Originally delivered as lectures by the Drs. Carl Scovel and Charles Forman, Journey Toward Independence recounts how King's Chapel, founded in 1686 as the first Anglican church in New England, became the first Unitarian Church in America. These Minns lectures were delivered as part of King's Chapel's 300th anniversary celebrations. 

A unique congregation that is Anglican in worship and Unitarian Christian in theology, King’s Chapel was shaped by many factors. Scovel and Forman recapture that period of change in Colonial America, when Anglican practices predominated and eighteenth-century rationalism largely influenced religious thought in New England. The pioneering spirit of James Freeman, who contributed to the beginnings of Unitarianism by instituting liturgical revisions, and the the subsequent ministries of Francis Greenwood and Ephraim Peabody are also examined in this enlightening account of liberal religion in the making. 

Charles C. Forman, Ph.D, is a Professor of Religion at Wheaton College (MA) and Affiliate Minister of King’s Chapel. Educated at Tufts, Harvard, and Oxford University, he has taught at Harvard and Tufts and has served parishes in Salem, Hubbardston, and Plymouth, Massachusetts. 

Carl R. Scovel, D.D., S.T.B., was ordained at the Arlington Street Church in Boston in 1957. Educated at Oberlin and Harvard, he was a minister of the First Parish of Sudbury for a decade before becoming minister of King’s Chapel in 1967.