First Parish In Brookline

Specialties

Join us at First Parish in Brookline, a caring community and sanctuary for diversity. A Welcoming Congregation in the Unitarian Universalist Association, we seek to make a place for all ages to experience and celebrate community, to teach and learn from each other in an environment guided by respect and love, and to actively work for social justice.

Worship is deeply theological, musically inspired and intellectually challenging. We are united not by creed but by a belief that the human spirit needs tending and the struggle to live a moral and ethical life is transformative and essential. You’ll feel welcome here.

History

Established in 1717.

In 1717, a meeting house was built at the center of the town of Muddy River, which later became Brookline. The original Town green is now the patch of green splitting the streets in front of the current building. The present building, dedicated in 1893, is the fourth to house the congregation that began as a Christian church in Puritan New England, and evolved into the First Parish in Brookline.

Unlike the many Congregational churches in New England that split apart into separate Unitarian and Congregational churches during the Unitarian Controversy in the early 19^th century, this one did not. It retained within its walls both groups in the Unitarian vs. Trinitarian struggle and stood strong as a community church embracing both Christian traditions as well as the theology and liberal inclusiveness of the Unitarian faith. To this day it honors the history and the tradition, but is firmly implanted in the Unitarian Universalist spirit of openness to all religious wisdom and practice.