312 FILLMORE STREET, STATEN ISLAND, NY 10301 PHONE: 718-447-2204
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Sunday Services resumed on September 8th, with a virtual option via Zoom. Find news about us on the Events and Services page, on Instagram and Facebook, and the Friday newsletter to Members and Friends.
Many Staten Islanders know about Robert Gould Shaw and are familiar with names like Curtis High School, the Goodhue Center, Jewett Avenue but do they know that these famous names date back to the families who founded our church, the Unitarian Church of Staten Island?
Many of the founders had roots in New England where they were active in abolitionist groups. George William Curtis and George Francis Shaw, both from New England, ended up on Staten Island, where they became prominent members of the fledgling Unitarian Church of the Redeemer, founded as the result of the merger of two independent liberal churches in West Brighton and Stapleton. Both George Francis Shaw and George William Curtis were Transcendentalists. They were influenced by the Boston Unitarian ministers, William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker. Channing and Parker were considered radical by contemporary New England Unitarians, yet the Transcendentalist values they embraced remain surprisingly modern: dedication to racial and gender equality, and social justice. Two famous quotes by prominent Americans that are derived from sermons by Parker: Martin Luther King: "The arc of the moral universe..." and Abraham Lincoln: "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..," espouse the deep beliefs of Transcendentalism. Its influence on the Church of the Redeemer, today known as the Unitarian Church of Staten Island, stretches in an unbroken line from the abolition of slavery to the Black Lives Banner that hangs on the exterior wall of our Parish Hall. |