Theodore
Parker was born on August 24, 1810 in
Lexington, Massachusetts. His large family had deep roots in New
England. His grandfather was the Captain Parker who had
commanded the militia on Lexington
Green in the opening skirmish of
the American Revolution.
He was scholarly and devout, but lost both
parents and his seven of his nine siblings
by the time he was 27, mostly to that scourge
of the era consumption (tuberculosis.) The losses confirmed
his rejection of Calvinist orthodoxy.
As a youth he was unable to afford tuition at Harvard, so he read
the entire curriculum on his
own. He dallied as a school master
and toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer
before he settled on becoming a minister.
After mastering Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, theology,
church history, and biblical studies on his own, Harvard
Divinity School admitted him even without an undergraduate degree in 1834.
After graduating, Parker married and
was ordained by the small West Roxbury congregation. The light duty of a small congregation allowed
Parker time to study more on his own. With his introduction to German historical
Biblical criticism, his views began to evolve away from the generally accepted Unitarian theology.
First, he began to question the historical validity of miracles in the Old Testament.
That lead to questions about Christ’s
miracles and a new view that Jesus
was simply more divinely inspired
than most men—although divine inspiration was open to all—and that his
teachings were great not because they came from God, but because their authority
was based on truth. By the end
of the decade his written speculations
along these lines were beginning to cause
ripples.
Parker naturally fell in with the
emerging Transcendentalists. He attended early meetings of the Club
and was soon contributing to their seminal journal The Dial.
Like others in the group he was influenced by Ralph Waldo
Emerson. After the scandal of Emerson’s Divinity School
Address, which he heard in person, he was drawn into the controversy
that arose after Unitarian traditionalist Andrews Norton launched his
furious assault on Emerson’s infidelity.
He soon published his own defense of Transcendental liberalism in the guise of
commentary by a member in the pews.
The pamphlet, The Previous Question, cemented Parkers reputation
as a leading voice of a new movement.
On May 19, 1841 Parker summed up his
evolving views in an ordination sermon for Charles C. Shackford at the Hawes Place Church in South Boston,
much as a generation earlier William
Ellery Channing had launched Unitarianism as distinct religious movement in
the United States at the ordination of Jared
Sparks in Baltimore. A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in
Christianity is
now considered a foundational document
of the evolving Unitarian faith. But at the time it caused a scandal.
Most Boston area preachers believed
Parker had abandoned Christianity altogether. He became the target an informal boycott of pulpit exchanges. While his Roxbury parish loyally
stood by him, Parker went on the offensive
with well attended lectures in
Boson, which he collected and published as A Discourse of Matters
Pertaining to Religion in the spring of 1842. Soon the informal boycott
of pulpit exchanges led to an 1843 attempt to force Parker to resign from the Boston Association
of Congregational Ministers, whose members were all Unitarians.
He steadfastly refused to do so and
accused his colleagues of trying to impose
a creed.
Later in 1843 Parker and his wife
briefly escaped the growing controversy by making a European tour,
during which time he began to mull social
inequality and the nature of Democracy. When he returned he
began to infuse his sermons with topics of social
reform as well as theological
radicalism. Whether the topic was temperance, the rights of
workers, or the evils of slavery
this new rabble rousing only
increased hostility against him by his peers.
In 1844 John Sargeant,
employed by the Beneficial Fraternity to preach at a missionary chapel for immigrants,
exchanged pulpits with Parker and was reprimanded by the Ben Frat board. He
resigned in protest. Less than
a month later, in December, it was Parkers
turn by rotation among all of the members to preach the weekly Thursday
Lecture sponsored by the Ministerial association at First Church. Parker
delivered a blunt rebuke of
Unitarian orthodoxy, The Relation of Jesus to His Age and the Ages.
The association transferred management
of the lecture series to First Church so that Parker would never again be
called to speak by rotation.
In January of 1845 James Freeman
Clarke, one of the most esteemed Boston ministers and a theological
opponent of Parker, decided that his fellows had gone too far in trying to impose conformity and invited Parker
to exchange. Fourteen of the leading families of The Church of the
Redeemer resigned in protest, putting Clarke’s ministry in peril. It
would be the last time any Boston minister extended an invitation to exchange.
But Parker’s radicalism did have
supporters in the pews in Boston. They rented the Melodeon Theater to house weekly
worship services in 1845. The rest of the year he preached in the
Theater on Sunday morning and in Roxbury that afternoon. By December the
group decided to form an independent
congregation and call Parker.
Theodore Parker filled the seats of the Boston Music Hall, second venue for his 28th Congregational Society. |
On January 4, 1846 Theodore Parker was installed
as the minister of the 28th Congregational Society of Boston, a
congregation created for the sole purpose of providing a platform for the
maverick, outcast Unitarian and
fiery abolitionist in the heart of the Hub of the Universe.
The distinguished Unitarian ministers of Boston were outraged. Probably
even more so when they learned that he broke with precedent and preached his
own instillation sermon, The True Idea of a Christian Church—which
could only be interpreted as an in-your-face challenge to their moral authority.
Although the core group of three
hundred or so supporters who underwrote
the new congregation was largely Unitarians,
the new congregation was not considered a Unitarian Church, but a Free
Church open to all and unbound by any dogma. Soon upward of
1000 people were regularly attending Parker’s Sunday sermons and Wednesday evening lectures on social,
political, and scientific issues. When that venue became too crowded,
services were moved to the Boston Music Hall and attendance
doubled.
Parker could be considered the first
pastor of a mega church. And like the leaders of modern mega
churches, he used every medium at his disposal to spread his radical
gospel. Although banned from the Unitarian press, he published articles
regularly in both Boston and national periodicals
and edited his own journal, the Massachusetts
Quarterly Review. His sermons were collected and published in popular collections and he
regularly churned out books on theological, moral, and reform issues.
When he was not speaking from his own pulpit, he lectured widely. By the 1850’s he was one of the most famous men in America, adored by his followers and cordially hated by his enemies.
Parker in 1855. |
If the local Unitarian worthies
thought that Parker was trouble before, his prominent new pulpit only provided
him with opportunities to go even further, particularly on social justice
issues. Parker espoused a new American industrial democracy which
he proclaimed was “of all the people, by all the people, for all the people”—a
phrase latter borrowed by Abraham Lincoln who had read several
collections of Parker’s sermons. To this end he advocated numerous social
reforms including free public education,
penal reform, and support for the
emerging Women’s Rights movement.
But his greatest attention was turned to the mortal flaw that kept industrial democracy form truly flourishing—slavery.
He had already denounced the Mexican
War as an attempt to expand slavery
and led Boston opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He
was a minister at large to the Black community for the Abolitionists and as chair of their Vigilance
Committee arranged for support and abetted the escape of fugitives. He personally harbored at least two in
his own home. In 1855 he was indicted
by a Federal Grand Jury for conspiracy to violate the Fugitive
Slave Act. Although his popular support in Boston led to the eventual
dismissal of the charges, he was branded an enemy of the South and
worked with a pistol on his desk to defend himself from constant threats on his life.
Parker supported John Brown in Kansas, was on the secret Boston Commitee that funded the Harper's Ferry Raid, and was one of the few to publicly defend Brown after his arrest. |
Parker was now in league with the
fieriest of abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison. With
the outbreak of guerilla warfare
between pro-slavery and Free Soil
partisans in Kansas, Parker raised money to buy weapons for the Free State militias, including a arming a firebrand named John Brown.
When Brown came to Boston to plead for support for a plan to foment a slave
rebellion he was one of the secret
committee that helped finance and arm Brown’s failed Harper’s Ferry Raid
in October 1859. Parker was one of the few to publicly support Brown,
penning John Brown's Expedition Reviewed a public letter
defending Brown’s actions and the right
of slaves to kill their masters.
By that time Parker was exhausted. His always fragile health had begun to deteriorate two years earlier.
The strain of his tireless abolitionist efforts and a packed schedule of
preaching and lecturing had taken a toll. The tuberculosis that had
killed so many in his family was wracking his body. He had to give up
preaching in January 1859.
He and his wife sought relief with a
cruise to the Caribbean during which time he wrote a long autobiographical letter and final confession of faith to his former
congregation which was published as Theodore Parker’s Experience as a
Minister.
The old establishment was not prepared
to forgive or forget. Knowing Parker was critically ill and likely dying,
the 1859 annual meeting of the Harvard
Divinity School Alumni Association rejected a motion to extend personal sympathy for his suffering.
Parker's grave in the Stranger's Cemetery in Florence, Italy. |
Parker and his wife continued on their
journey to Europe. On May 10, 1860 Parker died in Florence, Italy.
He was buried in the Strangers Cemetery, the final resting place of stranded,
exiled, or expatriate Protestants. The Boston Ministerial
Association declined to send condolences
to the widow.
As much as Parker was despised by
the old guard, he was already lionized
by a whole younger generation of
ministers who would go on to lead Unitarianism in the later 19th
Century. His theology broadly
trumped a more conventional Christianity and he was held to be the model of
prophetic ministry.
In the modern Unitarian
Universalist Association, with its heavy emphasis on social justice, he has become an even more canonical
figure.
Lately, as a minority movement has emerged that wishes to tone down “political” action and emphasizes congregational
autonomy and enriched spiritual
content, Parker has begun to be criticized
for his disruptive, un-collegial behavior, his willingness
to defy the law and endorse violence, and surprisingly for
one of Unitarianism’s deepest theological pioneers, for a lack of spirituality.
One suspects that these biting gnats will do no serious
damage to the reputation of the man
who inspired Martin Luther King with his words, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long
one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete
the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from
what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
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