James Freeman Clarke

James Freeman Clarke ( born April 4, 1810 in Hanover, New Hampshire, † June 8, 1888 in Jamaica Plain, (now Boston ), Massachusetts) was Unitarian preacher, founder of a church in Boston and author. He belonged to the circle of the transcendentalists and was known in his time as one of the leading intellectuals and reformers of New England.

Parents and youth

James Freeman Clarke was the third of six children of Samuel Clarke (1779-1830) and Rebecca Clarke, born in Hull. His childhood learned promotion and care through the step-grandfather James Freeman (1759-1835), one of the pioneers of Unitarianism in New England, who was the first priest his parish (Kings Chapel, Boston) in 1782 led to the new faith. The grandfather, whose name he bore also playfully gave him the basics of the ancient languages ​​, literature and philosophy. This early positive experience and the subsequently experienced school life with imaginative Wi memorization were for him later initiated a reform in education. The first regular school he attended from the age of ten, the Boston Latin School, which he left as a fifteen year old. He then went to Harvard College. Then he studied from 1829 to 1833 at the theology school at Harvard (Harvard Divinity School ).

While at Harvard, he met the same age, a distant relative of Margaret Fuller, with whom him - until her untimely death - shared a platonic relationship. Since women were not admitted to the program, Clarke allowed her access to the library. Together they learned German. From her he received suggestions for the study of German literature, which made ​​him one of Goethe expert and mediator German Literature in America later. So he could also participate in George Ripley's 15 - tamer collection of European and German literature. Clarke was next to Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Henry Channing one of the editors of the first biography of Margaret Fuller.

Church History

The year 1833, which ended Clarke's study of theology, was also the year in which Massachusetts had taken as a final states of the complete separation of church and state. In the neighboring state of Rhode Iceland religious freedom since 1643 was already. Loss of status as a quasi- state church had for the Protestant churches in the individual states a significant loss of members result. On average, less than 10 percent of American citizens willing to volunteer to join a church. In the rejection of the faithful not only a general dissatisfaction with the routine and the sobriety in the previous church practice was expressed, but also a feeling of uneasiness about the still originating from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers privileges of the churches. The response of the younger men of the church were reforms in almost all areas of community work, worship and personal ministry. James Freeman Clarke was one of those reformers and counted as part of the second great awakening ( Great Awakening ) to the pioneers of the free church movement.

Time in Kentucky

After his ordination, and the first sermon on July 21, 1833 in Waltham, Massachusetts, Clarke went to Kentucky for the Unitarian church in Louisville. There, he found religious narrow-mindedness and bigotry on the one hand and feral morals on the other side. He became friends with Ephraim Peabody, the pastor of the Unitarian church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Together they founded in 1835 the first transzendentalistische magazine The Western Messenger, with whom she spread liberal religious principles and contemporary domestic and foreign literature. The first poems Emerson 's published here. Kentucky belonged at the time to the slaveholding Union states. Although Clarke denounced slavery as a sin, but chose not to denounce the slave-owners. In 1837 he accepted an invitation from the merchant's Harm Jan Huidekoper, Meadville, Pennsylvania, who had co-founded there the Unitarian Church and the theological school. His daughter Anna married Clarke 1839. Two years later he moved with his wife and first child to Boston.

Boston

In Boston, he founded against conservative resistances own Unitarian congregation that was not responsible for a specific area, in contrast to the established churches, but people from all over the Boston area addressed. He called them the disciple church (Church of the Disciples ), where he himself as a disciple under other disciples - members of the community - understand. Together they were responsible for the church, which he took over Martin Luther's principle of the priesthood of all believers. As a further principles were voluntary in the payment of contributions, recognize and strengthen the laity work and the equality of all members of the community. He finished the unchristian custom of kept free wealthy families the front seats near the altar. With the acquisition of forms of devotion of Catholics, Methodists and Quakers, he was a forerunner of the ecumenical movement. With the exception of the years 1850 to 1853, where he was staying staying for a rest after a typhoid fever in Europe and in the house of his parents in Meadville, he was until his death pastor of this church, a total of 45 years.

Offices and callings

In addition to his work in Louisville and Boston, he was a co-founder of the Unitarian Church in Chicago. In Massachusetts elected him to the Senate chaplain, who had initiated the meetings with a prayer. Clarke held a number of offices in management and supervisory boards of Harvard, the Boston Public Library and the American Unitarian Association. At Harvard, he taught comparative religion, Natural theology and Christian doctrine. His contemporaries, he was to many social problems a tireless Mahner and thought leaders. He has worked with numerous commissions and committees and was involved in reforms to improve the education system, the penal system, the elimination of the urban housing shortage and the organization of immigration. Clarke argued for the abolition of slavery and the death penalty. He turned against corruption in business and politics, and demanded equal rights for women. As part of the ongoing industrialization he was on the side of the unions.

James Freeman Clarke left an extensive literary work especially in the field of theology and religious philosophy.

During the American Civil War, he provided the land of Brook Farm, which he had acquired after the failure of social- utopian project, free the troops of the Northern States for training. In erected there Camp Andrew, as well as in other camps and hospitals Clarke worked as a military chaplain.

Selection of his works

  • Orthodoxy: Its Truth and Errors (1866 )
  • Ten Great Religions (1871 )
  • Common Sense in Religion (1874 )
  • Self -Culture: Physical, Intellectual, Moral and Spiritual (1880 )
  • Anti-Slavery Day ( 1884)
  • The Idea of ​​the Apostle Paul ( 1884)
  • Every-Day Religion ( 1886)
  • Essentials and Non- Essentials in Religion ( 1890)
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