Plymouth Church’s History Ministry, is debuting this new speaker series to inform a 21st Century audience of all ages 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 individuals, churches and communities.

Fall 2024 Speakers

Harold Holzer
America’s foremost Abraham Lincoln scholar & author.
Wednesday, October 16, 7:00 PM

Harold Holzer, former Senior Vice President for Public Affairs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is currently Director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. Holzer is the author/editor of more than 40 books on Abraham Lincoln.

Jonathan Eig
Author of King: A Life, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Tuesday, December 10, 7:00 PM

Jonathan Eig, born in Brooklyn and currently living in Chicago, is an author of numerous best-selling and award-winning biographies including King: A Life, and Opening Day, The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season.

OUR HISTORY

Six descendants of fugitive slaves and abolitionists come together in Brooklyn to discover more about their lineage. Documenting each person learning about their ancestors, and featuring renowned historian, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the film interweaves powerful personal moments with contextual historical anecdotes.

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.