The first record in the books of the First Baptist Church of Boston reads: “The 28th of the third month, 1665, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the Church of Christ, commonly, though falsely, called Anabaptists, were gathered together, and entered into fellowship and communion with each other; engaged to walk together in all the appointments of our Lord and Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, as far as he should be pleased to make known his mind and will unto them by his word and Spirit, and then were baptized, Thomas Gould, Thomas Osborne, Edward Drinker, and John George, and joined with (fifteen others, several of whom emigrated from England) before 1669.”
Thomas Gould became the pastor of this small congregation. He and everyone else knew the physical risks that they were taking. They lost the right to vote, were fined and imprisoned, were threatened with banishment, and yet their peaceful existence and their endeavor to serve the Lord spread a Godly influence over many including Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College. The church moved, en masse, from Charleston to Noodle Island in the Boston Harbor, and then, after the death of Pastor Gould in 1675, into Boston itself. Eventually, in the face of the persecution from the “Christian” Congregationalists, the little church began construction of a meeting house. The initial service of the First Baptist Church of Boston in that building took place on this day in 1679. Meetings there were sporadic in the beginning due to the conflicting laws of the day. At one point the doors of the church house were nailed shut by order of the civil court. After petitioning for reopening, and not receiving a positive response, on one Lord’s Day the church planned to hold a public meeting the yard of their property. When they arrived, they found the door opened and their service was once again moved inside. For more than seventy years, this was the only Baptist church in Boston. The consistency and spirituality of the church and its members are a part of the process which brought religious liberty to the United States.