William Channing Gannett

William Channing Gannett (March 13, 1840 – December 15, 1923) was an American Unitarian minister. He presided at the Unity Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1877 to 1883, and at the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York from 1889 to 1908. A noted author and editor of hymnbooks, Gannett was a central figure in the Western Unitarian Conference, which took the liberal side in the Unitarian Church's doctrinal debates of the late 19th century.

Early life and education Gannett was born in Boston in March 1840. He was named after, and baptized by, William Ellery Channing, "founder of American Unitarianism".

A year after graduating in 1860 with an AB degree from Harvard College, Gannett enrolled at Harvard Divinity School. But he soon left to work on the Sea Islands of South Carolina for the New England Freedmen's Society. He organized a school and managed a plantation where he sought to demonstrate that "illiterate black freedmen would work without the incentive of the lash".

Career His first parish was in Milwaukee, "then a Western town of muddy streets and wooden sidewalks".

Gannett played a key role in founding Unity magazine, a Chicago semimonthly launched in March 1878. He and the other Western ministers on Unitys editorial board were known as the "Unity men", and their publication became "the voice of the more radical Unitarians of the West".

At the contentious 1886 WUC convention in Cincinnati, Gannett debated the so-called "creedal issue" with other church leaders including Jabez T. Sunderland. Earlier that year, Sunderland had published a pamphlet, The Issue in the West, which argued for preserving the Christian, theistic roots of Unitarianism, and for resisting a possible WUC takeover by the Free Religious Association (of which Gannett was a member). At the 1886 convention, Gannett proposed a resolution, written in non-theistic language, that the WUC "conditions its fellowship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all who wish to join it to help establish truth and righteousness and love in the world." The next year at a WUC meeting in Chicago, Gannett wrote a Statement of Faith which was adopted by the attendees. Titled "Things Commonly Believed Among Us", it included assertions such as "We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of religious belief", and this notable passage:

In 1889, Gannett became minister at the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York. By then he was widely known as a writer and editor of significant hymns. In 1880 he had collaborated with James V. Blake and Frederick L. Hosmer to compile Unity Hymns and Chorals for the Congregation and the Home, a popular hymnbook that was expanded and reprinted multiple times. In 1885, Gannett co-wrote with Hosmer the anthology, The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems, which had a follow-up volume published in 1894.

Throughout his adult life, Gannett was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of women's suffrage. Susan B. Anthony was a friend and a member of his Rochester congregation.

William Gannett died on December 15, 1923. He was 83.