The First Parish Church in Dorchester, was built in 1631 by the emigrants from Dorchester, Dorset and the south west of England who founded the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts on March 30, 1630.
The first church building was an crude log cabin thatched with grass. As well as the church, the Puritans founded the first elementary school 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 on earth and the attempt to realize this in England 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.
Famous quotes containing the words parish and/or church:
“There is not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I condemn Christianity. I raise against the Christian church the most terrible accusation that any accuser has ever uttered. It is to me the ultimate conceivable corruption. It has possessed the will to the final corruption that is even possible. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity: it has turned every value into a disvalue, every truth into a falsehood, every integrity into a vileness of the soul.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)