Get to Know Us

The United Presbyterian Church of Binghamton is a proudly an open and affirming congregation and a member of the More Light Presbyterians movement. If you are seeking to learn more about Jesus Christ and discover what God can do in your life, we invite you to join us for worship, education, service to the community, mission, and fellowship.


You will find us to be a congregation of all sorts of people: young and old, single and married, adults and children, traditional and nontraditional families. We are teachers, secretaries, engineers, homemakers, line workers, retirees. Some are involved in a church for the first time (or the first time in a long time), others are transfers from other denominations, and some are lifelong Presbyterians. 


What we hold in common is belief in the good news of reconciliation to God and to one another through Jesus Christ. We are committed to live and grow in that good news and to apply it to our lives.

Our History

On November 20, 1817, twenty people met on the steps of Binghamton’s Court House to assent to the Articles of Faith and Covenant prepared for a new church — First Presbyterian Church of Binghamton. The first members were enrolled by Rev. Ebenezer Kingsbury and Rev. Joseph Wood, who were representatives of the Presbytery of Susquehanna.

 

Over the course of the next 150 years, as the Binghamton area grew and flourished, First Presbyterian Church provided the seeds for ten more churches: the Presbyterian Church of Castle Creek (1833–1861), First Congregational Church of Binghamton (est. 1836), North Presbyterian (1870–1980), West Presbyterian (1871–2011), Ross Memorial Presbyterian (1879–2021), Immanuel Presbyterian (est. 1887), First Presbyterian Church of Johnson City (formerly Floral Avenue Presbyterian, est. 1892), Broad Avenue Presbyterian (1894–1980), Jon Hus Presbyterian (est. 1937), and South Hills Presbyterian (1962–2006). In 1980, Broad Avenue–North Presbyterian Church was formed by merger; in 2007, they merged with First Presbyterian Church of Conklin to become Conklin Presbyterian Church and the Broad Avenue–North Presbyterian Chapel.

 

In the mid-1980s, as our local economy began to struggle and demographics changed, mainstream church attendance declined. After several years of study, prayer, and collaboration, in 2010 the First and West Presbyterian Church congregations voted to merge into a single new congregation, and in August 2011 they became the United Presbyterian Church of Binghamton. This merged congregation is now the steward of the 200+ years of history embodied in this church.