(Dr. William Ellery Channing (17801842) was the foremost ...)
Dr. William Ellery Channing (17801842) was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. Known for his articulate and impassioned public speaking and sermons, Channing was a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. Dr. Channing's religion and influence was most lasting upon the Transcendentalist movement that inspired famous American authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who took Channings teachings even further. Ironically, Channing himself found the Transcendentalists radical. Nevertheless, he became the primary spokesman and interpreter of Unitarianism when he preached the ordination sermon of Jared Sparks in Baltimore in 1819, a sermon that came to be known and titled "Unitarian Christianity." In that address, Channing explained the distinctive tenets of the Unitarian movement, one of which was the rejection of the traditional Christian teaching of the Holy Trinity. Other important tenets were the belief in human goodness and the subjection of theological ideas to the light of reason.
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His maternal grandfather was William Ellery, a signer of the Declaration of Independence; his mother, Lucy Ellery, was a remarkable woman; and his father, William Channing, was a prominent lawyer in Newport.
His father was a strict Calvinist, and Dr Samuel Hopkins, one of the leaders of the old school Calvinists, was a frequent guest in his father's house.
He prepared for college in New London under the care of his uncle, the Rev. Henry Channing, and in 1794, about a year after the death of his father, entered Harvard College.
After graduating in 1798, he lived at Richmond, Virginia, as tutor in the family of David Meade Randolph, United States marshal for Virginia.
He returned to Newport in 1800 " a thin and pallid invalid, " spent a year and a half there, and in 1802 went to Cambridge as regent (or general proctor) in Harvard; in the autumn of 1802 he began to preach, having been approved by the Cambridge Association.
At this time it seems certain that his theological views were not fixed, and in 1808, when he preached a sermon at the ordination of the Rev. John Codman (1782 - 1847), he still applied the title " Divine Master " to Jesus Christ, and used such expressions as " shed for souls " of the blood of Jesus, and " the Son of God himself left the abodes of glory and expired a victim of the cross. "
But his sermon preached in 1819 at Baltimore at the ordination of the Rev. Jared Sparks was in effect a powerful attack on Trinitarianism, and was followed in 1819 by an article in The Christian Disciple, " Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered, " and in 1820 by another, " The Moral Argument against Calvinism "-an excellent evidence of the moral (rather than the intellectual) character of Unitarian protest.
Even in 1810, in a Fast Day sermon, he warned his congregation of Bonaparte's ambition; two years later he deplored " this country taking part with the oppressor against that nation which has alone arrested his proud career of victory"; in 1814 he preached a thanksgiving sermon for the overthrow of Napoleon; and in 1816 he preached a sermon on war which led to the organization of the Massachusetts Peace Society.
In August 1821 he undertook a journey to Europe, in the course of which he met in England many distinguished men of letters, especially Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Both of these poets greatly influenced him personally and by their writings, and he prophesied that the Lake poets would be one of the greatest forces in a coming spiritual reform.
On his return to America in August 1823, Dr Channing resumed his duties as pastor, but with a more decided attention than before to literature and public affairs, especially after receiving as colleague, in 1824, the Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett.
The moderation and temperance of his presentation of the anti-slavery cause naturally resulted in some misunderstanding and misstatement of his position, such as is to be found in Mrs Chapman's Appendix to the Autobiography of Harriet Martineau, where Channing is represented as actually using his influence on behalf of slavery.
In 1837 he published Thoughts on the Evils of a Spirit of Conquest, and on Slavery: A Letter on the Annexation of Texas to the United States, addressed to Henry Clay, and arguing tnat the Texan revolt from Mexican rule was largely the work of land-speculators, and of those who resolved " to throw Texas open to slave-holders and slaves "; that the results of annexation must be war with Mexico, embroiling the United States with England and other European powers, and at home the extension and perpetuation of slavery, not alone in Texas but in other territories which the United States, once started at conquest, would force into the Union.
But he still objected to political agitation by the Abolitionists, preferring " unremitting appeals to the reason and conscience, " and, even after the prominent part he took in the meeting in Faneuil Hall, called to protest against the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, he wrote to The Liberator, counselling the Abolitionists to " disavow this resort to force by Mr Lovejoy. "
On the 16t of August 1842 he delivered at Lenox, Massachusetts, an address celebrating the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies.
(Dr. William Ellery Channing (17801842) was the foremost ...)
After his graduation from Harvard in 1798, he was installed as minister of the Federal Street Congregational Church, Boston, on June 1, 1803, and held this office for the remainder of his life.
In this discourse he set forth the basic Unitarian principles, which he derived from Scripture, and thus contributed to the integration of Unitarian beliefs.
American Christian pastor, originally a Congregationalist: in the schism between conservatives and liberals, Channing espoused the liberals, rejecting the Trinity and the radical consequence of original sin.
He declined to identify himself with the Abolitionists, whose motto was " Immediate Emancipation " and whose passionate agitation he thought unsuited to the work they were attempting.
Quotations:
From his college course he thought that he got little good, and said " when I was in college, only three books that I read were of any moment to me" .
He was, even as a child, he himself says, " quite a theologian, and would chop logic with his elders according to the fashion of that controversial time. "
He is thus regarded as a leading Unitarian thinker, but he said that he belonged only to ‘the community of free minds’.
"Price saved me from Locke's philosophy. "
Quotes from others about the person
Coleridge wrote of him, " He has the tove of wisdom and the wisdom of love. "
In 1830, because of his wife's bad health, Channing went to the West Indies.
