Third Presbyterian Church and Rochester History (Three-part Series)

 

Bob Marcotte, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

 

 

Presbyterian church lets us take look into our past

May 31, 2010

When a group of Rochesterians decided to erect a Presbyterian Church on the east side of the Genesee River in 1827 (there were already two on the west side), it didn't take them long.

Josiah Bissell, one of the group's leaders — a zealous man who was not accustomed to taking no for an answer — promised to build the church in a week.

And he delivered.

A temporary structure using crude logs as pews was erected on what is now North Clinton Avenue near Main Street.

That was the beginning of Third Presbyterian Church, which is undergoing a much more time-consuming renovation of its building at Meigs Street and East Avenue. The church hopes to complete the approximately $4 million project by Christmas.

A church that is 183 years old is bound to have some "history" behind it.

And indeed, Third Presbyterian offers an interesting mirror into our past. From the first Finney revival here, to one of the city's most disastrous fires, to the social gospel of the early 20th century, to the ordaining of women, Third Presbyterian has been prominent in some of the most important religious and social events in Rochester's history and that of the church.

Religious revival

"A tall, grave-looking man, dressed in an unclerical suit of grey, ascended the pulpit. I listened. It did not sound like preaching, but like a lawyer arguing a case before a court and jury. The discourse was a chain of logic brightened by felicity of illustration and enforced by urgent appeals from a voice of great compass and melody."

So wrote one Rochesterian upon hearing Charles Grandison Finney, one of the preeminent evangelists of his day, who preached here during a six-month revival that former city historian Blake McKelvey regarded as "possibly the most dramatic and significant episode in Rochester's early history."

It was only appropriate that he would be invited to Rochester by leaders of Third Presbyterian.

From the start, the young church had challenged the outworn dogmas and orthodoxy of the day, placing a greater emphasis on the need for individuals to repent to fully experience God's grace, and taking an active interest in the issues of the day.

Finney lectured Rochesterians on the frailties of human nature, but also opened to them the promise of redemption. Salvation was reserved not for a chosen few, but open to all, and he encouraged public demonstrations of repentance.

He found many Rochesterians eager to do so. The opening of the Erie CanalYour browser may not support display of this image. in 1825 had changed Rochester from a quiet frontier settlement into America's first Boom Town, with all the attendant problems of drunkenness and rowdyism. Sam Patch's fatal, foolhardy leap into the Genesee River in 1829 — "the final climax to a decade of riotous living" — touched off an "emotional powder keg" in Rochester, McKelvey writes.

Bissell, for example, warned the Third Presbyterian Sunday School that any of its members who had encouraged Sam's fatal jump — even if by only showing up to watch — would be held accountable at the Last Judgment. Duly chastened, Rochesterians were anxious for forgiveness.

Finney's impact during his six-month stay was remarkable.

He "lit a religious prairie fire that swept over much of upstate New York," McKelvey observed. In Rochester, "pious women went door-to-door praying for troubled souls. The high school stopped classes and prayed.

Businessmen closed their doors early and prayed with their families," Paul Johnson writes in Shopkeeper's Millennium, his account of Finney's 1830-1831 revival here.

Many "crude frontiersmen and free-thinking adventurers" were transformed "into sober and pious citizens," McKelvey added.

"Rochester became a stronghold for Bible and tract societies, a banner city for Sunday schools, a staunch supporter of home and foreign missions."

By the time Finney left in the spring of 1831, Rochester was a "changed community, animated by a new spirit of self-conscious restraint. The days of the boom town were over."

(Next: Third Presbyterian's role in the Abolitionist movement.)

Third Presbyterian active in abolitionism

June 7, 2010

(This is the second installment looking at the history of the Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester. This 183-year-old institution offers an interesting mirror into our past, figuring prominently in some of the most important religious and social events in Rochester's history and that of the church. As described in last week's column, for example, Third Presbyterian was instrumental in bringing evangelist Charles Finney to Rochester. Finney "lit a religious prairie fire that swept over much of upstate New York," and turned America's first boom town into "a stronghold for Bible and tract societies, a banner city for Sunday schools, a staunch supporter of home and foreign missions.")

Many of Charles Finney's converts became active in the abolitionist movement. Samuel D. Porter, for example, became one of Rochester's leading abolitionists and a staunch supporter of the Underground Railroad, hiding runaway slaves in his barn. Alvah Strong, a prominent newspaperman, also supported anti-slavery efforts.

Third Presbyterian's first pastor, Joel Parker, spoke out against slavery even before Finney arrived.

So, in 1833, when anti-slavery advocates were thwarted in their attempt to hold meetings at the court house in Rochester, it is not surprising where they ended up. Thomas James, one of Rochester's leading black citizens and a founder of the Rochester AME Zion church, described how the first night the crowd listened quietly, the second night "plied" the advocates with questions, and on the third "drowned with their noise the voices of the speakers and finally turned out the lights."

William Bloss, one of the promoters of the meeting and "not a man to be cowed by opposition," moved the meetings to the session room of the Third Presbyterian Church.

"But even there we were forced to lock the doors before we could hold our abolition meeting in peace," James noted.

Even in the city that would be home to Frederick Douglass and an important stop on the Underground Railroad, most Rochesterians, like most people across the North, were not sympathetic to the abolitionist agenda.

From the ashes

"The fire was one of the grandest spectacles we have ever beheld — it carried terror as well as awe to the mind of every beholder. The city and country about was lighted up by the flames, and the cinders and burning flakes floated away for a mile to the eastward ..." This was the Union and Advertiser's description of the Minerva block fire of 1858, which laid waste to five blocks containing 20 stores on the south side of Main Street. Among the buildings destroyed: Third Presbyterian Church's second permanent home.

The fire broke out late the same night that the city celebrated the first laying of the Atlantic Cable; there had been a fireworks display and a torchlight parade, and a series of late rallies "with the usual liquid refreshment," former city historian Joseph Barnes related.

The fire was significant not only for the record $188,000 in damages, but because it exposed the shortcomings of the city's volunteer firefighters, their antiquated equipment and inadequate water supply.

Unfortunately, the city did not obtain a pressurized water system adequate for firefighting until the 1870s.

In the meantime, Third Presbyterian moved into a new Gothic style church of Genesee limestone on Temple Street, the Union and Advertiser reported. The pews could accommodate 600 people.

Changing philosophy

By then, Third Presbyterian had swung toward a "conservative orthodoxy," notes the church's online history. Pastor Albert Gallatin Hall, the minister for 30 years, was self-educated, had a "literal rather than imaginative mind," and a "simple and sure faith." He guarded his church against "the intrusions of the world." That included refusing to let a woman speak in the church, and refusing to have a farewell service for a local infantry regiment going off to the Civil War.

A long-term pastor could have that kind of influence on a church, notes John Wilkinson, Third Presbyterian's current pastor, especially "where the personality of a pastor comes together with the personality of the congregation."

"They are kind of windows to their times," he added, and by the mid-19th century, many church members were becoming uncomfortable with all the emotionalism associated with revivalism.

By the turn of the century, however, another shift in emphasis would take place.

(Next: A new pastor brings a new approach.)

Strayer pushed for social gospel

June 14, 2010 - 5:00am

(This is the third installment in a look at the history of Third Presbyterian Church.)

Rochester in the early 1900s was confronted with many of the problems found in big industrial cities at the time: Overcrowded slum housing; long hours and low wages in many of its factories where newly arrived Jewish, Slavic and Italian immigrants toiled; growing tension between labor and management. Leading citizens were alarmed by an increase in prostitution and other vices.

Could the application of Christian principles and ethics solve these problems?

That was the basic premise of the social gospel movement, and Paul Moore Strayer, a Maryland native who arrived as Third Presbyterian’s pastor in 1903, was a strong proponent.

In his very first sermon, former city historian Blake McKelvey writes, Strayer announced that “the work we must do lies principally outside, not within the church.”

Strayer was closely allied with Walter Rauschenbusch, a Rochester Theological Seminary professor and author who was nationally recognized as a leader of the social gospel movement.

Strayer did not hesitate to make his views known, even when it was not popular to do so.

At one point, for example, a local women’s committee urged the opening of bathing pools, bowling alleys and even pool rooms on Sundays, as a healthier alternative to the dance halls and houses of ill repute. This ran counter to the tradition of keeping such places closed on the Sabbath. During the ensuing debate, Strayer backed the proposal. “The sanctity of man, not the sanctity of the Sabbath, is at stake,” he observed. This “was not appreciated by many of his clerical brethren,” McKelvey notes.

Strayer attended meetings of the local trades and labor council, and was active in helping to resolve labor disputes. His People’s Sunday Evening religious services, aimed at non-churchgoing workers, were held at a downtown theater and were well attended. This eventually led to the creation of a Labor Bureau to assist the unemployed, then a United Charities pooling the resources of 39 social agencies and 40 churches.

Small wonder Third Presbyterian’s online history calls him “one of the great men in the life of Third Church.”

Role for women

Lilian Alexander had been a feminist since her college days at Vassar, where she marched in suffragist parades.

By the 1950s, she was an elder of the Third Presbyterian Church. However, she did not realize the church officially barred women from the pulpit, “learning of this only when a friend told her that her daughter had graduated from seminary but could not be accepted as a ministerial candidate,” according to Lois A. Boyd and R. Douglas Brackenridge in Presbyterian Women in America: Two Centuries of a Quest for Status.

On her own initiative, Alexander decided to do something about it. She consulted with local church officials and drew up a petition to allow ordination of women, which eventually worked its way through the church hierarchy and was adopted in 1956.

And so it was that “A lone member of the Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York, sparked the modification of the Presbyterian form of government that would allow women to be ordained to the ministry.”

Third Presbyterian continues to take an interest in the world outside its walls.

Pastor John Wilkinson describes it as a “big tent church. We have pockets of lots of kinds of activity. We’re still pretty traditional in our beliefs, worship and music,” he noted, but the 1,350-member congregation has also continued the tradition of activism and public faith.

For example, the church has a partnership with a congregation in Kenya, serves the Rochester community with food donations and a community meal program, provides tutors in city schools, and has sent volunteers to New Orleans to help that city rebuild.

It has also been “very public” in supporting ordination of gays and lesbians, Wilkinson said.

It is a role that seems consistent with much of its 183-year history.

What Wilkinson said of his church’s renovation project seems equally true of its mission and projects: “A church standing still is really a church going backward, and that is not where God is calling us.”