First Parish Church of Dorchester
Encyclopedia
Dorchester, Massachusetts
Dorchester is a dissolved municipality and current neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is named after the town of Dorchester in the English county of Dorset, from which Puritans emigrated and is today endearingly nicknamed "Dot" by its residents. Dorchester, including a large...
on March 30, 1630.
The first church building was a crude log cabin thatched with grass. As well as the church, the Puritans founded the first elementary school
The Mather School
The Mather School is the oldest public elementary school in North America. It is located in the Dorchester region of Boston, Massachusetts and was named after Richard Mather...
supported by public money in the New World. They held the first town meeting at the church, which determined policy through open and frequent discussion. In all of this they were inspired by the ideal of the Kingdom of God
Kingdom of God
The Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven is a foundational concept in the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.The term "Kingdom of God" is found in all four canonical gospels and in the Pauline epistles...
on earth and the attempt to realize this in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in the time of the Rev. John White. The church is referred to as a 'Foundation Stone of the Nation".
The First Parish Church of Dorchester is now a Unitarian Universalist church.
External links
- First Parish Church in Dorchester Website
- First Parish Church (Dorchester, Mass.) Records 1636-1981 Guide to the Collection
- Construction photos of the reconstruction of the steeple, November 2006
- Boston Globe article, March 27, 2006, on the installation of Rev. Arthur R. Lavoie as the 26th minister.