Anchored in the heart of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, A Church Built of Granite traces four centuries of faith, questioning, and community through the evolving life of South Church. It begins with a rough wooden meeting house raised by seventeenth-century English fishermen on contested Indigenous land and culminates in the solid granite church completed in 1826, where worshipers and change-seekers still gather today.
Drawing on deep and thoughtful research, the history reveals how theology, geography, politics, and personality shaped a New England congregation and the town around it. Along the way, it explores shifting ideas of land ownership, religious authority, slavery, and conscience, showing how Anglicans, Puritans, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Universalists, and Indigenous peoples all left enduring marks.
Vividly narrated, the book speaks to Unitarian Universalists, New England history lovers, and visitors alike. A Church Built of Granite is a portrait of a seaport community continually remaking itself--where belief evolved as surely as the land beneath it, and where faith was forged as much by debate as by devotion.
