Federal Street Church (Boston)

The Federal Street Church (established 1729) was a congregational unitarian church in Boston, Massachusetts. Organized in 1727, the originally presbyterian congregation changed in 1786 to "Congregationalism", then adopted the liberal theology of its fifth Senior Minister, William Ellery Channing, (1780-1842). For most of the 18th century the church was known as the Long Lane Meeting-House. In 1788, state leaders met in the relatively spacious building to determine Massachusetts' ratification of the United States Constitution. Thereafter the church renamed itself the Federal Street Church in honor of the event. In 1803, it called William Ellery Channing, (1780-1842), as its minister who defined "Unitarian Christianity" and launched the Unitarian movement, making the Federal Street Church one of the first to define itself as Unitarian.

The congregation began as a group of Scots-Irish Calvinists gathered in a converted barn on Long Lane in Boston on November 15, 1729. The inhospitable residents of Boston dubbed them derogatorily as “The Church of the Presbyterian Strangers,” and the name stuck. "Their first house of worship was a barn, which sufficed until they were able, in 1744, to build a neat wooden edifice. Governor Hancock presented the bell and vane which had belonged to the Old Brattle Street Meeting-house." "The Presbyterian was exchanged for the Congregational form of government, by a unanimous vote, August 6, 1786.

"It was the Federal St. Church where the Massachusetts convention congregated, when debating and deciding on the confederating constitution of the United States in 1788; and from that time, the name of the street was changed from Long Lane to Federal Street."

William Ellery Channing, (1780-1842), often known as "The Father of American Unitarianism", served as Senior Minister at the Federal Street Church from 1803 to 1842. Under his leadership the congregation prospered. To accommodate the crowds that Channing drew, the third meeting house, designed by the noted architect Charles Bulfinch, was built in 1809 on the Federal Street site. At the time, Bulfinch's design received mixed reviews. "The lightest and most graceful steeple in Boston is in Federal Street, of the Gothic order. We believe the Federal Street Church is the first attempt at this style of architecture in Massachusetts, and one of the first in the United States. It has great faults, and, indeed, few merits except the steeple."

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