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Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism: Channing, Emerson, Parker
Three landmark addresses in the history of American Unitarianism in one convenient volume. Edited by one of the leading UU historians.
Introduction by Conrad Wright
Unitarian Christianity by William Ellery Channing
The divinity school address by Ralph Wa;do Emerson
The transient & permanent in Christianity by Theodore Parker
Note on the Texts
Introduction by Conrad Wright
Unitarian Christianity by William Ellery Channing
The divinity school address by Ralph Wa;do Emerson
The transient & permanent in Christianity by Theodore Parker
Note on the Texts
Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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June 1, 2024
AN EXCELLENT EDITION OF THESE INFLUENTIAL STATEMENTS OF PROGRESSIVE RELIGION
Conrad Wright wrote in the Introduction to this 1961 book, “Channing’s Baltimore Sermon, Emerson’s Divinity School Address, and Parker’s South Boston Sermon have long been accepted as the three great classic utterances of American Unitarianism… What do they have in common to account for their recognized standing? In the first place, they all occasioned widespread controversy Channing’s sermon of 1819 provided the liberal Christians of his day with a party platform… Emerson’s address in 1838 similarly spoke for a new generation… Parker’s sermon in 1841 reinforced the reverberations of Emerson’s address and was no less bitterly attached… All three were significant for what they said but no less important for the response they elicited. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 152-page edition.]
“In the second place, all three … represent turning points in the history of American Unitarianism. Channing took the liberal wing of New England congregationalism… and forced it to … recognize that it had become … a separate and distinct Christian body. Emerson cut deeply at the traditional … Unitarianism of his day, so that it was never thereafter possible for Unitarians to return to the position that Christianity is based on the authority of Christ as the unique channel of God’s revelation to man… Since that time there has always been a universalistic as well as a Christian component in American Unitarian thought… Finally, all three of these addresses were influential beyond the confines of the religious body which produced them.” (Pg. 3-4)
He continues, “Channing’s Baltimore Sermon… was memorable partly because a group of men were determined … to make it a manifesto to which the religious community would have to give heed. It was… a party proclamation.” (Pg. 6) He notes that “at the beginning of his career [Emerson] accepted without reservation the system of rational theology that prevailed among the Unitarians of that day. The Divinity School Address… revealed the extent to which he had departed from that system.” (Pg. 20) He adds, “Parker clearly belongs with Emerson and the Transcendentalists. But … the tone of [Parker’s] religious emotions was much more specifically Christian than Emerson’s, and the Christian Church had much more meaning for him.” (Pg. 35)
In Channing’s sermon, he says, “Revelation is addressed to us as rational beings. We may wish, in our sloth, that God had given us a system, demanding no labor of comparing, limiting, and inferring. But such a system would be at variance with the whole character of our present existence; and it is the part of wisdom to take revelation as it is given to us, and to interpret it by the help of the faculties, which it everywhere supposes, and on which it is founded.” (Pg. 55)
He states, “We believe in the doctrine of God’s UNITY, or that there is one God, and one only… We find no intimation … that God’s unity was a quite different thing from the oneness of other intelligent beings. We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that… it subverts in effect, the unity of God… when common Christians hear these persons spoken of as conversing with each other, loving each other, and performing different acts, how can they help regarding them as different beings, different minds? We do, then… protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity… We challenge our opponents to adduce one passage in the New Testament, where the word God means three persons, where it is not limited to one person, and where… it does not mean Father.” (Pg. 57-59)
He points out, “the human condition and sufferings of Christ tended strongly to exclude from men’s minds the idea of his proper Godhead; and… we should expect to find in the New Testament perpetual and care to counteract this tendency, to hold him forth as the same being with his Father, if this doctrine were… the soul and center of his religion… But instead of this, the inferiority of Christ pervades the New Testament… Could it, then, have been the great design of the sacred writers to exhibit Jesus as the supreme God?” (Pg. 65-66)
He observes that orthodoxy “teaches, that God selects from this corrupt mass a number to be saved, and plucks them… from the common ruin; that the rest of mankind… are commanded to repent… and that forgiveness is promised them, on terms which their very constitution infallibly disposes them to reject, and in rejecting which they awfully enhance the punishments of hell. These proffers … to beings born under a blighting curse, fill our minds with a horror which we want words to express.” (Pg. 73)
He asserts, “We ask for one text, in which we are told, that God took on human nature that he might make an infinite satisfaction to his own justice; for one text, which tells us, that human guilt requires an infinite substitute; that Christ’s sufferings owe their efficacy to their being borne by an infinite being; or that his divine nature gives infinite value to the sufferings of the human. Not one word of this description can we find in the Scriptures.” (Pg. 77) He concludes, “Christianity is at this moment dishonored by gross and cherished corruptions… Our earnest prayer to God is, that he will overturn the … spiritual usurpation… and that Christianity, this purified from error, may… prove itself, by its ennobling influence on the mind, ‘to be indeed ‘the power of God unto salvation.’” (Pg. 88-89)
Emerson notes, “These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed, that the world is … the product … of one will, or one mind… Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute… The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness... This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable.” (Pg. 93-94)
He suggests, “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul… He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of the world… Having seen that the law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. Boldly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was God. Thus is he, I think, the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man.” (Pg. 96-97)
He states, “The test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands---so commanding that we fine pleasure and honor in obeying.” (Pg. 102) Later, he adds, “We have contrasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought… The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past… indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology… The true Christianity---a faith like Christ’s in the infinitude of man---is lost.” (Pg. 106) He concludes, “The evils of the church that now is are manifest… What shall I do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and now we it, and faith makes its own forms.” (Pg. 111)
Parker asks, “Let us… consider that is TRANSIENT in Christianity, and what is PERMANENT therein.” (Pg. 114) He continues, “It must be confessed, though with sorrow, that transient things form a great part of what is commonly taught as Religion. An undue place has often been assigned to forms and doctrines, while too little stress has been laid on the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man.” (Pg. 118)
He argues, “Any one, who traces the history of what is called Christianity, will see that nothing changes more from age to age than the doctrines taught as … essential to Christianity and personal salvation. What is falsehood in one province passes for truth in another… Now Arius, and now Athanasius is Lord of the ascendant. Both were excommunicated in their turn, each for affirming what the other denied… The stream of Christianity… streams troubled and polluted by man with mire and dirt. If Paul and Jesus could read our books of theological doctrines, would they accept as their teaching, what men have vented in their name?” (Pg. 122-123)
He suggests, “It is hard to see why the great truths of Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus, more than the axioms of geometry rest on the personal authority of Euclid, or Archimedes. The authority of Jesus, as of all teachers, one would naturally think, must rest on the truth of his words, and not their truth on his authority.” (Pg. 129) He adds, “Christianity does not rest on the infallible authority of the New Testament. It depends on this collection of books for the historical statement of its facts… I cannot see that it depends on the personal authority of Jesus. He was the organ through which the Infinite spoke.” (Pg. 132)
He concludes, “The form Religion takes… can never be the same in any two centuries or two men… so religious DOCTRINES and FORMS will always differ, always be transient, as Christianity goes forth… But the Christianity holy men feel in the heart---the Christ that is born within us, is always the same thing to each soul that feels it… there is something in Christianity which no sect… entirely overturns. This is the common Christianity, which burns in the hearts of pious men.” (Pg. 142-143) He adds, “Let then the Transient pass… and may God send us some new manifestation of the Christian faith, that shall stir men’s hearts as they were never stirred.” (Pg. 145)
This is an excellent edition of these influential sermons, which should be “must reading” for all Progressive Christians, Unitarians, Universalists, and those who consider themselves “spiritual, not religious.”
Conrad Wright wrote in the Introduction to this 1961 book, “Channing’s Baltimore Sermon, Emerson’s Divinity School Address, and Parker’s South Boston Sermon have long been accepted as the three great classic utterances of American Unitarianism… What do they have in common to account for their recognized standing? In the first place, they all occasioned widespread controversy Channing’s sermon of 1819 provided the liberal Christians of his day with a party platform… Emerson’s address in 1838 similarly spoke for a new generation… Parker’s sermon in 1841 reinforced the reverberations of Emerson’s address and was no less bitterly attached… All three were significant for what they said but no less important for the response they elicited. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 152-page edition.]
“In the second place, all three … represent turning points in the history of American Unitarianism. Channing took the liberal wing of New England congregationalism… and forced it to … recognize that it had become … a separate and distinct Christian body. Emerson cut deeply at the traditional … Unitarianism of his day, so that it was never thereafter possible for Unitarians to return to the position that Christianity is based on the authority of Christ as the unique channel of God’s revelation to man… Since that time there has always been a universalistic as well as a Christian component in American Unitarian thought… Finally, all three of these addresses were influential beyond the confines of the religious body which produced them.” (Pg. 3-4)
He continues, “Channing’s Baltimore Sermon… was memorable partly because a group of men were determined … to make it a manifesto to which the religious community would have to give heed. It was… a party proclamation.” (Pg. 6) He notes that “at the beginning of his career [Emerson] accepted without reservation the system of rational theology that prevailed among the Unitarians of that day. The Divinity School Address… revealed the extent to which he had departed from that system.” (Pg. 20) He adds, “Parker clearly belongs with Emerson and the Transcendentalists. But … the tone of [Parker’s] religious emotions was much more specifically Christian than Emerson’s, and the Christian Church had much more meaning for him.” (Pg. 35)
In Channing’s sermon, he says, “Revelation is addressed to us as rational beings. We may wish, in our sloth, that God had given us a system, demanding no labor of comparing, limiting, and inferring. But such a system would be at variance with the whole character of our present existence; and it is the part of wisdom to take revelation as it is given to us, and to interpret it by the help of the faculties, which it everywhere supposes, and on which it is founded.” (Pg. 55)
He states, “We believe in the doctrine of God’s UNITY, or that there is one God, and one only… We find no intimation … that God’s unity was a quite different thing from the oneness of other intelligent beings. We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that… it subverts in effect, the unity of God… when common Christians hear these persons spoken of as conversing with each other, loving each other, and performing different acts, how can they help regarding them as different beings, different minds? We do, then… protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity… We challenge our opponents to adduce one passage in the New Testament, where the word God means three persons, where it is not limited to one person, and where… it does not mean Father.” (Pg. 57-59)
He points out, “the human condition and sufferings of Christ tended strongly to exclude from men’s minds the idea of his proper Godhead; and… we should expect to find in the New Testament perpetual and care to counteract this tendency, to hold him forth as the same being with his Father, if this doctrine were… the soul and center of his religion… But instead of this, the inferiority of Christ pervades the New Testament… Could it, then, have been the great design of the sacred writers to exhibit Jesus as the supreme God?” (Pg. 65-66)
He observes that orthodoxy “teaches, that God selects from this corrupt mass a number to be saved, and plucks them… from the common ruin; that the rest of mankind… are commanded to repent… and that forgiveness is promised them, on terms which their very constitution infallibly disposes them to reject, and in rejecting which they awfully enhance the punishments of hell. These proffers … to beings born under a blighting curse, fill our minds with a horror which we want words to express.” (Pg. 73)
He asserts, “We ask for one text, in which we are told, that God took on human nature that he might make an infinite satisfaction to his own justice; for one text, which tells us, that human guilt requires an infinite substitute; that Christ’s sufferings owe their efficacy to their being borne by an infinite being; or that his divine nature gives infinite value to the sufferings of the human. Not one word of this description can we find in the Scriptures.” (Pg. 77) He concludes, “Christianity is at this moment dishonored by gross and cherished corruptions… Our earnest prayer to God is, that he will overturn the … spiritual usurpation… and that Christianity, this purified from error, may… prove itself, by its ennobling influence on the mind, ‘to be indeed ‘the power of God unto salvation.’” (Pg. 88-89)
Emerson notes, “These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed, that the world is … the product … of one will, or one mind… Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute… The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness... This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable.” (Pg. 93-94)
He suggests, “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul… He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of the world… Having seen that the law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. Boldly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was God. Thus is he, I think, the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man.” (Pg. 96-97)
He states, “The test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands---so commanding that we fine pleasure and honor in obeying.” (Pg. 102) Later, he adds, “We have contrasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought… The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past… indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology… The true Christianity---a faith like Christ’s in the infinitude of man---is lost.” (Pg. 106) He concludes, “The evils of the church that now is are manifest… What shall I do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and now we it, and faith makes its own forms.” (Pg. 111)
Parker asks, “Let us… consider that is TRANSIENT in Christianity, and what is PERMANENT therein.” (Pg. 114) He continues, “It must be confessed, though with sorrow, that transient things form a great part of what is commonly taught as Religion. An undue place has often been assigned to forms and doctrines, while too little stress has been laid on the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man.” (Pg. 118)
He argues, “Any one, who traces the history of what is called Christianity, will see that nothing changes more from age to age than the doctrines taught as … essential to Christianity and personal salvation. What is falsehood in one province passes for truth in another… Now Arius, and now Athanasius is Lord of the ascendant. Both were excommunicated in their turn, each for affirming what the other denied… The stream of Christianity… streams troubled and polluted by man with mire and dirt. If Paul and Jesus could read our books of theological doctrines, would they accept as their teaching, what men have vented in their name?” (Pg. 122-123)
He suggests, “It is hard to see why the great truths of Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus, more than the axioms of geometry rest on the personal authority of Euclid, or Archimedes. The authority of Jesus, as of all teachers, one would naturally think, must rest on the truth of his words, and not their truth on his authority.” (Pg. 129) He adds, “Christianity does not rest on the infallible authority of the New Testament. It depends on this collection of books for the historical statement of its facts… I cannot see that it depends on the personal authority of Jesus. He was the organ through which the Infinite spoke.” (Pg. 132)
He concludes, “The form Religion takes… can never be the same in any two centuries or two men… so religious DOCTRINES and FORMS will always differ, always be transient, as Christianity goes forth… But the Christianity holy men feel in the heart---the Christ that is born within us, is always the same thing to each soul that feels it… there is something in Christianity which no sect… entirely overturns. This is the common Christianity, which burns in the hearts of pious men.” (Pg. 142-143) He adds, “Let then the Transient pass… and may God send us some new manifestation of the Christian faith, that shall stir men’s hearts as they were never stirred.” (Pg. 145)
This is an excellent edition of these influential sermons, which should be “must reading” for all Progressive Christians, Unitarians, Universalists, and those who consider themselves “spiritual, not religious.”
February 18, 2019
I thought I read this whole book sometime in 2018, but maybe not. Interesting to read when you're in the mood to find out where UU thinking came from.
May 8, 2012
In some ways, these two sermons and one address are not easy to read, and the ideas they address may not hold much shock value any more (many of the arguments would be accepted by lots of Unitarians and Christians without much argument). But, if one can put himself/herself in 19th c. mode and imagine sitting in the audience, one can well see why these three addresses, Channing's "Unitarian Christianity," Emerson's "Harvard Divinity School Address," and Parker's "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity," sparked such outrage in their day.
July 30, 2011
There are three documents that helped found modern, American Unitarian thought. All three sermons from this book provide the reasons for why the Unitarian Church became what it was and the voice that carries on to today.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews