Theodore Parker

From Philosopedia

Parker, Theodore (24 August 1810 - 10 May 1860)

A Unitarian minister of note, Parker was brought up in poverty, yet acquired a university education while laboring on the farm. A famed orator he was opposed to slavery (to the point of sheltering slaves in his own house), contributed to The Dial, and was a transcendentalist.

His Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion was considered a “radical” viewpoint in 1842, and he agreed: radix is a word-root that describes getting down to the roots of matters. Not only did Parker deny miracles but also he introduced Unitarians to the new German scientific criticism of the Bible.

He was an early example of the preacher who used his pulpit as a platform for constantly urging social reform. For him, most of the traditional supports of Christian belief such as the biblical miracles, the inspiration of the scriptures, and the divinity of Jesus were transient rather than permanent and necessary parts of religion. Such an outlook made him a rebel, an iconoclast, among fellow Unitarians, and “Parkerism” became a shorthand phrase for modernist and reformist stances within Unitarianism.

Parker, who bequeathed his library of 13,000 volumes to the Boston Public Library, is described in Edward J. Renehan Jr.’s The Secret Six (1995) as one of the men who conspired with John Brown. (See entry for Frances Power Cobbe.)

Biography of Parker by Dean Grodzins

Dean Grodzins, writing for the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography, has a thorough biography of Theodore Parker. He points out Parker's successes but ends,

Yet Parker's actual ideas have been half forgotten, and some criticize him for having been unnecessarily divisive and confrontational. He also is charged with having been an inadequate churchman. The 28th Congregational Society commonly is believed to have been a "one-man show" that collapsed after his death. In fact, although the crowds departed the Society after 1860, the core membership remained active. They appointed a number of successors to Parker, the most well known being David A. Wasson; they built their own meeting house, the Parker Memorial Building, in 1873; and they continued to offer services until 1889, when they turned over their assets (ironically enough, considering the dispute over Parker's exchange with John Sargent in 1844) to the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches.

The site includes images of the West Roxbury Church, his study with a bust of Jesus and a state of Spartacus, Boston Music Hall where he was preaching, his grave in Florence, and the photo of his rejection of traditional clerical white tie as a symbol of false authority.

{BDF; CE; ER; EU, Paul H. Beattie; FUS; JMR; JMRH; U; U&U; UU}