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All Souls History
The
Early Years
The
Boston Religion Takes Root in New York City
The founding
of All Souls dates from its charter in 1819, the year that Lucy
Channing Russel invited about 40 friends and neighbors into her
home in lower Manhattan to hear a talk by her brother, William
Ellery Channing, minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston.
Channing was en route to Baltimore, Maryland, where at the ordination
of Jared Sparks he would preach a sermon titled, "Unitarian
Christianity". Called "one of the great sermons of the
American church," this 90-minute address achieved virtual
best-seller status by going through five printings in six weeks.
In it, Channing said that the Bible must be interpreted by reason
and that it "proclaims the unity of God. . . We object to
the doctrine of the Trinity."
The message
of the sermon was well received. When Channing stopped again in
New York on his way home from Baltimore, "he was a famous
man," says Walter Kring in his history of our congregation,
Liberals Among the Orthodox: Unitarian Beginnings in New York
City 1819-1839. On his return trip, Channing spoke three times
in the largest hall available for rental; each time hundreds of
persons were turned away for lack of space.
When Channing
returned to Boston, it was left to the lay people, New Englanders
primarily, to found a congregation, build a church and call a
minister. Catharine Maria Sedgwick, whose career as a novelist
would emerge from the request of her brother to write a tract
in defense of liberal religion, described the early congregation
as "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."
All Souls'
first church, built before a minister could be found to leave
the stability of New England and risk a career with a struggling
congregation, was located on Chambers Street between the Broad
Way and Church Street. It was dedicated on January 21, 1821, and
would be the home of the congregation until 1844. William Ware,
our first minister, was installed on December 18, 1821. It had
taken just two years from the first gathering in Mrs. Russel's
drawing room to establish "the Boston religion" in the
burgeoning mercantile hub of the young nation, New York City.
By Mary-Ella
Holst, Director of Religious Education Emerita and member of All
Souls.
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The
Middle Years
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Modern Era
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