[1] As an early supporter of the socialistic movement in the United States, he was editor of the Present, the Spirit of the Age and the Harbinger.

In 1848 he presided over The Religious Union of Associationists in Boston, a socialist group which included many members of the Brook Farm commune.

[2] As minister of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester in 1852, he influenced Susan B. Anthony, a member of his congregation who was a young schoolteacher on the threshold of her career as a women's rights activist.

"[3] Channing wrote the call for and played a leading role in the Women's Rights Convention that Anthony organized in Rochester in 1853.

He was a prolific writer, contributing to the North American Review, the Dial, the Christian Examiner, and other serials, a member of the Transcendental Club, a close friend of Henry David Thoreau and corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson.