William Channing Gannett

William Channing Gannett
Born(1840-03-13)March 13, 1840
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedDecember 15, 1923(1923-12-15) (aged 83)
Rochester, New York, U.S.
Alma materHarvard College
Harvard Divinity School
OccupationsUnitarian minister, author
Spouse
Mary Thorn Lewis
​
(m. 1887)​
Children2; Charlotte and Lewis
Parent(s)Ezra Stiles Gannett
Anna Tilden

William Channing Gannett (March 13, 1840 – December 15, 1923) was an American Unitarian minister. He presided at the Unity Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1877 to 1883, and at the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York from 1889 to 1908. A noted author and editor of hymnbooks,[1] Gannett was a central figure in the Western Unitarian Conference, which took the liberal side in the Unitarian Church's doctrinal debates of the late 19th century.[2]

Early life and education

Gannett was born in Boston in March 1840. He was named after, and baptized by, William Ellery Channing, "founder of American Unitarianism".[1] Gannett's father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, was a longtime associate of Channing and, in 1842, succeeded him as minister at Boston's Federal Street Church. Gannett's mother, Anna Tilden, died in childbirth in 1846.[3]

A year after graduating in 1860 with an AB degree from Harvard College, Gannett enrolled at Harvard Divinity School. But he soon left to work on the Sea Islands of South Carolina for the New England Freedmen's Society. He organized a school and managed a plantation where he sought to demonstrate that "illiterate black freedmen would work without the incentive of the lash".[1] After travelling with his father in Europe in 1865–66, Gannett returned to Harvard Divinity School to graduate in 1868.[4]

Career

His first parish was in Milwaukee, "then a Western town of muddy streets and wooden sidewalks".[1] Gannett aligned himself with the Western Unitarian Conference (WUC), which represented the liberal wing of the Unitarian Church. The WUC clashed with the more conservative American Unitarian Association based in the East.[5]

In 1875, Gannett published a biography of his recently deceased father titled Ezra Stiles Gannett: Unitarian Minister in Boston, 1824–1871. It included historical chapters chronicling the evolution of American Unitarianism.[1] He then began his ministry in 1877 at the Unity Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was ordained there in 1879, and worked with an architect to design a new Unitarian church building in St. Paul that opened in April 1883.[6]

Gannett played a key role in founding Unity magazine,[7] a Chicago semimonthly launched in March 1878. He and the other Western ministers on Unity's editorial board were known as the "Unity men", and their publication became "the voice of the more radical Unitarians of the West".[8]

At the contentious 1886 WUC convention in Cincinnati, Gannett debated the so-called "creedal issue" with other church leaders including Jabez T. Sunderland.[9] Earlier that year, Sunderland had published a pamphlet, The Issue in the West, which argued for preserving the Christian, theistic roots of Unitarianism,[10] and for resisting a possible WUC takeover by the Free Religious Association (of which Gannett was a member).[11] At the 1886 convention, Gannett proposed a resolution, written in non-theistic language, that the WUC "conditions its fellowship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all who wish to join it to help establish truth and righteousness and love in the world."[12] The next year at a WUC meeting in Chicago, Gannett wrote a Statement of Faith which was adopted by the attendees. Titled "Things Commonly Believed Among Us", it included assertions such as "We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of religious belief",[13] and this notable passage:

Freedom, the method in religion, in place of Authority; Fellowship, the spirit in religion, in place of Sectarianism; Character, the test in religion, in place of Ritual or Creed; Service, or Salvation of Others, the aim in religion, in place of Salvation of Self.[14]

In 1889, Gannett became minister at the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York.[15] By then he was widely known as a writer and editor of significant hymns. In 1880 he had collaborated with James V. Blake and Frederick L. Hosmer to compile Unity Hymns and Chorals for the Congregation and the Home, a popular hymnbook that was expanded and reprinted multiple times.[16][17] In 1885, Gannett co-wrote with Hosmer the anthology, The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems, which had a follow-up volume published in 1894.[18]

Throughout his adult life, Gannett was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of women's suffrage.[19][20] Susan B. Anthony was a friend and a member of his Rochester congregation.[1][21]

Later years

After retiring in 1908, Gannett remained in Rochester as pastor emeritus.[1] In his last years, he suffered from deafness and relied increasingly on his wife Mary to champion his various reformist causes.[21]

William Gannett died on December 15, 1923.[22] He was 83.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Gannett, William Channing (1840-1923)". Harvard Square Library. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  2. ^ Ruff, Allen (1997). "We Called Each Other Comrade": Charles H. Kerr & Company, Radical Publishers. The History of Media and Communication. University of Illinois Press. p. 219n25. ISBN 978-0252065828.
  3. ^ Bendroth, Margaret (1999). "Reviewed Work: Anna Tilden: Unitarian Culture and the Problem of Self-Representation by Sarah Ann Wider". Church History. 68 (1): 217–19. JSTOR 3170174.
  4. ^ "William Channing Gannett". The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press. Retrieved January 5, 2026.
  5. ^ Ruff 1997, pp. 26–28.
  6. ^ "Unity Church History". Unity Church-Unitarian. September 2011.
  7. ^ Ruff 1997, p. 29: It was initially called Pamphlet Mission but was renamed to Unity within six months.
  8. ^ Ruff 1997, pp. 28–29.
  9. ^ Phillips, Roy (November 13, 2007). "William Channing Garrett: Early Life and Work and His Role in the Creedal Issue". p. 17. Archived from the original on February 27, 2023.
  10. ^ Lavan, Spencer (October 16, 2003). "Sunderland, Jabez Thomas". Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography.
  11. ^ Ruff 1997, p. 28: "By the early 1880s conservatives in the West had come to believe that the 'Unity men' intended to transform the WUC into a branch of the FRA."
  12. ^ Eliot, Samuel Atkins, ed. (1952). Heralds of a Liberal Faith. Vol. 4. Boston: The Beacon Press. p. 145. OCLC 645779.
  13. ^ "Sources of Religious Knowledge". Faith like a River: Themes from Unitarian Universalist History. Unitarian Universalist Association. August 4, 2025.
  14. ^ Eliot 1952, p. 146.
  15. ^ Pease, William H. (Spring 1954). "William Channing Gannett: Two Episodes". University of Rochester Library Bulletin. Vol. IX, no. 3. Archived from the original on March 3, 2015. After relocating to Rochester, Gannett softened his opposition to conservative East Coast-based Unitarians, a shift in position that was condemned by his radical Western allies such as Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
  16. ^ Lyttle, Charles H. (2006) [1952]. Hughes, Lynn Gordon (ed.). Freedom Moves West: A History of the Western Unitarian Conference, 1852–1952. Providence, Rhode Island: Blackstone Editions. p. 197. ISBN 0972501762.
  17. ^ "'Unity Hymns and Chorals' – Search results". Retrieved January 6, 2026 – via HathiTrust. Later editions were retitled Unity Hymns and Chorals with Service Elements.
  18. ^ Hosmer, Frederick L.; Gannett, William C. (1894). The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems, Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers. OCLC 4012243 – via HathiTrust.
  19. ^ Ruff 1997, p. 30.
  20. ^ "William C. Gannett". Western New York Suffragists: Winning the Vote. April 2025.
  21. ^ a b Pease, William H. (October 1955). "The Gannetts of Rochester: Highlights in a Liberal Career, 1889–1923" (PDF). Rochester History. XVII (4): 3 – via Rochester Public Library.
  22. ^ "Gannett, William Channing". Harvard Divinity School Library. September 2014.

Further reading

  • Pease, William H. (September 1956). "Doctrine and Fellowship: William Channing Gannett and the Unitarian Creedal Issue". Church History. 25: 210–238.
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