All Saints' Church

Like all churches, we struggle to apply the ancient truths to contemporary life and we struggle to refine our vision for what we should do next. We don’t claim to have all the answers but we do try to tolerate all the questions. We look to the scriptures and sacraments as having hope and meaning encoded within them and we accept the fact that not everyone sees things the way we do.

In our teaching, we take seriously Jesus’ teaching that "wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." From there we teach that every congregation is a full local manifestation of Christ’s body.  

Of course this is heady theology but it fills us with a sense of purpose, meaning and mission. That’s what we are in essence - but to the naked eye, we are just ordinary people participating in extraordinary ritual.  We are teachers, actors, bankers, retired, young and old, gay and straight, liberal and a little less liberal!

We are a community of people who are gradually learning to see the sacred in our everyday lives and gradually learning to forgive others as we have begun to experience forgiveness. We study the sacred masters, we welcome the seeker and the skeptic, we feed the homeless and we seek to find a new way of being human in our personal, public and political lives.

All Saints Church has a rich history. Its origins lie in the Free Chapel founded by St. Thomas Church on May 2, 1858, in downtown Manhattan. It was not until the 1960’s that the parish secured its independence, and its new name of All Saints Church was first used at Easter, 1963. The legal transfer of independence came on April 14, 1965, when deeds to the properties of the 60th St. church were transferred. On May 11, 1965, All Saints Church was admitted into the Diocese of New York at its annual convention.