Religion and Spirituality In Putney, Vermont
By Stuart Strothman, 2002, with funding from the Vermont Humanities Council
On Sunday mornings, Saturdays, and holy days, people of Putney and the surrounding communities have attended meetings for worship, and for spiritual growth. With motor vehicles in common use, many people attend services outside Putney, at St. Michael’s Episcopal, St. Michael’s Catholic, All Souls Unitarian Universalist, the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community, the Windham Community Chapel in Dummerston, the Westminster West or Dummerston Congregational Churches, the Guilford Community United Church of Christ, or elsewhere. In this section of our website, we have descriptions from all the Putney churches, based on interviews of experienced members.
In town, our history has braided lines of Congregational with Methodist and Baptist to form the Putney Federated Church, founded in 1919 and lasting until 1997, when church members voted to return to the more Congregational title of the United Church of Putney. Our Lady of Mercy has held services for Catholic parishoners in the tradition of St. Edmund since 1930, in what had been the Methodist Church, while our formerly Baptist Church in Christian Herald Square has become the Putney Community Center. The Putney Friends’ Meeting formed in 1963 and has continued to date, raising the roofbeam of a meeting house in 1986, and in 1981 the Genesis Church of the Brethren was established in Putney, erecting a church on Kimball Hill in 1991. The beauty, majesty, and warmth of our meeting houses is immediately notable to the visitor from the outside world; the steeples of the churches, the invariable proximity to the heart of town, and the open invitations to worship have drawn attendees from the greater Windham and Cheshire county areas for generations.