We are a Christian community inspired and challenged by the radical social-justice mandates of both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Testament. Since our church became the first building constructed on the physical margin of Boston in the newly-filled Back Bay, our mission and sense of community have consistently been outward looking and expansive.
Since 1860, Emmanuel Church has ministered on the margins of society. Beginning with The Rev. F. Dan Huntington, Emmanuel sponsored mission churches, one of which was Church of the Ascension in the South End. In the summer of 2021 about 20 Emmanuelites toured the neighborhood with the Hon. Byron Rushing and the Emmanuel Memorial House, where for decades our church operated programs for orphans and other people on the margins.
Our helping tradition continued in the 1980s with some of Boston’s first healing services for AIDS-afflicted communities and continues today with a shelter for homeless women; a program called “Café Emmanuel,” which brings LGBT elders together for a weekly meal and entertainment in a safe environment; and more than a dozen 12-step programs. We host Ecclesia Ministries’ weekly programs BostonWarm and Common Art, which offers homeless Bostonians an opportunity to create art. Every summer we participate in our diocesan B-SAFE program for Boston youth.
Through our rector’s prison ministry and the programs we house and support Emmanuel carries on this tradition of restoring well-being in community. Please explore the pages linked on the right and read our rector’s sermons, which exhort us to shoulder a burden for others. On Jan. 9, 2022, she preached:
We are already beloved and called to make the world more just….Let’s not wait another moment to do the next right thing….There are opportunities to join with others to work for the common good, which is what justice ultimately means.
