I’ve been building websites since 1996: some have been lost to time, others I have taken down because they’re so behind the times. But then this Twitter conversation with Stephen Lingwood, the minister of the Unitarian church in Cardiff, Wales. He posted, and has been quoting parts of William Ellery Channing’s 1819 Unitarian Christianity, also known as “the Baltimore Sermon.” And as you can count, this is its bicentennial.
We had this chat:
“Now all books, and all conversation, require in the reader or hearer the constant exercise of reason; or their true import is only to be obtained by continual comparison and inference.”#UnitarianChristianity https://t.co/WUFxHmH7jY
— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 23, 2019
Funny. I was the first to put it on the Internet — for Gopher, pre-WWW — having typed out myself. How early was that? I wonder if I have my original file around here.
— Scott Wells (@bitb) February 24, 2019
Wow. That’s amazing.
— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 24, 2019
I found one file of the sermon unchanged since 1994. I used to have a Channing site — many years ago — with that and other titles, and maybe I will remount it. I do own the https://t.co/vTvTPuZ8xJ domain.
— Scott Wells (@bitb) February 24, 2019
Be great to have a lot of historical stuff online.
— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 24, 2019
So, I dusted off the version of the site from 2003; I know because the files hadn’t been changed since. I re-purposed unitarianchristian.org, and created a channing folder for the files. I lightly cleaned up the Channing entry (index) page and knocked together a page for the domain. I know that if I didn’t just do it, I wouldn’t.
So. your blast from the past: William Ellery Channing Center
(I might fix it when I have the time. Maybe a bit by bit.)