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All Souls History
The
Middle Years:
All
Souls and Henry Whitney Bellows: Vision, Pragmatism, Activism
When Henry
Whitney Bellows was called to All Souls straight from Harvard
Divinity School in 1839, he was embarking on a partnership that
would last 43 years and would prove to be extraordinary.
For one thing,
the match of minister and congregation was a good one. Bellows,
a New Englander who was a pragmatist even before the founding
of the philosophical movement of that name, became the quintessential
19th-century New Yorker - activist rather than theologian, organizer
rather than scholar, more chief executive officer than academician.
But Bellows
served not only his congregation. He also served the nation, the
city of New York and the Unitarian denomination. He stepped onto
the national stage in May 1861, when he founded the United States
Sanitary Commission, a volunteer organization modeled after Florence
Nightingale's life-saving work in the Crimea. The Sanitary Commission
would treat disease in army camps, deliver medical supplies to
the battlefields and feed, treat and care for countless thousands
of soldiers during the course of the Civil War. Of equal importance,
it would channel and organize citizens throughout the Union into
an effective and efficient organization of support.
In New York
City, Bellows played an active role in the advancement of culture.
Among the most successful fund-raising efforts on behalf of the
Sanitary Commission were the "Metropolitan Fairs" held
in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and New York. The New York Fair
in 1865, led by All Souls member Caroline Kirkland, author, editor
and Bellows colleague, earned over $1 million. It was noticed
that one of the most popular displays at that fair was the art
from the private collections of wealthy New Yorkers. As a result,
soon after the war, the Union League Club, which Bellows helped
organize, established a committee to examine the potential for
creating a public art institution. From the vision and actions
of that committee emerged the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bellows'
accurate assessment of the needs, problems and course of action
of such an effort is quoted in several histories of the museum.
Finally,
Bellows is responsible for the effective organization of the Unitarian
denomination. The Liberal Christian had been published
in New York for many years under his editorship, so he had long
been well known in denomination circles. In 1865, after the close
of the war, he called a meeting in New York from which evolved
the "National Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian
Churches." He served as president of this denominational
body from its formation until 1880, two years before his death.
Bellows spent
his entire adult life among this congregation, which included
women and men such as William Cullen Bryant, poet and editor of
the Evening Post; Peter Cooper, businessman and founder
of Cooper Union; Herman Melville, during his years of personal
hardship; Louisa Lee Schuyler, Sanitary Commission organizer and
founder of the Bellevue School of Nursing; Dorman C. Eaton, civil
service reformer and author; Nathaniel Currier, who (with his
partner, Ives) created a new standard of pictorial excellence;
as well as important bankers and businessmen. Together, these
people created a myriad of city institutions, led reform movements,
and erected a new church, All Souls' third building, at Fourth
Avenue and 20th Street.
Bellows preached
30 sermons a year, and later in life honors came to him from Harvard,
where he served on the Board of Overseers and delivered the prestigious
Divinity School Address. When he died, the congregation commissioned
the Augustus Saint-Gaudens bas relief that dominates the south
wall of the chancel today.
Because Bellows
was the leader of a great congregation, one could ask "who
led whom?" The question hardly matters, because in his activity
is All Souls' own history. What he did, we did. What we did, he
supported. It was an extraordinary meeting of congregation and
minister who continually worked together.
By Mary-Ella
Holst, Director of Religious Education Emerita and member of All
Souls.
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