Theodore Parker was a reforming American minister of the Unitarian church, and a Transcendentalist. He was born in Lexington, Massachusetts on August 24, 1810, the youngest child in a large farming family, and died in Florence, Italy on May 10, 1860.
According to the Faith and Social Justice web site (linked below under External links), he was a:
- Transcendentalist, theologian, scholar, Unitarian minister, abolitionist, and social reformer...Theodore Parker was all of these things and more. A friend of Emerson, a foe of slavery, ...
Theodore Parker
| Table of contents |
|
2 Theological questions 3 Controversy and his split with the church 4 His church and social mission 5 His last days 6 Final words 7 External links and references |
Most of his family had died by the time he was 27, probably to tuberculosis, and he grew into faith that the soul was immortal, and in a God who would not allow lasting harm to any of his flock. His belief in God's benevolence made him reject Calvinist theology as cruel and unreasonable.
He thought of a legal career, but his strong faith led him to theology. He certainly spoke Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and German, and claimed to learn a new language every month. His journal and letters show that he had acquaintance with many other languages, including Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, as well as the classical and the principal modern European languages.
In 1834, despite no college degree, Harvard Divinity School gave him advanced standing. A patron helped with tuition.
While he started with a strong faith, with time he began to ask questions. He learned of the new field of historical Bible criticism, then growing in Germany, and he came to deny traditional views. Ultimately, he rejected all miracles, and saw the Bible as full of contradictions and mistakes. He retained his faith in God.
According to the Unitarians (below, references),
As he denied Biblical miracles, and the authority of the Bible and Jesus,
he was attacked. Some felt he was not a Christian. He lost friends. Nearly all the pulpits in Boston area were closed against him. His career looked over.
In January 1845, Parker accepted an invitation from supporters to preach in Boston. His first sermon was that February, and in December 1845, his supporters organized the 28th Congregational Society of Boston. His parishoners included Louisa May Alcott, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
His church was called a "free church," and he lost more Unitarian support. His religious views were radical enough, but socially he moved even more left.
He came to support not only temperance, but prison reform, and most controversial of all — he became an abolitionist. One must understand the the American union was then beginning to split over slavery. He wrote the scathing To a Southern Slaveholder in 1848, as the abolition crisis was heating up.
He defied slavery, advocated violating the Fugitive Slave Act (a controversial part of the Compromise of 1850 that required returning escaped slaves to their masters), and began working with fugitive slaves. He believed all had the God-given right to freedom, and while indicted, he was never convicted of violating the Fugitive Slave Act.
It is well known that he had fugitive slaves in his congregation, and would hide them in his home. It is often told that he would be home, composing his church services, and have a gun sitting on the table and a sword by the table. When he preached, he would lay a gun on the pulpit — just in case any slave-catchers dropped by. There seems no record of his using it.
In 1850, there was a wanted fugitive slave in his congregation, one Ellen Craft. He hid her in his house, until sending her to Canada and freedom, in direct contravention of United States law. During the undeclared war in Kansas (see Bleeding Kansas and Origins of the American Civil War) prior to the actual outbreak of the American Civil War, he supplied money for arms for free state militias. He worked with many escaped slaves.
A blot on his name is his support for the abolitionist John Brown, whose methods are considered terrorism, and whose provocations worsened the growing conflict and helped make the Civil War inevitable.
He wrote a public letter defending John Brown's actions after his arrest, defending the right of slaves to kill their masters (John Brown's Expedition Reviewed).
He developed tuberculosis, and left for the warm climate of Italy, where he died in Florence on May 10, 1860, less than a year before the Union split. His grave is still there.
He was the first to use the phrase, "of all the people, by all the people, for all the people," that later influenced the Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln.
To the end, the Boston Unitarian leadership opposed him, but younger ministers admired him for his attacks on traditional ideas, his fight for a free faith and pupit, and his very public stances in social issues such as slavery. The Unitarians now refer him (references),
Early life
Theological questions
Controversy and his split with the church
His church and social mission
His last days
Final words
While some thought his ministry a "one man show," it continued after his death, until 1889.
