Well, welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

Last time we were together, we were talking about what happened to the Puritans.

And I was mentioning at the very end of that that one of the things that

negatively happened to the Puritans and caused the Puritans

to go away, as it were, was a person.

And that was the person, William Ellery Channing.

Well, let's go back and talk about him and see what some of his contributions

were. Sadly, these were not positive contributions, but he was very influential not only

on New England Christianity but also setting a new charter

for American Christianity.

William Ellery Channing was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1780. By the time he was 18 years old, he had

graduated from Harvard. Now that was fairly typical for young men when they were in that 12 to 15 age

range to go to college and then be there for four years or so and in Channing's case he graduates with a

degree in hand from Harvard in 1798. Five years later we find him at the Federal Street Church in Boston.

He takes to the pulpit in 1803,

and he remains in that church, a single church for almost 40 years

until the time of his death in 1842.

Towards the end of his life and his health was failing,

he pulled away from some of his pastoral duties, but that was his single charge

for his professional career. Early on, he began to disagree with his background and with the from those emphasis. We see this early in his career, but he doesn't publish some of these things

until the late 1810s. In 1819, he publishes a very crucial piece simply called Unitarian Christianity. And in that piece he identifies

and defines Unitarianism. Unitarianism, of course, is the belief in the singular God, the one God, which of course is there in

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