Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Cities

Boston

Also Known As Bostonian
United States

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Boston was founded in 1630 by Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose leader John Winthrop described the venture as a city upon a hill bound by covenant. Mary Baker Eddy founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston in 1879, and the city's Mother Church remains the administrative center of Christian Science worldwide. Boston was also a seedbed of American Unitarianism, as many of the colony's Congregationalist churches, including King's Chapel, adopted Unitarian theology in the decades after independence.

Facts
Origins
Founded
Founded in 1630 by English Puritans as the principal town of the Massachusetts Bay Colony 1
Origin of the Name
Named for Boston, Lincolnshire, in England, itself traditionally explained as a contraction of "St Botolph's Town" after the Anglo-Saxon saint Botolph; several of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Puritan founders, including John Cotton, had ties to the Lincolnshire town. 1
Attributions
Tradition
Congregational Puritanism as the established order of the colony, out of which Unitarianism and later Transcendentalism came; Catholicism, from Irish and Italian immigration; and Christian Science, whose Mother Church stands in the city 2
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
English throughout, the Bay Psalm Book of 1640 being the first book printed in British North America 3
History
Notable Development
Aboard the ship Arbella before landing in 1630, Puritan leader John Winthrop preached that the new settlement would be as "a city upon a hill", a phrase drawn from the Sermon on the Mount that became attached to Boston's founding self-understanding. 1
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A City Upon a Hill, and Who Was Driven Out of It

John Winthrop's address to the Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1630 described the venture as a covenant: the settlers had bound themselves to God and to each other, and if they failed, the eyes of all people would be on them, for they would be as a city upon a hill. The phrase has since been used in American political speech to mean an example to be admired. Winthrop meant it as a warning about being watched.

The colony that followed was a congregational one, in which each church covenanted its own members and full membership required an account of a personal experience of grace given before the congregation. That standard produced its own crisis when the children of members could not supply such an account, resolved by the compromise of 1662 that allowed a partial membership.

It was not a tolerant society and did not claim to be. Roger Williams was banished for arguing that the civil magistrate had no authority over conscience, and founded Rhode Island on that principle. Anne Hutchinson was tried and expelled in 1638 for holding meetings in which she said that most of the colony's ministers preached a covenant of works. Four Quakers were hanged on Boston Common between 1659 and 1661, among them Mary Dyer, who returned after banishment knowing what would follow. Boston's ministers were also closely involved in the witchcraft trials at Salem in 1692, and one of them wrote both in support and, afterwards, in caution.

Unitarians, Christian Science, and a Newspaper Investigation

The Puritan churches of Boston changed from within. King's Chapel revised its prayer book in 1785 to remove the Trinity, the appointment of a liberal to the Harvard divinity chair in 1805 split the establishment, and by 1819 William Ellery Channing was preaching a sermon that gave the emerging position its name and its programme. Most of the old Congregational churches of eastern Massachusetts became Unitarian, and Transcendentalism grew out of the same soil a generation later when Emerson decided that even that was too much church.

Mary Baker Eddy published Science and Health in 1875 and organised the Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston four years later. Its central claim is that sickness is an error of belief and that healing comes through understanding the divine, and its structure is unusual: the Manual she wrote governs the whole denomination, services consist of readings from the Bible and her book by elected readers rather than sermons by clergy, and the Mother Church in Boston is the administrative centre for branches worldwide. The Christian Science Monitor, founded in 1908, became a respected daily paper. The reliance on prayer rather than medicine has produced repeated litigation in the United States, particularly where children have died.

Immigration made Boston an Irish and Italian Catholic city in the nineteenth century. In 2002 the Boston Globe published an investigation of how the archdiocese had handled priests accused of abusing children, which forced the resignation of its cardinal and set off inquiries in many countries.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Boston directly: "World's Crisis office was removed to Boston, where it has remained ever since." Also records the formal organization of the Advent Christian Association at a Worcester, Massachusetts convention on..."

Source Advent Christian Association (McClintock And Strong's Cyclopedia)John McClintock and James Strong

This source names Boston directly: "Unitarian Association was organized in Boston in 1825, drawing together New England Congregationalist churches that had rejected the doctrine of the Trinity in favour of belief in the single..."

Source The Unitarians and the UniversalistsDavid Robinson

This source names Boston directly: "began holding weekly meetings in her Boston home to discuss recent sermons, and the meetings grew to include dozens of colonists, women and men alike."

This source names Boston directly: "winning investigative series by the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, opening January 6, 2002 with the report "Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years." The Globe found the Archdiocese of Boston had..."

Source The Boston Globe Spotlight Team's Investigation of Clergy Sexual AbuseThe Boston Globe Spotlight Team (Walter V. Robinson, Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, Matt Carroll)

This source names Boston directly: "payout since the scandal broke in Boston in 2002."

This source names Boston directly: "Street Meeting House, part of the Boston African American National Historic Site, carries direct institutional authority as the federal agency responsible for the site's historical designation and..."

This source names Boston directly: "in direct response to the scandal the Boston Globe's Spotlight investigation had made public that year."

Source Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (the Dallas Charter)United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

This source names Boston directly: "illustrated poem, first published in Boston in December 1893 with eleven images she developed in close collaboration with the artist James F."

This source names Boston directly: "by the American Unitarian Association, Boston"; and that it was renamed The Unitarian Register in 1957 before merging with The Universalist Leader in 1961."

Source Christian Register (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Christian Science was founded in Boston, and the Mother Church there remains its administrative center.

This source names Boston directly: "A report by Meghan Dorney in The Boston Pilot, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, published 26 September 2003, on Suffolk Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney's approval of the..."

Source Church Abuse Settlement FinalizedMeghan Dorney, The Boston Pilot

This source names Boston directly: "Old North Meeting House in Boston alongside his father Increase Mather for most of his life, and describing Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) as his most widely distributed work, a seven book..."

Source Cotton Mather (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Boston directly: "June 2002, in direct response to the Boston Globe's Spotlight investigation earlier that year."

Source Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (the Dallas Charter)United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

This source names Boston directly: "of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."

This source names Boston directly: "I, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, showing the storm god Susanoo, identified in the print by the syncretic name Gozu Tenno, slaying the eight headed serpent Yamata no Orochi."

This source names Boston directly: "Ty Burr's Boston Globe review, published 2016-01-28 following the film's Sundance premiere, describing Holy Hell's account of Buddhafield, its leader Michel (also called Andreas or Jaime Gomez), and..."

This source names Boston directly: "University and then, in 1953, at Boston University, the first Black person to hold such a position at a majority white American university."

This source names Boston directly: "held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, describing the two deities stirring the primordial waters with the sacred spear Ame-no-Nuboko to form the Japanese islands."

This source names Boston directly: "This Boston Globe obituary for Jose Arguelles is a straightforward piece of journalism reporting his death in 2011 at age seventy-two, and it is useful for exactly what an obituary is good for..."

This source names Boston directly: "A wire report carried by the Boston Globe, published 9 November 2015, on U.S."

This source names Boston directly: "Christine Legere's report for The Boston Globe, published June 4, 2009, on the Twelve Tribes community's property holdings and expansion plans in Plymouth, Massachusetts, naming a worldwide..."

This source names Boston directly: "(1897) printing rather than the first (Boston, December 1893), so this atlas relies on it for physical bibliographic detail and relies on the Longyear Museum's own account for first edition and..."

This source names Boston directly: "payout since the scandal emerged in Boston in 2002."

This source names Boston directly: "Old North Meeting House in Boston alongside his father Increase Mather for most of his life."

Source Cotton Mather Bibliography (Congregational Library And Archives)Congregational Library and Archives staff

Mary Baker Eddy founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston in 1879.

This source names Boston directly: "that broke from Calvinist orthodoxy in Boston and Concord in the early nineteenth century."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Boston directly: "into how the Archdiocese of Boston handled child sexual abuse by its clergy, built from the archdiocese's own personnel records and grand jury testimony gathered under a single justice grand jury..."

This source names Boston directly: "a fourth by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."

This source names Boston directly: "in 1850, held a pastoral position in Boston between 1855 and 1858, and edited The World's Crisis and Second Advent Messenger from 1856 to 1876."

Source Miles Grant (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Boston directly: "Rezendes previously shared in the Boston Globe Spotlight team's 2003 Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Catholic clergy abuse, already carried in this atlas."

This source names Boston directly: "Groover Senior's explanation from the Boston Globe of 10 February 2004 that the church's first call is to hear the voice of God in Scripture."

This source names Boston directly: "It runs food and clothing programs for the homeless through its Boston chapter, has funded welfare, community service and medical equipment for a partner foundation in Cote d'Ivoire, and has..."

This source names Boston directly: "A sustained investigative series by the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, opening with the January 6, 2002 report "Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years" on Father John Geoghan, who was moved..."

Source The Boston Globe Spotlight Team's Investigation of Clergy Sexual AbuseThe Boston Globe Spotlight Team (Walter V. Robinson, Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, Matt Carroll)

This source names Boston directly: "first issued April 20, 1821 in Boston under editor David Reed, four years before the American Unitarian Association itself was founded in 1825."

Source Christian Register (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Boston directly: "Harvard's Peabody Museum and private Boston collectors."

This source names Boston directly: "Hawthorne's 1850 novel, set in Puritan Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1642 and 1649, built around the colony's ministers and its congregational practice of public church discipline..."

Source The Scarlet Letter (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Boston directly: "Reed and Fields, and is set in Puritan Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1642 and 1649, built around the colony's ministers and its practice of public church discipline and shaming."

Source The Scarlet Letter (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Boston directly: "into how the Archdiocese of Boston handled child sexual abuse by its clergy."

This source names Boston directly: "that March, the paper relocated to Boston in February 1856, where it remained for the rest of the century."

Source Advent Christian Association (McClintock And Strong's Cyclopedia)John McClintock and James Strong

This source names Boston directly: "Unitarian Universalist Association's Boston headquarters, and minister and credentialed religious educator as its named roles, a continuously revised, community edited tertiary encyclopedia entry..."

This source names Boston directly: "the American Unitarian Association in Boston," was renamed "The Unitarian Register" in 1957 "because it was becoming less and less focused on Christianity," and that "in 1961, the journal merged..."

Source UU World (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Boston directly: "held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."

Contained In

Contains

Sacred To

Puritan founding and the later Unitarian and Christian Science movements all grew from the city's Christian congregations.

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Errand into the Wilderness
Perry Miller, Harvard University Press, 1956
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Mary Baker Eddy, First published Boston; The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1875
Manual of The Mother Church
Mary Baker Eddy, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, 1895
Article 105 of the Constitution of Greece, on the regime of the Athos peninsula
Hellenic Republic
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