universal God and emphasized the enlightenment of reason. Another challenge to the "establishment" was from a very different movement beginning in the 1730s and 1740s: the sweeping religious fervor and pietism of the Great Awakening. The http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/98wrb/chriitr.htm 8/31/2005 The Pluralism Project -- Christianity in the Boston Area Page 3 of 6 formality of establishment churches was too restrictive for these new winds of spirituality. The bell of awakening resounded from the pulpits of powerful preachers like Jonathan Edwards in Northampton and George Whitefield, whose Boston circuit in 1740 included sermons at King's Chapel, South Church, and Harvard College. Whitefield denounced the dreary dryness of the churches and their preachers, saying: "I am verily persuaded, the generality of preachers talk of an unknown, unfelt Christ. And the reason why congregations have been SO dead is because dead Men preach to them!" When British troops pulled out of Boston on March 17, 1776, a day still observed in Boston as "Evacuation Day," the rector of the Anglican King's Chapel in downtown Boston went with them out of loyalty to the crown. When that pulpit was filled by James Freeman, a new liberal tradition of interpretation and preaching began to develop at King's Chapel. Thus was the Unitarian movement born. As American historian Sydney Ahlstrom put it, "The first Episcopal Church in New England became the first Unitarian Church in America." Unitarianism, born in the new spirit of the Enlightenment with its confidence in human rationality, responsibility, and virtue, developed a more humanitarian view of Christ and a less exclusivist and more universal view of God and God's dealings with humanity. The quip of the day was that the Unitarians believed in "the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of Man, and the neighborhood of Boston." This new liberalism was strongly skeptical of the populist piety of the Great Awakening. Indeed, the Harvard faculty denounced the charismatic preachers who had "taken people from their work and business, to attend their lectures and exhortations, always fraught with enthusiasm and other pernicious errors. " In the early 19th century liberal thinking got a firm foothold at Harvard with the appointment of Henry Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinity, and Harvard became one of the primary battlegrounds in the conflict between old Puritan congregationalists and the new thinking that became Unitarianism. By the mid-nineteenth century, Harvard had become one of the unmistakable standard bearers of Unitarian liberalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists carried this thinking to its logical conclusion, moving beyond the spiritual, intellectual, and institutional arena of Christianity with an interest in Asian religions and in a new spirit of universalism. The relations of "church" and "state" changed radically in the period after the revolution, with the negotiation of a new federal union and the writing of the American Constitution. The emerging American consensus prevented the "establishment" of any state religion while protecting the "free exercise" of all religions. At the state level, however, "disestablishment" did not become a reality in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1833, when state support of churches entirely ceased. Churches became wholly voluntary associations, supported by the donations and energies of their constituencies, a pattern which is being adopted now, in the late twentieth century, by such diverse traditions as Hinduism and Islam as they take root in American soil. In the 1800s the whole range of Christian churches and denominations developed in Boston --Presbyterians and Congregationalists, Methodists and Baptists, Lutherans and Swedenborgians, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. Among the many landmarks of Protestant Boston are early black churches. African slaves were brought to New England in the seventeenth century, but in 1783, in the wake of the American Revolution, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts made slavery illegal. Social equality was something else, however, and even the churches directed blacks to seats at the back of the balconies where they would not be seen. In the first decade of the 1800s the First African Baptist Church was formed. The congregation built a church, consecrated in 1806 on a street now called Smith Court on Beacon Hill. This meeting house, sometimes referred to as "the Black Faneuil Hall," resounded for ninety years with the voices of freedom and reform -- from William Lloyd Garrison to Frederick Douglass. In 1898, the African American congregation outgrew the building and sold it to an Eastern European Hassidic Jewish congregation, Anshe Lubavitch, which met there for many decades until the building http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/98wrb/chri itr.htm 8/31/2005 The Pluralism Project Christianity in the Boston Area Page 4 of 6 was purchased as an historical landmark of African American history. Indeed, it is still the oldest Black meeting house in the country. In the first decade of the 19th century, a French cleric, John Cheverus, became the first Catholic Bishop in charge of the Boston diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. He remained in Boston as a beloved leader of what was a rather small Catholic community until 1830. The first Roman Catholic church was Holy Cross Cathedral in Franklin Square, built from 1801-03. By 1820, the immigrations that would change the face of religious Boston had begun. First, there was a massive exodus from Ireland, bringing as many as 200,000 Irish immigrants a year, totaling four and a half million Irish between 1820 and 1920. Their religious world was very different from that of the Christian and Unitarian religious liberals of Boston and from the rationalism and free inquiry of the German Enlightenment. They came from a rural Irish milieu, shaped by a climate of scarcity, famine, and pessimism, and dominated by a conservative Catholic Church. As Oscar Handlin put it, "Irish Catholics could not think like their neighbors without a complete change in way of life." In the 1830s the Boston Pilot was launched, the Catholic periodical named for a journal in Dublin. In the 1840s and 50s, more than a dozen Catholic churches were founded. In the late 1800s, Italian immigrants arrived and, for a few decades, shared the North End with Eastern European Jews. The first Italian Catholic church was St. Leonard's on Hanover Street. Eventually, further down Hanover Street, the early-19th century New North Meeting House designed by Bulfinch was transformed from a congregationalist meeting house to St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church. A multitude of smaller shrines appeared in the North End and today this area still provides the energy for many summer festivals or festas--St. Jude, St. Rosalie, St. Agrippina, Madonna Della Cava, and St. Anthony -- each with its own procession and street fair. Immigration from Greece began in the 1890s. In 1895, a Greek Orthodox priest passing through Boston on his way to Georgia found enough Greek Orthodox faithful to hold what must have been the first services in Boston. By 1899, the Greek community in Boston had both a priest and regular services in a rented hall at the corner of Stuart and Tyler Streets. In 1905, the "Hellenic Association of Boston" was formed to "establish a school for teaching Greek," and in 1906, the Association purchased land and built its first church on Winchester Street. The Church of the Annunciation was consecrated on February 12, 1907. It served the community for seventeen years until Christmas Day, 1924, when the community moved to a fine new cathedral near the Museum of Fine Arts on Parker Street, where the Cathedral church remains. Syrian immigration also began in the 1880s, the term "Syria" here referring to a larger area of the Middle East including what is now Lebanon. Nearly half were Orthodox Christians under the Patriarchy of Antioch. Of the Antiochean Orthodox churches, St. George's in Boston is the oldest, founded at the turn of the century. St. John of Damascus began on Hudson Street in Boston in 1907, and in the 1930s a group of congregants from this parish began St. Mary's on Inman Street in Cambridge, next to Cambridge City Hall, the most "Americanized" of the Antiochean Orthodox churches in Boston. In addition to Orthodox churches, Syrian Christians established other distinctive congregations in Boston -- the Melkite Catholic Church of the Annunciation on the VFW Parkway, a Maronite Church called Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon near Jamaica Pond, and an Arabic Evangelical Church in West Roxbury. There are many other Orthodox Churches in the Boston area, with ethnic roots in all parts of the Eastern Orthodox world. There are Armenian Orthodox churches in Cambridge, Watertown, and Boston. While Armenians began to settle in Boston in the 1880s, the first church was not consecrated http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/98wrb/chri itr.htm 8/31/2005 The Pluralism Project -- Christianity in the Boston Area Page 5 of 6 until 1923. The large Armenian Apostolic church at 145 Brattle Street in Cambridge was built in the late 1950s and consecrated in September of 1961. The first Russian Orthodox parish began in Roxbury in 1951 and moved to its present home in Roslindale in 1969. There is the striking new Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox cathedral on the Fenway at 165 Park Drive, now part of the Orthodox Church of America. More recently, there are a number of smaller orthodox congregations from Ethiopia and India. Boston's churches provide living testimony to the history of Christianity in America. The Old Ship Church in Hingham, its roof constructed like the hull of a great ship, was built in 1681 and is the oldest continuously used house of worship in the United States. The Old South Church (Third Congregational) served as a colonial meeting house where protest and revolution were discussed. In 1775 in the bell tower of the Old North Church the sexton hung two lanterns to signal the movements of the British to Paul Revere. In Park Street Church at one corner of the Boston Common, William Lloyd Garrison gave his first major anti-slavery speech in 1829. The Y.M.C.A. movement was born in Boston in 1854. In 1879, the First Church of Christ Scientist was gathered by Mary Baker Eddy and before long its first building, the "Mother Church," became the headquarters of the international Christian Science movement. The churches of Boston have also given visible evidence of the increasing diversity of the Christian tradition in New England. Especially in the past twenty years, this diversity has become evident in the great number of multi-congregational churches. It is this that would perhaps astound our Puritan visitors most -- the growing number of diverse ministries and congregations sharing a common church space. For example, at Tremont Baptist Temple downtown there are Cambodian, Ethiopian, and Hispanic ministries. In the city of Cambridge, the Cambridgeport Baptist Church shares its old brick building with the Iglésia Bautista Central, an Hispanic Pentecostal congregation. The North Prospect United Church of Christ on Massachusetts Avenue near Porter Square shares its building with a Korean congregation, the Harvard Korean United Church of Christ. And in the heart of Central Square on Franklin Street, the signboard of the Cambridge Church of the Nazarene gives clear testimony to the new face of Christianity in Boston: English Congregation Sunday Services Sunday School 9:45 AM Worship 10:45 Haitian Congregation Sunday School 10:00 AM Worship 11:00 CCFC Afternoon Worship 1:45 Portuguese Congregation 5:30 Chinese Bible Study Friday Evenings 7:00 By the late 19th century there were SO many churches in Boston that inter-church cooperation became a necessity. Today Boston can look back upon a long history of ecumenical relations among the churches, relations given institutional expression today in the active work of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. And now in the last decade of the 20th century, as Boston becomes increasingly multireligious, local clergy councils and councils of churches throughout the Boston area are grappling with how to reconfigure themselves to take into account the new religious reality of their communities. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/98wrb/chri itr.htm 8/31/2005 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS American Society of Church History The Second Great Awakening and the New England Social Order Author(s): Richard D. Birdsall Source: Church History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Sep., 1970), pp. 345-364 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3163469 Accessed: 27-02-2017 18:40 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3163469?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. 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