Beneficent's Story:
A Place for Firsts

As a church born in the Great Awakening, Beneficent Church has always been engaged in active outreach to the wider community. The congregation's concern for people has caused us to be an innovative place for new opportunities in mission. Our early inclusive theology, which welcomed people of many backgrounds, beliefs, and ideas to open communion has encouraged us to welcome and hear leaders of various traditions and insights. Here are some of the ways in which we broke ground in new understandings and new ministries:

Some Beneficent Firsts:

1770-1774 The first five Brown University commencements (Rhode Island College) are held at Beneficent.

1775 Nicholas Cooke, a member of Beneficent becomes the first Revolutionary Governor of Rhode Island, after the overthrow of the Tory Governor.

1810/1812 Beneficent member, Governor William Jones, becomes one of the first incorporators of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, America's first foreign missionary organization.

1835 Lowell Mason, noted hymn writer and prime mover in American public school music education "kept" a singing school at Beneficent.

1836 Beneficent organist and Sunday School Superintendent Stephen S. Wardwell becomes a key leader in the organization of the abolitionist Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society. Wardwell, who lived next door to the Church, later corresponds with people involved in the Amistad incident. Tradition holds that this building served as a station on the Underground Railroad.

1909 Beneficent is the site of the planning meeting for a Providence Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1945 First Alcoholics Anonymous group in Rhode Island begins at Beneficent.

1963/1967 Beneficent creates a new corporation, Beneficent House, to provide affordable housing in the City. A 180-unit apartment house is built across the street from the Meeting House.

1973 Beneficent founds the Interfaith Counseling Center.

Ecumenical Activities at Beneficent:

1740s Our first pastor, Joseph Snow, mentors Isaac Backus for the ministry. Backus became one of the most prominent Baptist preachers in American history.

1773 John Murray, the founder of Universalism in America, preaches at Beneficent.

1791 Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury gives the first Methodist sermon in Providence at Beneficent.

1791 / 1793 The congregation chooses James "Paddy" Wilson, a native of Ireland, and former associate of Methodist founder John Wesley, as Assistant, then Senior Pastor.

1831 Noted evangelist Charles G. Finney holds a several-week revival at Beneficent.

1939 The Ecumenical Patriarch Athenogoras I., at that point the Archbishop for North and South America, celebrates divine liturgy at Beneficent.

1965 Roman Catholic bishop, the Most Rev. Bernard M. Kelly, preaches at a service at Beneficent, as far as can be ascertained the first time a Roman Catholic bishop preached from a Protestant pulpit in the United States.

In His Steps:

In the late nineteenth century Beneficent pastor James G. Vose mentored for the ministry a protégé, Charles M. Sheldon. Sheldon spent much of his life as a pastor in Topeka, Kansas, where he wrote the book, In His Steps, which is, next to the Bible, the best selling religious book in American history. It tells the story of a congregation (much of it, we believe, based on his memories of Beneficent) which tries to live by asking the question, "What would Jesus do?" In many ways we try to live out this question, and welcome you in this Spirit!

Some Historic Ministries:

• Beneficent has reached out to new immigrants coming to the City from around the world. Extensive work was done particularly with the Swedish, Armenian, Chinese, Haitian, and Laotian communities.
• Between 1939 and 1985 Beneficent hosts seven refugee families from many troubled parts of the globe. (Germany, Poland, Russia, Holland, Egypt, Vietnam, Cambodia).
• Beneficent has opened is space as the "incubator" for several important ministries in their earliest and beginning stages. Among these are Crossroads Rhode Island (formerly Traveler's Aid), and the Samaritans (suicide prevention hot-line).

Some Current Ministries:

• Beneficent is the overflow shelter for the homeless.
• Beneficent maintains an extensive scholarship program, much of it to needy young people in the City of Providence.
• Beneficent operates Palmer House, an at-cost office building for non-profit groups. It currently serves the NAACP, People to End Homelessness, The American Friends Service Committee, a counseling center, and two arts organizations.
• Beneficent provides English-as-a-Second-Language classes to new immigrants in the Community.
• Beneficent is a primary meeting place for many social, advocacy, and mission directed programs.
  

 

A Short History of
Beneficent Church