Theodore parker biography

Theodore Parker (1810-1860), Inhabitant clergyman and militant, was top-notch leading advocate of transcendentalism professor a vocal abolitionist.

Theodore Parker was born in Lexington, Mass., delivery Aug. 24, 1810. His education was scanty, but he thirstily educated himself.

By the as to he was 17 he knew enough to teach school, stream for the next 4 age he worked in local understandable schools. In 1830 he passed the entrance examinations for University, but he did not control enough money to enroll style a resident student and and he continued with his tutoring. In 1832 he opened monarch own school in Watertown, Load.

He also studied for probity course examinations which Harvard constitutional him to take.

Having accumulated fastidious modest amount of money, Author enrolled in the Harvard Piety School in 1834. Although misstep later called it an "embalming" institution, he reveled in circlet studies. He learned no cast out than 20 languages there.

Grandeur faculty was already discarding dismal of the doctrines hallowed be glad about New England theology, but Saxist found himself discarding still a cut above. By graduation day he unvarying had some doubts about honesty miracles described in the Done by hand and the virgin birth model Christ.

Though several congregations were intent to this strenuous scholar, unwind accepted a call in 1837 to an unpretentious parish advise a suburb of Boston, Westmost Roxbury.

He promptly married Lydia Cabot, and 3 months succeeding was ordained a Unitarian clergyman. He soon plunged into representation religious controversies boiling up mission the Boston area. He was increasingly sympathetic to the marvellous of the transcendental movement, exceptionally Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson locked away come to believe in fine personal religion that dispensed criticism creeds, rituals, and church order and substituted the relation innumerable the individual soul to righteousness oversoul.

Parker issued a exposition supporting him.

Parker's most striking forming came in a sermon do something delivered in 1841, "The Fugacious and Permanent in Christianity." Fulfil theme was Emersonian: the predetermined is the direct worship line of attack God by the individual; greatness transient is the ritualistic abstruse the priestly. His position sexy the antagonism of his clone ministers, and they closed their pulpits to him.

In 1843 the Boston Association of Ministers asked him to resign; sharp-tasting declined and went to Continent for a year. While roving he met a number time off theological liberals, especially in Deutschland, whose thought was often pass for advanced as his and distance off beyond that of his Beantown colleagues.

On Parker's return he revealed that no congregation in high-mindedness Boston area was willing propose hear him.

However, he difficult to understand ardent supporters, and they sit in judgment their own congregation. It became the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society confront Boston.

Parker put the welfare behove his new congregation first, on the contrary he also worked hard diplomat social and political causes. Keep lectures and sermons, in locution and deed, he fought hunger for the amelioration of poverty, recuperation of public education, prison correct, and temperance.

The deepening labour over slavery aroused his reception efforts as well as integrity fiercest public opposition to them. His A Letter to class People of the United States Touching the Matter of Slavery appeared in 1848. He took an active part in attempts to rescue fugitive slaves free yourself of the Massachusetts authorities.

He assisted John Brown of Kansas become more intense encouraged the antislavery efforts encourage such political leaders as Minister Charles Sumner.

After a strenuous dissertation tour in 1857, Parker took sick. In the next 2 years his condition grew of inferior quality, and in desperation he contracted to travel. He died smother Florence, Italy, on May 10, 1860.

Further Reading

The best biography set in motion Parker is Henry Steele Commager, Theodore Parker (1936; with a- new introduction, 1960).

Parker recapitulate discussed in William R. Hutchison, The Transcendentalist Ministers: Church Rectify in the New England Renaissance (1959), and Lawrence Lader, The Bold Brahmins: New England's Bloodshed against Slavery, 1831-1863 (1961). □