First Meeting House
The First Meeting House is now the First Parish,
Scituate, and is more than 350 years old now. A group of
nonconformists began meeting in London in 1616, led by Rev. Henry
Jacob, and then succeeded by Rev. John Lothrop, a former rector of
the Church of England, in 1624, and then in 1632, they were
discovered worshipping clandestinely, so 42 members would be
arrested and jailed. After spending two years in jail, Lothrop would
be released under the provision that he leave England forever, so
with a majority of his congregation, they set sail for New England
and came to Scituate in 1634. Some months later, the rev. and a
dozen or so people would gather together and make a covenant with
each other, and form what has grown into the First Parish Unitarian
Universalist Church of Scituate. That first meeting place would be a
simple log cabin, constructed on Meeting House Lane, and now, today,
it is marked by a monument that has a list of the original members
of the parish, "The Men of Kent" and gravestones from the 17th
century. Over the years, the church would see six ministers, and
then face numerous theological dissensions. The principle points
were at first, simply baptism and then later, the
Unitarian/Triniarian schism. Those disagreements would lead to the
separation of the congregation, with some of them forming new
churches. The baptism problem would cause Rev. Lothrop to move his
congregation to Barnstable on Cape Cod in 1639.
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