Religion in Boston

Eliza set the biscuit plate on the tea tray and collected the used teacups. Bostoners were famously hotheaded about politics, but they took religion just as seriously, if not more so. Once-Puritan Boston was now home to dozens of denominations, and everyone had a stake in the proceedings. (Adrift, Ch. 8)

When it came to religion, 1790s Boston was a wild place. Massachusetts amended its constitution in 1780 to allow the free practice of religion, several years ahead of the Bill of Rights. As Eliza says above, Boston was already home to a number of denominations, and in 1785 King’s Chapel became the first Unitarian church. Soon church after church followed suit, renouncing Trinitarian theology in favor of a theology more compatible with Enlightenment-era philosophies.

For them, philosophy and theology mattered. Ecclesiology mattered. Molly Chase picks this up and runs with it. To flatten denominational differences in favor of “mere Christianity” or to omit any mention of religion all together would be ahistorical and, from a storytelling perspective, far less interesting. So much potential for drama here!

Religious Denominations Depicted in the Molly Chase Series

Episcopalian: Members include Molly Chase and her late parents, as well as several minor characters, including Old North’s real life rector, Dr. Walter. Eliza Hall was raised Anglican and is non-practicing. After the Revolutionary War, the Church of England parishes in American became the Episcopal Church—part of the Anglican communion, but disconnected in part from their ecclesial head, England’s monarch. As Josiah says in Adrift, at the time they were figuring themselves out.

Congregationalism: The majority of the series’s characters are Congregationalists, including the Robbs, the Warrens, the Findleys, Mrs. Beatty, the Breyers, and the Lawrences. The historic Old South Meeting House features prominently in the story, and its pastor and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Eckley, are a minor characters in the series. I didn’t find much about them, so I drew their characters from my imagination. Finally, Mrs. Robb’s childhood church, where her late father was pastor, is partly based on the Old North Meeting House, which General Howe pulled down for firewood.

Catholicism: Filippo Lazzari and Fr. François Matignon, of course. Josiah Robb is discerning Catholicism. Antoine de Laurent is a non-practicing Catholic, but with a tenuous hold on the faith, despite his Age of Enlightenment, rationalist principles. (“He was fond of the Blessed Mother. Another contradiction he countenanced in himself.” Adrift Ch. 9) Interestingly, the first Catholic pastor in Boston, Fr. John Thayer, was a convert from Congregationalism. He was a bit of a firebrand and was lacking in political acumen, and as “a prophet hath no honor in his own country,” etc., the town’s Protestants disliked him. Fr. Matignon, however, was a congenial soul and far more suited to being a Catholic priest in a historically Congregationalist town.

Unitarianism: The Christiansons and the Melvills. In In Pieces we visit the inside of King’s Chapel, when Joy Christianson gets married.

Other denominations existed in 1793 Boston, but I chose to focus on these. There’s a mention of Dutch Reformed (Peter Van der Veen), and some characters are indifferent, agnostic, or otherwise non-practicing (James Walden; Isaac Lewis). The series does not depict non-Christian religions, as they didn’t factor into this particular story.