Historic Sermons Re-Created

BHT_20160830_A1

Last Sunday, King’s Chapel parishioner and vestry member Patricia Bass, shown above, recreated a sermon preached at King’s Chapel on the death of the abolitionist Massachusetts senator, Charles Sumner, who lived on Beacon Hill and was infamously bludgeoned with a cane in 1856 by Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina, because of his anti-slavery actions. Sumner recovered only partially from his wounds and eventually died in 1874, when King’s Chapel’s minister Henry Foote gave this sermon. Bass, a lawyer and a resident of the West End, was an appropriate choice to deliver this sermon. Her ancestors were enslaved in Mississippi by “owners” who originally hailed from Arlington, Massachusetts. During the month of August, the pulpit of King’s Chapel, a church that has seen history since 1688 and has been housed in the Quincy granite-clad chapel at the corner of School and Tremont streets since 1754, has been filled with re-creations of historic sermons written by its ministers and read by present-day parishioners.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.