Channing
Bronze
Newport, Rhode Island
The sculptor has appropriately depicted William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), prominent Unitarian preacher and theologian, delivering a sermon. Born in Newport, he attended Harvard and spent his entire career as the minister of a Boston church, where he advocated a religion that rejected the trinity and emphasized the godness of human beings.
This statue sits in Touro Park a hundred yards or so from that of another of the city's favorite sons, Matthew C. Perry, the Commodore of the U. S. Navy who opened Japan to the West in the 1850s.
Photograph and text by George P. Landow