Channing Memorial Church, Unitarian Universalist Our History - William Ellery Channing

1780--WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING--1842

Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Channing was the son of a father who represented the Presbyterianism of Princeton, but of a mother who came of liberal Harvard stock.

After graduating at Harvard in 1798, he went as a tutor to Richmond, Virginia, where overwork and ascetic habits undermined his health. Appointed a regent at Harvard, he studied theology and in 1803 was ordained minister of the Federal Street Church, Boston. Here, as his monument in the Boston Public Garden says, "He breathed into theology a humane spirit." His influential preaching, notably his famous sermon on Unitarian Christianity, at Baltimore in 1819, together with his "gracious, almost saintly character," made him a recognized leader among the Unitarian Congregational ministers of Boston. Although for over twenty years these ministers had filled the more influential pulpits in eastern New England, together with the seminary at Harvard, they objected to forming an independent sect. In 1815, however, The Trinitarian or Orthodox Congregationalists withdrew their support from Harvard and established their seminary at Andover; and in 1820 Channing organized the conference of liberal ministers, which in May, 1825, became the American Unitarian Association. The theological grounds for the separation of the Unitarians from Calvinistic orthodoxy were effectively set forth in his sermons and controversial writings.

Always a semi-invalid, in 1821 Channing took a long vacation, and on his return was assigned a colleague in his church. With greater freedom from then on, he was able to give more of his time to that diversity of spiritual and social reforms which accompanied the intellectual and artistic movement often called the New England Renaissance. Objecting to a critical and rationalistic tendency within his sect, he urged a greater degree of spirituality, and as a friend and follower of Coleridge, he was largely responsible for the Unitarian contribution to the Transcendental movement of the 1830's. He pleaded for "a poetry which pierces beneath the exterior of life to the depths of the soul, and which lays open its mysterious working, borrowing from the whole outward creation fresh images and correspondence, with which to illuminate the secrets of the world within us." In his "Remarks on American Literature" (1830) he objected to the proneness of Americans to be influenced by English writers rather than being concerned with their own country. Always interested in politics as a moral issue, he helped to prepare New England for the abolition of slavery by a notable series of pamphlets. As a staunch pacifist he preached against the War of 1812, and the Massachusetts branch of the American Peace Society was organized in his study. He was also a leader in the temperance movement in his century, but believed its end should be attempted by persuasion not by legal enforcement.

This page was last updated on 05/16/2006