Cradley Heath Baptist Church, also known as Four-ways Baptist Church, was the first Church of any denomination to build a chapel in Cradley Heath, West Midlands. The first meeting was in December 1833, in Granger's Lane. Later, land was bought near the Four-Ways end of the High Street, and a meeting place was built. The site was expanded, and two further buildings were built, the last in 1904. This is now a listed building.
The church is noted for appointing Britain's first recorded black West Indian pastor, Rev. George Cosens (or Cousens), in 1837.
Read more about Cradley Heath Baptist Church: Origins, History, Buildings, The Present Day, Photographs
Famous quotes containing the words heath, baptist and/or church:
“We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick ... the trade union for the nation as a whole.”
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“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
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