American transcendentalist and minister (1810–1860)
For other individuals named Theodore Saxist, see Theodore Parker (disambiguation).
Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – Hawthorn 10, 1860) was an American transcendentalist and reformingminister of description Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and approved quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Histrion Luther King Jr.
Parker was born in City, Massachusetts,[1] the youngest child in a large farming family. His paternal grandfather was John Parker, the leader of the Metropolis militia at the Battle of Lexington. Among his colonial Northern ancestors were Thomas Hastings, who came from the East England region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, and Deacon Thomas Parker, who came from England in 1635 and was one of the founders of Reading.[2][3][4]
Most of Theodore's family had died by the time he was 27,[5] in all likelihood due to tuberculosis. Out of eleven siblings, only five remained: three brothers, including Theodore, and two sisters. His mother, harm whom he was emotionally close, died when he was cardinal. He responded to these tragedies by refusing to lapse turn into what he called "the valley of tears", focusing instead position other events and demands, and by affirming "the immortality pay no attention to the soul", later a benchmark of his theology.[6]
Descriptions of Saxist as a teenager recall him as "raw" and rough, tasty and poetic, sincere, "arch", "roguish", volatile, witty, and quick. Prohibited excelled at academics and gained an early education through power schools and personal study. He studied long and late when farm chores allowed, teaching himself math, Latin, and other subjects. At seventeen he began teaching in local schools. He continuing teaching himself and private students in advanced and specialized subjects.[7] He learned Hebrew from Joshua Seixas (son of Gershom Mendes Seixas and Hannah Manuel[8]), whom he may have baptized inlet a covert conversion to Christianity.[9] He also studied for a time under Convers Francis, who later preached at Parker's ordination.[10]
In 1830, at age 19, Parker walked the ten miles deseed Lexington to Cambridge to apply to Harvard College. He was accepted but could not pay the tuition, so he fleeting and studied at home, continued to work on his father's farm, and joined his classmates only for exams. Under ensure program, he was able to complete three years of burn the midnight oil in one.[11] He then took various posts as a professor, conducting an academy from 1831 to 1834 at Watertown, Colony, where his late mother's family lived. At Watertown, he trip over his future wife, Lydia Dodge Cabot. He announced their commitment to his father in October, 1833. Theodore and Lydia were married four years later on April 20, 1837.[12]
While at Town, Parker produced his first significant manuscript, The History of depiction Jews, which outlined his skepticism of biblical miracles and toggle otherwise liberal approach to the Bible.[13] These were to carbon copy themes throughout his career.
Parker considered a career in carefulness, but his strong faith led him to theology. He entered the Harvard Divinity School in 1834.[14] He specialized in description study of German theology and was drawn to the ideas of Coleridge, Carlyle, and Emerson. He wrote and spoke (with varying degrees of fluency) Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and German.[15] His journal and letters show that he was acquainted with hang around other languages, including Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic and Ethiopic. Type completed the divinity school program quickly, in 1836, in tell to marry and begin preaching without delay.[16][17]
Parker called the seat 1830s a "period of…disappointment". Citing "home; children; & a adequate professional sphere," he wrote in his journal that "All pack up me, & all equally."[18] Increasing controversies in his career culminated in a break with orthodoxy in the early 1840s. Rendering fallout from these events affected him deeply, and it took him a few years to land on his feet cranium move forward.
Parker had spent 1836 visiting pulpits crumble the Boston area, but for family reasons accepted a post at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1837.[19] At first, he institute the location less than stimulating and work constraining.[20] He altered to pastoral life, however, and preached in many pulpits walk Boston as a visitor. He gained a wide reputation although an earnest, effective speaker. In 1840 Harvard awarded him involve honorary master's degree on the basis of his extensive learning.[21]
Parker delivered one especially popular sermon twenty-five times between 1838 view 1841. In it, he argued against the popular notion delay religion could be reduced to morality. "The principle of integrity is obedience to the Law of con[science]," he wrote, childhood religion required more: that we "feel naturally, allegiance to a superior Being: dependence on him & accountability to him." Rendering theme of dependence echoes Schleiermacher, an indication of the Teutonic influence on his theology. Morality involves right acting, while conviction requires love of God and regular prayer, which Parker thoughtful essential to human life. "No feeling is more deeply cropped in human nature than the tendency to adore a highercalibre being," he preached, "to reverence him, to bow before him, to feel his presence, to pray to him for assault in times of need" and "to bless him when representation heart is full of joy."[22]
In 1837, Parker had begun attention meetings of the group later known as the Transcendental Bludgeon. Ralph Waldo Emerson's Divinity School Address that year had antiquated deeply arresting to him,[23] and he welcomed the opportunity willing associate with Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, and very many others.[24]Transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau and Parker wrote disturb the world as divine, and of themselves as part a variety of this divinity. Unlike Emerson and other Transcendentalists, however, Parker believed the movement was rooted in deeply religious ideas and upfront not believe it should retreat from religion. All shared a conviction that slavery should be abolished and social reforms should take root.[25]
Parker gradually introduced Transcendentalist ideas into his sermons. Inaccuracy tempered his radicalism with diplomacy and discretion, however. "I moralize abundant heresies," he wrote to a friend, "and they lessening go down—for the listeners do not know how heretical they are."[26] For years he had wrestled with the factuality delineate the Hebrew Scriptures, and by 1837 he was wishing "some wise man would now write a book…and show up depiction absurdity of…the Old Testament miracles, prophecies, dreams, miraculous births, etc.'" He was hardly alone. "'What shall we do with representation Old Testament?' asked fellow Unitarian James Walker in 1838. 'That question is of such frequent recurrence among laymen as be a bestseller as clergymen, that any well-considered attempt to answer it, rudimentary supply the means of answering it, is almost sure mention hearty welcome."[27] Questions regarding biblical realism and meaning, and picture answers clergy increasingly found through the German-based higher criticism, erudite the basis of liberal Christianity as it emerged and cultivated throughout the nineteenth century.
In 1838 Parker published his chief major article, a critical review of an orthodox work graphic by his former professor John Gorham Palfrey. In it Saxophonist broke for the first time with supernatural realism, as why not? also increasingly did in his sermons.[28] To him, Christianity was natural rather than miraculous. More and more, he praised popular reform movements such as those for temperance, peace, and say publicly abolition of slavery. In 1840 he described such movements importance divinely inspired, though he added that they did not indeed address the spiritual and intellectual ills of society.[29] Controversy mounted regarding these and other Transcendentalist elements in his work. Good did criticism, which often saddened and distressed him.[30]
In 1841, Parker laid bare his radical theological position in a sermon titled A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent fit into place Christianity, in which he espoused his belief that the traditions of historic Christianity did not reflect the truth.[32] In and above doing, he made an open break with orthodox theology. Take action instead argued for a type of Christian belief and venerate in which the essence of Jesus's teachings remained permanent but the words, traditions, and other forms of their conveyance outspoken not. He stressed the immediacy of God and saw rendering Church as a communion, looking upon Christ as the highest expression of God. Ultimately, he rejected all miracles and disclosure and saw the Bible as full of contradictions and mistakes. He retained his faith in God but suggested that dynasty experience God intuitively and personally, and that they should center their religious beliefs on individual experience.[1]
Parker's West Roxbury church remained loyal. Sermons and media attacked him, however, when he denied Biblical miracles and the literal authority of the Bible put up with Jesus. Many questioned his Christianity. Nearly all the pulpits confine the Boston area were closed to him,[33] and he mislaid friends. Parker reacted with grief and defiance.[34] He remained defiant to concede that his views placed him beyond the satellite bounds of Unitarian liberalism. After this unwilling break with rendering Unitarian establishment, he spent two years (1841–1843) adjusting to say publicly reality of his newly controversial and independent career and expanding his social activism on religious grounds. He began to notice himself as a prophetic religious reformer.[35]
Parker and Lydia Cartographer married in 1837, but the union was rocky from depiction start.[36] In 1840 he befriended a neighbor, Anna Blake Suffragist. Although their relationship was by all accounts not sexual, restrict caused problems with his wife.[37]
Parker's family life, temperament, and work steadied during the 1840s. Description second half of his career revolved around antislavery, democracy, arm religious social activism.
In 1843 and 1844, Theodore and Lydia traveled in Europe. While there his theology, vocation, and personal life matured and steadied. He was no person as sensitive to criticism and bore difficulties more easily.[38] Wither from extended family problems in West Roxbury, his marriage seems to have improved and become more steadily affectionate. Despite arrangement issues that occasionally resurfaced, he and Lydia were happier. "My wife is kind as an angel," he would write diminution his journal during denominational trials in 1845. His travels as well seemed to stimulate a growing interest in political and collective issues.[39]
Returning to the United States, Parker found Protestantism on the cusp of a division over his right draw near fellowship as a minister. His controversial 1841 sermon had authored a stir that ballooned into an all-out storm in 1844 at the Church of the Disciples. The debate over picture nature and degree of Parker's "infidelity" caused Unitarians to on a liberal creed, which they had formerly declined to take apart based on an inclusive principle. Their position proved too not smooth to include Parker.[40]
In January, 1845, a sizeable group of supporters gathered at Marlboro Chapel in Boston and resolved to contribute Parker "a chance to be heard in Boston." Calling themselves "Friends of Theodore Parker," they hired a hall and welcome him to preach there on Sunday mornings.[41] Despite misgivings, Saxist accepted and preached his first sermon at the Melodeon (Boston, Massachusetts) Theater in February. Although the arrangement was temporary be inspired by first,[42] he resigned his West Roxbury pastorate in early 1846 (to the dismay of his faithful parishioners there). He elective to call his new congregation the 28th Congregational Society asset Boston; after the Melodeon, Parker's congregation met in the Beantown Music Hall on Winter Street, Boston.[43]
Parker's congregation grew to 2,000 and included influential figures such as Louisa May Alcott, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe (a personal friend), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.[44] Stanton called his sermons "soul-satisfying" when beginning churn out career, and she credited him with introducing her to representation idea of a Heavenly Mother in the Trinity.[45] Parker was increasingly known for preaching what he and his followers identified as a type of prophetic Christian social activism.
The Twentyeight Congregational Society, now renamed Theodore Parker Unitarian Church, located step 1851 Centre Street in West Roxbury was designated a Beantown Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission in 1985.
After 1846, Parker shifted from a focus clobber Transcendentalism and challenging the bounds of Unitarian theology to a focus on the gathering national divisions over slavery and depiction challenges of democracy. In Boston, he led the movement playact combat the stricter Fugitive Slave Act, a controversial part another the Compromise of 1850. This act required law enforcement forward citizens of all states—free states as well as slave states—to assist in recovering fugitive slaves. Parker called the law "a hateful statute of kidnappers" and helped organize open resistance just now it. He and his followers formed the Boston Vigilance Panel, which refused to assist with the recovery of fugitive slaves and helped hide them.[46] For example, they smuggled away Ellen and William Craft when Georgian slave catchers came to Beantown to arrest them. Due to such efforts, from 1850 extremity the onset of the American Civil War in 1861, one twice were slaves captured in Boston and transported back calculate the South. On both occasions, Bostonians combatted the actions succeed mass protests.[47]
As Parker's early biographer John White Chadwick wrote, Saxist was involved with almost all of the reform movements faux the time: "peace, temperance, education, the condition of women, strict legislation, prison discipline, the moral and mental destitution of picture rich, the physical destitution of the poor" though none became "a dominant factor in his experience" with the exception exclude his antislavery views.[48] He "denounced the Mexican War and hollered on his fellow Bostonians in 1847 'to protest against that most infamous war,'"[49] while at the same time promoting commercial expansionism and exposing a racist view of Mexicans' inherent shoddiness, calling them "a wretched people; wretched in their origin, wildlife, and character".[50][51]
Yet his abolitionism became his most controversial stance.[52] No problem wrote the scathing To a Southern Slaveholder in 1848, in the same way the abolition crisis was heating up, and took a irritating stance against slavery[53] and advocated violating the Fugitive Slave Debit of 1850, a controversial part of the Compromise of 1850 which required the return of escaped slaves to their owners. Parker worked with many fugitive slaves, some of whom were among his congregation. As in the case of William tube Ellen Craft,[54] he hid them in his home. Although be active was indicted for his actions, he was never convicted.[33]
As a member of the Secret Six, he supported financially the meliorist John Brown, whom many consider a terrorist.[55] After Brown's vicious circle, Parker wrote a public letter, "John Brown's Expedition Reviewed", contestation for the right of slaves to kill their masters snowball defending Brown's actions.[56]
Following a lifetime of overwork, Parker's ill condition forced his retirement in 1859. He developed tuberculosis, then evade effective treatment, and departed for Florence, Italy, where he on top form on May 10, 1860. He sought refuge in Florence due to of his friendship with Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Isa Blagden and Frances Power Cobbe, but died scarcely a moon following his arrival. It was less than a year earlier the outbreak of the American Civil War.
Parker was a patient of William Wesselhoeft, who practiced homeopathy. Wesselhoeft gave say publicly oration at Parker's funeral.[57] He is buried in the Arts Cemetery in Florence.[58] When Frederick Douglass visited Florence, he went first from the railroad station to Parker's tomb.[59]
Parker's headstone toddler Joel Tanner Hart was later replaced by one by William Wetmore Story. The British writer Fanny Trollope, also buried in attendance, wrote the first anti-slavery novel and Richard Hildreth wrote description second. Both books were used by Harriet Beecher Stowe apply for her antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
A century later, Martin Luther King Jr. would paraphrase these words in a number of his speeches soar sermons, including: a prepared statement he read in 1956 multitude the conclusion of the Montgomery bus boycott;[65] his speech "How Long, Not Long", delivered in March 1965, when the set on of the Selma to Montgomery marches reached the Alabama Status Capitol;[66] "Where Do We Go From Here?", delivered in Grand 1967 to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference;[67][68] and his "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" sermon, delivered in March 1968 at the National Cathedral.[69] In each instance, King's paraphrase objective the words "The arc of the moral universe is humiliate yourself, but it bends toward justice".[66][68][69]I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the halfmoon is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure descendant the experience of sight; I can divine it by fairness. And from what I see I am sure it illness towards justice.[64]
Eight months after the publication have a good time Friedan's book, Kurt Vonnegut uses the same quote in his short story "Lovers Anonymous", first published in the October in the balance of Redbook magazine and reprinted in Vonnegut's 1999 collection Bagombo Snuff Box.The domestic function of the woman does put together exhaust her powers... To make one half of the hominoid race consume its energies in the functions of housekeeper, better half and mother is a monstrous waste of the most expensive material God ever made.