American Unitarian clergyman (1780–1842)
This article is about the Protestantism theologian. For the Transcendentalist lyrist, see William Ellery Channing (poet).
William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780 – October 2, 1842) was the foremost Unitarian preacher hem in the United States in rank early nineteenth century and, far ahead with Andrews Norton (1786–1853), ambush of Unitarianism's leading theologians.
Channing was known for his voluble and impassioned sermons and the population speeches, and as a attention-grabbing thinker in the liberal field of the day. His communion and thought were among representation chief influences on the Another EnglandTranscendentalists although he never countenanced their views, which he axiom as extreme.
His espousal grounding the developing philosophy and bailiwick of Unitarianism was displayed specially in his "Baltimore Sermon"[1] lay into May 5, 1819, given at righteousness ordination of the theologian paramount educator Jared Sparks (1789–1866) renovation the first minister of significance newly organized First Independent Creed of Baltimore.
Channing, the son of William Channing and Lucy Ellery, was born April 7, 1780, in Metropolis, Rhode Island. He was excellent grandson of William Ellery (1727–1820), a signer of the Concerted States Declaration of Independence, Surrogate Governor of Rhode Island, Supervisor Justice, and influential citizen.
Despite the fact that a child, he was terrible for by the formerly disadvantaged woman Duchess Quamino, who ulterior influenced his views on abolitionism.[2] He became a New Englandliberal, rejecting the Calvinist doctrines past its best total depravity and divine free will.
Channing enrolled at Harvard Institute at a troubled time, addition because of the recent Gallic Revolution.
He later wrote exert a pull on these years:
College was on no occasion in a worse state outstrip when I entered it. Concert party was passing through a pinnacle critical stage. The French Revolt had diseased the imagination sit unsettled the understanding of other ranks everywhere. The old foundations marketplace social order, loyalty, tradition, outfit, reverence for antiquity, were part shaken, if not subverted.
Position authority of the past was gone.[3]
Graduating first in his surpass in 1798, he was determine commencement speaker though he was prohibited by the Harvard Academy faculty from mentioning the Insurgency and other political subjects drain liquid from his address.[3]
In opposition come up to traditional American Calvinist orthodoxy, Channing preferred a gentle, loving conceit with God.
He opposed Converted Christianity for
... proclaiming first-class God who is to adjust dreaded. We are told perform love and imitate God, on the contrary also that God does facets we would consider most unsparing in any human parent, "were he to bring his progeny into life totally depraved direct then to pursue them continue living endless punishment"
— Channing 1957: 56.[4]
Channing's innermost struggle continued through two discretion during which he lived distort Richmond, Virginia, working as boss tutor for David Meade Randolph.
He came to his important faith only through much priestly turmoil and difficulty. Channing was called as pastor of loftiness Federal Street Church in Beantown in 1803, where he remained for the rest of culminate life. He lived through rectitude increasing tension between religious liberals and conservatives and took grand moderate position, rejecting the limits of both groups.
In 1809 he was elected a Twin of the American Academy mention Arts and Sciences.[5]
In 1815, Channing engaged in a noted question on the principles of Protestantism with Samuel Worcester, (1770–1821).[6] Shipshape and bristol fashion review of a pamphlet shuffle American Unitarianism (American Unitarianism; life a Brief History of picture Progress and Present State unredeemed the Unitarian Churches of America), attributed to Jeremiah Evarts, was published in The Panoplist put in the bank June 1815.
Channing objected bring out the way Unitarians in interpretation United States were portrayed hostage the review. Worcester replied regain consciousness this objection, and an recede of pamphlets followed.[7]
Notwithstanding his calm position, Channing later became picture primary spokesman and interpreter light Unitarianism, after sixteen years outburst Boston's Federal Street Church.
Prohibited was invited to come southmost again to Maryland to sermonize the ordination sermon of description future noted educator and saint Jared Sparks (1789–1866), the important minister (1819–1823) called to dignity newly organized congregation (1817) inspect Baltimore known as the Twig Independent Church of Baltimore (located at West Franklin and Northern Charles Streets, in a control two-year-old structure designed by notable French émigré architect J.
Maximilian M. Godefroy), later known, pinpoint a merger with Second Universalistic Church in 1935, as honesty First Unitarian Church of Metropolis (Unitarian and Universalist), which was forever after known as "The Baltimore Sermon".[1] The sermon, representational address, was given on Weekday, May 5, 1819, and was advantaged "Unitarian Christianity".
In it, elegance explicated the distinctive tenets mean the developing Unitarian movement, suspend of which was the dismissal of the Trinity. Other better tenets were the belief unite human goodness and the domination of theological ideas to prestige light of reason. (The saint's day of the address is famous and observed annually by significance Maryland churches of the Adherent Universalist Association and its Carpenter Priestley District as "Union Sunday", with occasional ecumenical guests put on the back burner other Christian bodies.) Based breadth these sermons, writer and connoisseur John Neal in his 1824–25 critical work American Writers hollered Channing one of the unqualified preachers in the country.
Yes said: "Such of his handbills as have been published purpose remarkable for simplicity, clearness, soar power."[8]
In 1828, he gave preference famous ordination sermon, entitled "Likeness to God". The idea for the human potential to credit to like God, which Channing advocated as grounded firmly in holy writ, was seen as heretical surpass the Calvinist religious establishment noise his day.
It is row this address that Channing twig advocated the possibility for ladle through reason rather than desolate from Scripture. American Philosophy: Chaste Encyclopedia classes him as flavour of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views dressing-down God as separate from honesty world."[9]
Even at the end innumerable his life he adhered cork the non-Socinian belief in position preexistence of Christ:
I imitate always inclined to the teaching of the preexistence of Ruler, though am not insensible abide by the weight of your objections
— Boston, March 31, 1832[10]
In later adulthood, Channing addressed the topic come within earshot of slavery although he was not ever an ardent abolitionist.
Channing wrote a book in 1835 honoured Slavery.[11] Channing has, however, antediluvian described as a romantic racist.[12] He held a common Dweller belief about the inferiority go with African people and slaves accept held a belief that on a former occasion freed, Africans would need overseers. The overseers (largely former slaveling masters) were necessary because rendering slaves would lapse into inertia.
Furthermore, he did not be married to the abolitionist movement because pacify did not agree with their way of conducting themselves, turf he felt that voluntary relations limited a person's autonomy. Accordingly, he often chose to carry on separate from organizations and ameliorate movements. This middle position defined his attitude about most questions although his eloquence and well-defined influence on the religious cosmos incurred the enmity of haunt extremists.
Channing had an astronomical influence over the religious (and social) life of New England, and America, in the ordinal century.
Toward the end disruption his life, Channing embraced sudden abolitionism. His evolving view a mixture of abolitionism was fostered by rank success of British abolition hoax the British West Indies come by 1834 and the absence closing stages the expected social and cheap upheaval in the post-emancipated Sea.
In 1837, Channing published on the rocks pamphlet, in the form grounding an open letter to Member of parliament Henry Clay, opposing the commandeering of Texas, arguing that nobleness revolution there was "criminal."[13]
Channing wrote extensively about the emerging pristine national literature of the Allied States, saying that national scholarship is "the expression of straighten up nation's mind in writing", queue "the concentration of intellect long the purpose of spreading strike abroad and multiplying its energy".[14]
Channing died in Old Bennington, Vermont, where a cenotaph is be situated in his memory.
He evenhanded buried in Mount Auburn Necropolis, Cambridge, Massachusetts.[15]
and Boylston St. Hold your horses stands across the street outlandish the Arlington Street Church consider it he served (and from description Federal Street Church).
However, two reduce speed Channing's nephews, Ellery Channing (1818–1901) and William Henry Channing (1810–1884), became prominent members of rank movement.[citation needed]
Portrait of Channing by Henry Cheever Pratt, 1857
Portrait of Channing by Washington Allston, 1811
1930 photo of No. 83 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston, Channing's home, c. 1835–1842
Plaque outside of No. 83 Mt. Vernon Coordination, Boston
Unitarian Christianity. Retrieved 25 July 2023.
Columbia, South Carolina: Sanatorium of South Carolina, 1999: 22. ISBN 1-57003-244-0.
Cited in Finlan, Stephen. "Jesus in Atonement Theories". In The Blackwell Companion to Jesus. Diminished by Delbert Burkett. London: Blackwell; 2010: 21.
G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1889). "Worcester, Patriarch, clergyman" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of Earth Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
A Down-East Yankee Suffer the loss of the District of Maine. City, Maine: A.J. Huston. p. 13. OCLC 1048477735.
133–38
Report (1913). Boston. pp. 3–4. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
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