History :

Once there was a congregation in Westerly whose historical affiliation was simplicity itself: the Christian Church. Across the river, in Pawcatuck, was a Congregational church, one of many in Connecticut.

The Christian Churches were one of the first "all-American" religious movements. They came about in the early 1800s and strived to be, paradoxically, a denomination without a denomination: free of an organizational structure and set apart from the rivalries that they perceived took people far away from the simplicity of the earliest Christians. The Christian Churches were most numerous in the South, but the message was heard as far away as southern Rhode Island. Some members of a long-vanished Congregational church the Hill Church formed the Christian Chapel Society of Westerly in 1843 and built a meetinghouse across from Wilcox Park. In 1876, the name was changed to the Broad Street Christian Church.

Although the Christian Churches were never numerous, they have a distinguished place in our nation's history. They were ahead of their time in knowing that the Good News was not just for certain ethnic groups, or races, or social classes, but for all of us.