FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH
IN NEW HAVEN
About Us
OUR HISTORY
New Haven clearly needed a Baptist church. Baptists in the wider region called together an ecclesiastical council to recognize and bless the city’s first Baptist congregation. The date was October 30, 1816. The constituting members were seven men and five women, including one African American woman. That very evening in an abandoned Episcopal Church, New Haven tailor Henry Lines, also a licensed preacher and ordained minister, was formally installed as pastor.
The small congregation began meeting in “Amos Doolittle’s Lodge Room” on College Street. By 1821 they had outgrown the space and were renting the hall of the New Township Academy on the corner of Chapel and Academy Streets. As the membership steadily grew, the flock moved several times— into the city’s Old State House and their own place of worship on Chapel Street. In 1856 a division in the church led to the creation of Second Baptist Church. Nearly a decade later, the congregations reunited under the name First Baptist Church, worshiping at Second Baptist’s Wooster Place church building.
By the end of the lengthy pastorate of S. Dryden Phelps in 1870, First Baptist Church was known as the largest evangelical church in Connecticut with a membership around 800. Eight Baptist churches, some still alive today, came out of this congregation. Almost three decades later, after merging with Hope Baptist Church, the united congregation built a new place of worship on the corner of Edwards and Livingston Streets in New Haven’s East Rock Neighborhood. Dedicated in 1903, this building remains our church home today.
First Baptist became known for its succession of scholarly pastors and vigorous Sunday school and youth outreach programs. But as the city’s population significantly declined in later decades, the church suffered a steady drop in membership as well. Nevertheless, today we still aim to be the hands and feet of God in our community and world. In line with our long history of inward and outward Missions, over the last 12 years we have been blessed to support over 100 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Currently, 60% of our faith community are Congolese; the rest is multicultural. God has positioned our diverse congregation to be a beacon of hope and love, and a reflection of God’s beautiful Kingdom. -From a history compiled by Rev. Dr. Edward Kaechele, Pastor Emeritus