Description:
A beautiful Autumn view of the Arlington Street Church and surrounding Back Bay neighborhood of Boston from the Public Garden. The bright Fall colored leaves make a bright contrast against the dark looming clouds above.
Old South Church Interior - Boston
Description:
The Old South Church in Boston was built in 1874. It is a church of the United Church of Christ in Boston and is also home to one of the oldest religious communities in the US.
Deep green ceilings with hanging chandeliers and rich brown pews adorn the interior of the Old South Church in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. The walls are filled this golds and beautiful stained glass works.
Old South Church is a beautiful stone church with northern Italian gothic revival architecture. One can't miss this beautiful site when walking down Boylston Street in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood.
Church Of The Advent 2
Description:
The Church of the Advent was born in 1844 from the inspiration of a group of Bostonians who desired to establish a new parish that would put into practice the ideals of the then-11-year-old Oxford Movement, which was attracting attention, converts, and controversy in England. The Oxford Movement called upon the Church of England to return to its historic roots in the undivided Catholic Church, including a restoration of liturgical practices which had fallen so far out of use that Anglican worship at the time looked little different from that of a Congregationalist church. The Movement's ideas quickly spread to America, where these Boston gentry resolved to found a church that would espouse and preach them.
The Advent's founders had one other idea that was even more radical in mid-nineteenth century Boston than any amount of liturgical elaboration: they refused to follow the widespread custom of renting pews, whereby those who had the means leased the best seats often from generation to generation, and servants and the poor were relegated to places in the back or in the galleries. In those days, before Canvass Committees and Stewardship Campaigns, pew rents provided incomes for churches but also effectively excluded those who could not afford them, thereby enforcing social distinctions contrary to the essential nature of Christianity. The Bostonians who signed the Advent's incorporation papers were simply following an apostolic ideal. They wrote in the parish charter that their intention was "to secure to a portion of the City of Boston the ministrations of the Holy Catholic Church, and more especially to secure the same to the poor and needy, in a manner free from unnecessary expense and all ungracious circumstances."
The new parish got off to a fast start, and within less than a year had already sparked a controversy. Manton Eastburn, then Bishop of Massachusetts, making his first official visitation, was so offended at the presence of a cross and candlesticks on the altar that he refused to come back unless they were removed. This is a telling measure of how thoroughly "Protestant" Anglican worship was in that day. (The situation was much worse in England, where the Church was an arm of the state: priests who placed ornaments on their altars were in some cases actually sent to prison!)
To this day the Church of the Advent continues to contribute to the life of the wider Church. Two other rectors went on to become bishops. Innumerable clergy who served as curates over the years have carried the Advent's teaching and liturgical style with them to other parishes. Other Anglo-Catholic churches in the United States (see related links) may have taken the elaboration of ceremonial to an even greater degree, but the Advent remains a parish whose name is recognized throughout the world as an icon of Anglo-Catholicism in America.
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