Free Religious Association
About the Author
The Free Religious Association was organized in Boston on 30 May 1867. Its founding meeting brought together advocates of religious freedom and inquiry, including Unitarian and Transcendentalist figures. Its reports and proceedings document the development of the American free religion movement.
Source: Free Religion: Report of Addresses at a Meeting Held in Boston, May 30, 1867, including the association’s constitution.
Resources by Free Religious Association
Proceedings of the Free Religious Association: Annual Meetings, 1907–1914
A bound set of the Free Religious Association’s fortieth through forty-seventh annual meeting proceedings, held in Boston from 1907 to 1914. Each year retains its own title page, reports, convention sessions, and festival material.
The set includes the 1910 Theodore Parker commemoration and later meetings on “The Next Step,” “State and Church in America,” “A Religious Programme for To-day,” and “World Religion and World Brotherhood.” Contributions range from addresses and discussions to hymns, poems, letters, and messages.
James H. West is explicitly credited as editor and arranger of the 1911–1913 proceedings; no whole-set individual editor is inferred. The navigation preserves the eight constituent meetings and their original sections. Extra preliminary leaves in 1910 and a misnumbered contents reference in 1911 have been accounted for.
Source: Internet Archive / Google Books scan of the Harvard copy. The repository’s 1868 series date does not describe the years bound here. The scan contains 849 pages, including ancillary leaves after the final 1914 text.
Read LessFreedom and Fellowship in Religion: A Collection of Essays and Addresses
A collection of essays and addresses edited by a committee of the Free Religious Association and published by Roberts Brothers in 1875. The volume presents discussions of religious freedom, science, Christianity, Protestantism, church liberty, philanthropy, and religion’s social role.
Its ten named essay contributors include David Atwood Wasson, Samuel Longfellow, Samuel Johnson, John Weiss, William J. Potter, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, Octavius B. Frothingham, John W. Chadwick, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Ednah D. Cheney. An introductory essay and “Voices from the Free Platform” frame the collection.
Navigation follows the twelve entries in the original contents. The main text runs through page 424; advertisements and end matter are retained in the 442-page facsimile. Source: Internet Archive, University of California Libraries copy.
Read LessProceedings at the Third Annual Meeting of the Free Religious Association, Held in Boston, May 26 and 27, 1870
Proceedings of the Free Religious Association’s third annual meeting, held in Boston on May 26–27, 1870. The volume includes annual reports, the sessions at Tremont Temple, an essay by Samuel Johnson, addresses and remarks by other participants, and the association’s constitution.
Contributors include Octavius B. Frothingham, David Atwood Wasson, Ednah D. Cheney, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, Lucretia Mott, Isaac M. Wise, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Henry Channing, and William J. Potter. Navigation follows the original contents, including separately listed remarks that share a printed page.
Copy note: the scan includes repeated or misordered leaves near printed pages 116–117. The constitution, listed at printed page 122, appears at scan page 124. Full leaf-by-leaf continuity has not been certified.
Source: Internet Archive scan G5173.
Read LessProceedings at the First Annual Meeting of the Free Religious Association, Held in Boston, May 28th and 29th, 1868
Proceedings of the Free Religious Association’s first annual meeting, held in Boston on May 28–29, 1868. Includes committee reports, addresses and discussions on religion, worship, philanthropy, and social reform, followed by an appendix with an address and correspondence concerning religious movements abroad.
Contributors include Octavius B. Frothingham, James Freeman Clarke, Olympia Brown, John Weiss, Caroline C. H. Dall, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Wendell Phillips, Keshub Chunder Sen, Moncure D. Conway, and Isaac M. Wise.
Scan defects: printed pages 21–22 are missing; the copy also contains blank, damaged, duplicate, and misordered images. It should not be treated as a complete transcription witness. Navigation points to the surviving section openings in their actual scan positions.
Source: Internet Archive scan G5179. The available alternate file formats reproduce the same 122-leaf scan.
Read LessProceedings at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Free Religious Association
Proceedings of the Free Religious Association’s thirty-fifth annual meeting, held in Boston on May 29 and 31, 1902. Includes the constitution, officers, business reports, sessions on “The Ideals and Duties of the Republic” and “American Workers for the World’s Order,” and the concluding festival.
Speakers include Edwin D. Mead, Jacob Gould Schurman, Charles Fleischer, George Willis Cooke, Charles Gordon Ames, Julia Ward Howe, Edward Waldo Emerson, and Anna Garlin Spencer. The volume records the association’s later interests in public life and international order.
The date and publisher follow this copy’s title page. The Internet Archive catalogue also carries an 1868 series date and a different publisher, which do not describe this issue. The scan includes inserted advertisement leaves; navigation accounts for them.
Read LessProceedings at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Free Religious Association
The Free Religious Association’s eighth annual proceedings, from its Boston meeting on 27–28 May 1875. The volume includes the executive committee’s report, essays and discussion by religious liberals, an evening social festival and the association’s constitution.
Boston: Cochrane & Sampson, printers, 1875, 79 pages with preliminary matter. Contributions include those of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William C. Gannett, Lucretia Mott, Octavius B. Frothingham and Francis E. Abbot. Navigation follows the publication’s reports, sessions and individual contributions.
Read LessFirst Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the Free Religious Association
The Free Religious Association’s first executive report, presented in Boston on 28 May 1868 by its secretary, William J. Potter. It explains the association’s principles, reviews its first year of lectures and correspondence, and discusses possible future publishing and educational work.
Boston: W. F. Brown & Co., printers, 1868. The report occupies printed pp. 3–15 and is followed by a publisher’s notice for the first annual proceedings. This contemporary account documents the association’s international correspondence and its broad understanding of religious fellowship.
Read LessFree Religion: Report of Addresses at a Meeting Held in Boston, May 30, 1867
The published report of the Boston meeting at which the Free Religious Association was organized. It records addresses by advocates of free religion, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lucretia Mott, John Weiss, Robert Dale Owen and Francis Ellingwood Abbot, followed by the association’s constitution and officers.
The full title specifies the meeting’s purpose: “to consider the conditions, wants, and prospects of free religion in America,” together with the constitution of the association there organized. Boston: Adams & Co., 1867. Complete report and organizational documents; the scan also includes preliminary and preservation leaves.
Read Less