Church of the Advent (Boston)

Church of the Advent
The church in 2019
42°21′28″N 71°04′17″W
Location	Boston, Massachusetts
Country	United States
Denomination	Episcopal
Tradition	Anglo-Catholic
Website	theadventboston.org
History
Status	Parish church
Founded	1844 (parish)
Consecrated	December 1, 1894
Architecture
Functional status	Active
Architect(s)	John Hubbard Sturgis
Style	English Gothic Revival
Years built	1879-1888 (present building)
Specifications
Number of spires	1
Spire height	172 feet (52 m)
Bells	8
Administration
Diocese	Massachusetts
Clergy
Rector	The Very Reverend Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Laity
Organist(s)	Mark Dwyer Andrew Scanlon

The Church of the Advent is an Episcopal parish in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The church is housed in a Victorian Gothic building, faced in brick with eight large change ringing bells and a 172-foot spire. It is well known as a prominent center of Anglo-Catholic worship.

Location

The church building is located at 30 Brimmer Street at the corner of Mount Vernon and Brimmer Streets on the "flat" of Beacon Hill. It is next door to the historic Charles Street Meeting House.

History

The parish's 1851 home was on Green Street in the since-demolished West End.

The church was begun in 1844 by a group who wished to implement the ideals of the new Oxford Movement, then about a decade old in England. The founders defied the widespread custom of renting pews, whereby those who had the means leased the best seats, often from generation to generation. Servants and the poor were relegated to places in the back or in the galleries. Such pew rents provided income for churches but also effectively excluded those who could not afford them, thereby enforcing social distinctions contrary to the essential nature of Christianity. Founders 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."

Baptistery in the church

In 1872, Charles Chapman Grafton became the Advent's fourth rector. It was during his tenure that construction began on the parish's permanent home, the Gothic Revival structure on Brimmer Street on the "flat" of Beacon Hill. Previously the congregation had moved from its first meeting space, an "upper room" in a building on Merrimack Street, to rented space in a building near Causeway Street, and later to a church on Green Street in Boston's since-demolished West End. From it moved to a disused Congregational church on Bowdoin Street on the other side of the Hill.(This building served as the Church of St. John the Evangelist until 2015.) Father Grafton was elected bishop of the Diocese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1888 but returned in 1894 to preach and consecrate the completed Brimmer Street church on Advent Sunday, December 1 – fifty years to the day after the parish's first services in the North End loft.

In 1936, parishioner and master organ-builder, G. Donald Harrison of the Aeolian-Skinner Company, designed and installed a pipe organ which remains a world-renowned masterpiece of the art.

In 1965, parishioner and seminarian Jonathan Daniels, died in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement.

Also of note is the parish's thirteenth pastor, Richard Holloway, who subsequently became Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

External links

• Official website
• Church history from parish website
• Historical Resources on the Church of the Advent, Boston from Project Canterbury