Park Street Church is a stop on Boston's Freedom Trail. The founding of the church is dated to 1804 when the "Religious Improvement Society" began weekly meetings with lectures and prayer.[3] The society organized the church on February 27, 1809. Twenty-six local people, mostly former members of the Old South Meeting House, wanted to create a church with orthodox Trinitarian theology.
Park St. Church, 1904
The church's cornerstone was laid on May 1, 1809, and construction was completed by the end of the year, under the guidance of Peter Banner (architect), Benajah Young (chief mason) and Solomon Willard (woodcarver). Banner took inspiration from several early pattern books, and his design is reminiscent of a London church by Christopher Wren. Park Street church's steeple rises to 217 feet (66m), and remains a landmark visible from several Boston neighborhoods.[4] The church was the tallest building in the United States from 1810 to 1828. For much of the early 19th century, it was the first landmark travelers saw when approaching Boston.
The church is next to the historic Granary Burying Ground and was site of granary building for which the burial grounds was named. The first worship service was held on January 10, 1810. The church became known as "Brimstone Corner", in part because of the fervent missionary character of its preaching,[5] and in part because of the storage of gunpowder during the War of 1812.[6]
Park Street Church has a strong tradition of missions, evangelical doctrine, and application of Scripture to social issues, as well as a notable list of firsts. Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837) served as the first pastor of the Park Street Church and preached a famous series of Sunday evening sermons attacking the New Divinity.[7] In 1816, Park Street Church joined with Old South Church to form the City Mission Society, a social service society to serve Boston's urban poor.
The Park Street steeple in 2017
In 1826, Edward Beecher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and son of Lyman Beecher, a notable abolitionist, became pastor of the church. On July 4, 1829, William Lloyd Garrison delivered his Address to the Colonization Society at Park Street, making his first major public statement against slavery.[8] From 1829–1831, Lowell Mason, a notable Christian composer, served as choirmaster and organist. The church hosted the debut of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", also known as "America", by Samuel Francis Smith on July 4, 1831.[9] Park Street also played a role in founding the first "Homeland" or American Mission to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), where that church still stands; the Handel and Haydn Society started there. Benjamin E. Bates, an industrialist who founded Bates College in Maine in 1855, was a Sunday school teacher and active attendant of Park Street in the mid-19th century. In 1857–58, evangelist Charles Finney led a revival at Park Street which led the pastor, Andrew Leete Stone, to experience a spiritual awakening.
In 1974, the church built a Church Ministries Building at 1 Park Street beside the main edifice. Designed in a modernist architectural style by Stahl/Bennett Associates with a concrete structure, window-walls and purplish brick facing, the building is described by the Boston Preservation Alliance as follows: "The Church Ministries Building Addition to Park Street Church breaks dramatically with its surroundings in style, while relating coherently to it in materials. The building rises with large panes of glass stretching across its narrow facade and handsome red brick covering the rest of the building. The ground floor is glass and looks out to the Granary Burial Ground beyond the building to the rear".[10]
In the 1990s, the church purchased the 2 and 3 Park Street buildings from Houghton-Mifflin.[11]
Today
Church interior, 2007
The church still holds to its Statement of Faith adopted by the church in 1877 and readopted in 2003.[12] After 200 years, the church is still engaged in current social issues. For example, Park Street Church helped launch a privatehigh school in Hyde Park, Boston Trinity Academy, in 2002, to help address the educational needs of inner-city Boston (more than 70% of its students are on scholarship and more than 50% are minorities); it hosts many English as a Second Language classes during the week;[13] it has and supports ministries for the homeless, such as Boston Rescue Mission, and Park Street's HOME ministry on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings;[14] it partners with crisis pregnancy centers Daybreak Pregnancy Resource Center and A Woman's Concern; it provides English classes for international students and immigrants. There are many ministry focus areas: children and teens, young adults, undergraduates, international and graduate students, as well as introductory classes on Christianity and adult education classes. There is also a ministry called Alive in Christ, an affiliate of Hope for Wholeness.
Park Street is an international congregation, with members from more than 60 countries. Park Street believes strongly in education integrated with faith, so it is associated with Park Street Kids, Park Street School, and Boston Trinity Academy, as well as partnering with Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for undergraduate and graduate ministries, and a long-time partnership with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Boston Mayor Menino[15] announced February 27, 2009, as Park Street Day in honor of its bicentennial.
Since his tenure began in 2020, current Senior Minister Mark Booker has been the center of disagreements with many of his staff and church leaders.[16] Things came to a head with the firing of Associate Minister Michael Balboni, the public sharing of internal documents alleging spiritual abuse, and a months long process to petition a special meeting to review the Board of Elders' decision to fire Balboni.[17] In a non-binding vote Booker garnered the support of 2/3 of members present at the 2024 Annual Meeting.[18] The resignations of three additional ministers and testimonies of former ministers resulted in a majority of members present at a subsequent meeting rejecting the assertion that Mark Booker is not disqualified from pastoral ministry.[19] Many of the church leadership remain steadfast in their support for Mark as their Senior Minister.[20]
Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS) is an evangelical seminary with its main campus in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and three other campuses in Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Jacksonville, Florida. According to the Association of Theological Schools, Gordon-Conwell ranks as one of the largest evangelical seminaries in North America in terms of total number of full-time students enrolled.
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became writers or ministers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.
Fuller Theological Seminary is a non-denominational / multi-denominational Evangelical Christian seminary in Pasadena, California, with regional campuses in the western United States. It is egalitarian in nature.
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is an American association of Evangelical Christian denominations, organizations, schools, churches, and individuals, member of the World Evangelical Alliance. The association represents more than 45,000 local churches from about 40 different Christian denominations and serves a constituency of millions. The mission of the NAE is to honor God by connecting and representing Evangelicals in the United States.
The Old South Meeting House is a historic Congregational church building located at the corner of Milk and Washington Streets in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston, Massachusetts, built in 1729. It gained fame as the organizing point for the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. Five thousand or more colonists gathered at the Meeting House, the largest building in Boston at the time.
Harold John Ockenga was a leading figure of mid-20th-century American Evangelicalism, part of the reform movement known as "Neo-Evangelicalism". A Congregational minister, Ockenga served for many years as pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also a prolific author on biblical, theological, and devotional topics. Ockenga helped to found the Fuller Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as well as the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).
The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference is a Congregationalist denomination in the United States. It is the most conservative and oldest Congregationalist denomination in America following the dissolution of the Congregational Christian Churches. It is a member of the World Evangelical Congregational Fellowship and the National Association of Evangelicals.
Tremont Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts.
Edward Beecher was an American theologian, the son of Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher.
The Congregational Library & Archives is an independent special collections library and archives. It is located on the second floor of the Congregational House at 14 Beacon Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The Library was founded in 1853 by a gathering of Congregational ministers and has since evolved into a professional library and archives that holds more than 250,000 items, predominantly focused on 18th to 21st century American Congregational history. The Library's reading room is free and open to the public for research but the Library's stacks are closed and book borrowing privileges are extended exclusively to members.
First Church in Boston is a Unitarian Universalist Church founded in 1630 by John Winthrop's original Puritan settlement in Boston, Massachusetts. The current building, located on 66 Marlborough Street in the Back Bay neighborhood, was designed by Paul Rudolph in a modernist style after a fire in 1968. It incorporates part of the earlier gothic revival building designed by William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt in 1867. The church has long been associated with Harvard University.
The Brattle Street Church (1698–1876) was a Congregational and Unitarian church on Brattle Street in Boston, Massachusetts.
Thomas Kinnicut Beecher was a Congregationalist preacher and the principal of several schools. Also a minister, his father, Lyman Beecher, moved the family from Beecher's birthplace of Litchfield, Connecticut, to Boston, Massachusetts, and Cincinnati, Ohio, by 1832.
The Boston Seaman's Friend Society or Seafarer's Friend is a charitable religious organization based in Boston, Massachusetts. It aims to improve the welfare of mariners.
Arcturus Zodiac Conrad (1855-1937) was an American Christian author, theologian, and pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts from 1905 to 1937.
Andrew Leete Stone was an author, Civil War chaplain, and pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Paul E. Toms was an American author and pastor. He was pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts from 1969 to 1989 and also served as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and chairman of World Relief.
James Chaplin Beecher, was an American Congregationalist minister and Colonel for the Union Army during the American Civil War. He came from the Beecher family, a prominent 19th century American religious family.
Congregationalism in the United States consists of Protestant churches in the Reformed tradition that have a congregational form of church government and trace their origins mainly to Puritan settlers of colonial New England. Congregational churches in other parts of the world are often related to these in the United States due to American missionary activities.
↑ Old, Hughes Oliphant. The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church: Volume 6, The Modern Age. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007: 164.
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