Fountain Street Church has occupied a distinctive and sometimes controversial place in Grand Rapids for more than a century. The church was founded in 1869 as a Baptist congregation but evolved, through a series of remarkable ministers, into one of the most theologically liberal Protestant churches in the Midwest — a place that embraced evolution before most churches would discuss it, welcomed agnostics and questioners, and took positions on civil rights and Vietnam that put it at odds with the more conservative evangelical culture surrounding it in west Michigan. The current building, a Gothic Revival structure completed in 1924 with a soaring bell tower and dramatic stained glass, is one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings in the city.
The church has hosted Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bertrand Russell from its pulpit — a roster that tells you something about its theological and political orientation. In a city shaped by Dutch Calvinist conservatism, Fountain Street has functioned as a persistent liberal counterweight, reminding Grand Rapids that dissent and inquiry have their own long tradition here.