(This book is a companion to two books, similar in charact...)
This book is a companion to two books, similar in character, already published: The Evolution of Christianity and Christianity and Social Problems. Each of these volumes assumes the truth of the principle of evolution as defined by Professor Le Conte, and attempts to apply that principle; the first volume in tracing the history of Christianity as a spiritual force; the second in exhibiting Christianity as a social development; the present one in a statement of Christianity as a system of doctrine.
(We need a new theology, but not a new religion. Religion ...)
We need a new theology, but not a new religion. Religion is the life of God in the soul of man. This divine life is in its manifestation ever new, in its essential principle ever old. Theology is the science of this life, that is, it is the intellectual statement, in an orderly manner, of the laws of that life as they are understood by man. Such intellectual statements of life change from time to time with increased knowledge and with an altered point of view. The stars are the same, but we have a new astronomy; flowers the same, but we have a new botany; religion is the same, but we need a new theology.
Lyman Abbott’s dual career as a journalist and clergyman lasted for nearly seventy years. For Abbott, these were not opposing but rather complimentary professions. As a young adult, Abbott first began a career in law working in the firm of his two older brothers. However, meeting Henry Ward Beecher in 1857, changed Abbott’s life. Beecher was a nationally known pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York. The church had gained acclaim through its pastor’s vocal opinions on contemporary topics such as abolition and temperance. Through Beecher’s influence, Abbott decided to become a minister. In 1859, he began a program of religious study designed with the help of Beecher himself. A year later, he was ordained.
Abbott’s first pastorate was in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he moved in 1860. After only a year in Indiana, the Civil War broke out. Abbott brought Beecher’s abolitionist views with him to his new workplace, although the members of his pastorate were deeply divided in their allegiances during the war.
Abbott spent the next four years trying to maintain peace in the community while, at the same time, upholding his belief that the Union side was in the right. As the war was coming to a close, Abbott decided to move to New York City. There, he took posts with organizations that were aiding in post-war recovery - first with the American Union Commission founded to help refugees and then with the American Freedmen’s Union Commission which dealt with education for black Americans.
For the latter, Abbott had his first experience with editing a publication for the organization’s monthly, American Freedman. While working with the American Freedman’s Union Commission, Abbott became a pastor or a small church in Manhattan. However, he had to resign from the congregation in 1869 when his wife came down with tuberculosis. The couple moved to upstate New York, and while Abbott nursed his wife back to health, he worked on various freelance writing projects including two Bible study books.
At the same time, Abbott took a break from his work as a minister. Turning his full attention to journalism, he became editor of a new magazine, the Illustrated Christian Weekly, in 1871.
In a regular column that he titled “Outlook,” he wrote about scientific, political, and social issues as well as religious ones. This position led to an associate editorship at the Christian Union in 1876. While working in this new position, Abbott strengthened his lies with Beecher, who was the Union’s editor. In 1881, Beecher retired from the Christian Union and Abbott, who had already taken over much of the responsibilities, officially became editor in chief. Under Abbott’s leadership, the publication thrived and circulation increased.
Abbott accomplished this by widening the scope of the publication, emphasizing social and political content so that it would not be seen as a strictly religious newspaper.
Abbott returned to ministering when Beecher died in 1887. At the time of his death, Abbott took over Beecher’s pulpit at Plymouth Congregational Church, first as a temporary then as a permanent replacement.
For ten years, Abbott served the congregation, delivering accessible sermons and lecturing on the same social and political topics that were covered in his journal.
To further make the issues that he considered important accessible to the public, Abbott made some changes to the Christian Union. First came a new format, changing the publication from a newspaper to a magazine. Next, he gave it a new, non-religious title more befitting the general and secular content of the magazine.
In 1893, Abbott renamed the publication Outlook after the column he had started when he first became an editor at the Illustrated Christian Weekly and labeled it “a weekly family newspaper.” This new image for the journal proved to be a success with an increase in advertising revenue and circulation.
Dividing his time between duties as a pastor and editor, however, eventually took its toll on Abbott’s health. Under his doctor’s order to rest, he left the Plymouth Congregational Church in 1898 but continued his work with Outlook.
When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, Abbott became a member of his “kitchen cabinet.”
The relationship between Roosevelt and Abbott continued after the President’s term ended. In 1906, Abbott had invited Roosevelt to work as an editor at Outlook which he accepted, beginning work there upon leaving office in 1909.
However, when Roosevelt again ran for president in 1912, Outlook began to take on the image of an impartial vehicle for Roosevelt’s political agenda. Even after Roosevelt resigned in 1914, the magazine never regained the renown it once had. Because of ill health, Abbott worked there less and less as the publication steadily declined, until his death in 1922.
Abbott proved his loyalty by writing Uncontradicted Testimony in the Beecher Case, Compiled from Official Records, published in 1876, in response to an undecided legal case that Beecher had endured in which he was accused of committing adultery with a woman in his parish.
Abbott’s opinions on subjects such as the Spanish-American war, Filipino independence, and American imperialism in the magazine had gained him political allies.
Views
As a believer in the Social Gospel doctrine that applied Christian teachings to social problems, Abbott was able to use both his professions as outlets to communicate his beliefs. On the subject of Indian rights, Abbott, working as a member of the Indian Rights Association, actively advocated returning land and providing education to displaced tribes. His views and coverage of the topic in the Christian Union influenced the writing of the well-meaning but disastrous Dawes Act in 1887. Another topic that gained Abbott’s was the industrialization of post-Civil War America. Labor issues and conditions of the poor working class became a common topic in the Christian Union.
Membership
In 1913, Lyman Abbott was expelled from the American Peace Society because military preparedness was vigorously advocated in the Outlook, which he edited, and because he was a member of the Army and Navy League.
American Peace Society
1913
Personality
Abbott was neither an original nor a profound thinker, and the limitations of his moderate, essentially middle-class position are suggested by the fact that he acquiesced in the increasing segregation of African Americans, lamented the extension of political rights to women, deplored labor violence, rationalized American imperialism, vociferously urged early intervention in World War I (following the lead of his friend Theodore Roosevelt, whom he had backed in 1912, for the presidency on the Progressive party ticket), and approved the suppression of wartime dissent.
Quotes from others about the person
“Under Abbott’s guidance, the publication examined a broad range of issues, including temperance, the tariff, the rights of blacks and Indians, immigration, conservation, and coinage of silver.” - James Boylan
“Never a profound student of any problem, his ideas were often superficial and his judgments hasty. His knowledge of Indian affairs was entirely secondhand, yet he played a significant role in molding and expressing public opinion in that field.” - Brown
Connections
Lyman Abbott married Abby Frances Hamlin, October 14, 1857. She died in 1907.