UPCOMING EVENTS
Join us at Plymouth for a lecture by author Ron Chernow, speaking on his latest book, #1 New York Times Bestseller Mark Twain – named one of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025
Wednesday, June 24, 7:00 PM | Plymouth Sanctuary
Ron Chernow is the prizewinning author of eight books and the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. His first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award, Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize.
This lecture is free and open to the public.
Doors to the Sanctuary open at 6:30PM. The lecture begins at 7:00PM.
Plymouth’s History Ministry speaker series’ is designed to give a 21st Century audience of all ages information on the history of the church, the history of New York City and Brooklyn, and the history of the United States. Knowing more about our past can inform our future and inspire the actions we take as an individual and a church, community and country.
OUR HISTORY
Plymouth Church has an amazing history. When you sit in pew 89, you wonder what Abraham Lincoln prayed when he sat there. You can turn off the lights in the basement—where runaway slaves passed through on the Underground Railroad—and imagine what it feels like to run for your life. When you are in the pastor's office, you may think of Branch Rickey—a member of Plymouth Church and General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers—praying there until he decided that God wanted him to invite Jackie Robinson to integrate baseball.
Some of our church’s heritage is complicated. The sculptor of a statue of Henry Ward Beecher and a bas-relief of Abraham Lincoln in our church garden is Gutzon Borglum, who created Mount Rushmore. Borglum was also a designer of the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, GA.
The founding pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, was a gifted minister who fought courageously against slavery and was considered the most famous man in America. His adultery trial sold a lot of newspapers and ended in a hung jury.
Every church has a history with which to deal. Churches stuck in their history keep talking about how great it was years ago. Churches that have forgotten their history mistakenly believe that there are no good gifts older than they are.
We can be grateful for our past without being trapped in it. We do not need to choose between being a museum and a church. We explore what God has done and discover that God is still at work.