Harbor Church is believed to have begun as early as 1662, when the first English settlers arrived at Block Island, presumably in search of freedom of religion. These settlers met for services in individual homes. It was not until 1763 that the congregation was formally established. Four previous church buildings are no longer standing. The fourth building at the area known as Old Harbor had the first furnace on Block Island. With tourism, especially from May to October, important to the area, Harbor Church constructed a summer chapel with a pipe organ. This fourth church building, however, was later destroyed in a fire. The fifth former location of the church was on Chapel Street in Old Harbor. In addition to worship services, this building hosted such community events as school graduations. In October 1944, the church received as a gift the title to the Adrian Hotel, a Victorian-style structure built in 1886. Two months later, the church on Chapel Street burned to the ground. The congregation had little funding available to rebuild in part because of devastating consequences from the Hurricane of 1938. The former hotel hence became unexpectedly the sixth home of Harbor Church, with services held in the former hotel dining room. After the sale of the parsonage to raise funds, the cornerstone was laid in 1952, and the current sanctuary was added to the reconstructed seventh and current church building. During the 1970s, a pastor's office was established within the church. The current parsonage was formed through the restoration of several former hotel rooms upstairs in the church building.
Church activities
Tourists often swell the number attending weekly worship services, which begin Sundays at 10 a.m. The church offers Bible study at 7 p.m. on Thursdays and a fellowship breakfast for men at 7:30 a.m. Saturdays. In August, Harbor Church holds Vacation Bible School. The church can seat up to 120 persons and hosts weddings, including couples from outside the community who wish to marry in the resort environment. Harbor Church the second weekend of August holds the annual Block Island Arts Festival. The church also hosts the Block Island chapter of the Boy Scouts of America. The town recreational center operates in the church basement. Since 2009, the Harbor Church pastor has been the Reverend Stephen Eugene Hollaway, a poet born in 1952 in Japan and reared in Tokyo and then Nashville, Tennessee. He is a graduate of Princeton Seminary in New Jersey and a member of the board of directors of the Rhode Island Baptist Heritage Center. His wife, Rebecca P. "Becca" Hollaway, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, is an artist and a potter. Each summer Jim Wallis, the founder and editor of Sojourners magazine, a theologian of the evangelical left, and an advocate of issues of peace and social justice, addresses the Harbor Church congregation. He has long-term ties to Block Island, where he vacations to reflect and write. His wife, Joy, is one of the first women ordained as an Anglican priest. Harbor Church observed its 250th anniversary in 2015.
