William Ellery Channing: An Essay on the Liberal Spirit in America

by Andrew Delbanco

This is a vivid portrayal of the man who led the movement toward liberal religion in America. Andrew Delbanco traces the development of Channing's thinking on the relation of man to God and nature, on the reality of evil, on the autonomy of the individual. He reveals Channing's hope and doubt concerning America's contribution to human progress. And he recounts Channing's emergence as a major voice in the antislavery movement--after a complex hesitation to embrace the cause. This is a study of the religious, literary, and political concerns of a man and his time. It will well serve all students of nineteenth-century American thought.

223 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 1981

About the author

Andrew H. Delbanco (born 1952) is Director of American Studies at Columbia University and has been Columbia's Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities since 1995. He writes extensively on American literary and religious history.

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

The explosive that Channing brandished was, like so many elements of this debate, more threatening in what it might lead to than in itself. For the insistence on reason in interpretation boiled down to the idea that man must supply the key without which scripture was gibberish, or worse, without which it might seem to make an unintended sense. It is here that we see most clearly the affinity with Edwards; and to see that kinship is to go some distance toward comprehending what happened to New England religion after the century turned. For Edwards too had granted the existence of a requisite key: his was individually God-given, the indwelling spirit of discernment. Channing's key, except for his more strenuous assertion that it could be duplicated and handed out to any man, is not so different. Finding himself utterly dependent upon the individual perception, he was stymied, for he did not share Edward's serene belief in God's sublime orchestration of all men into a great march toward redemption. Channing found himself with nowhere to turn but inward -- in an age that Locke had taught to look for truth from without. Some men, Channing had to concede, would be good readers of scripture, others bad. The world had broken into millions of churches of one.