Theodore Parker web site

Theodore Parker Web Site

"Applying good sense to religion and religion to life. This is the field in which I design to labor"

Transcendentalist, theologian, scholar, Unitarian minister, abolitionist, and social reformer...Theodore Parker was all of these things and more. A friend of Emerson, a foe of slavery, Parker impacted America in numerous ways. He challenged dogmatism in religion, he introduced higher critical methods of studying the Bible to this country and presented in a fashion to be used for both clergy and lay people. This tireless fighter (who lived from 1810-1860) now has a web site which will be expanding in the next month with articles by and articles about Theodore Parker.

Theodore Parker's Sermons

  • The True Idea of a Christian Church Theodore Parker's first sermon at the 28th Congregational Society of Boston in 1846 The themes of social justice and reform at his installation sermon would be prevalent in many sermons he gave there.
  • Delight in Religion A sermon delivered to the Progressive Friends, a Quaker congregation in Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1858
  • The Permanent and Transient in Christianity
  • The role concerning women Parker in his advocacy for suffrage and equal rights for women was a figure considerably ahead of his time

    Theodore Parker's Letters and Misc.

  • A Letter to a Southern Slaveholder written in 1848, it seeks to present a case against slavery
  • A letter to the American Party in 1855 criticizing it's anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant stances
  • Parker's Poetry
  • On Jesus
  • On Transcendentalism
  • On Sin
  • Quotes of Theodore Parker

    From Theodore Parker's book A Discourse on Matters Concerning Religion

  • The Essential Excellence of the Christian Religion
  • Cause of the False and the Real Veneration for the Bible
  • The Absolute Religion Independent of Historical Documents- The Bible as it is

    Articles

  • The Critical Theology of Theodore Parker
  • Theodore Parker: The Man
  • On Theodore Parker's Thought
  • Excerpts on Parker by Octavius Brooks Frothingham
  • Theodore Parker: The Preacher
  • The Apologetics of Theodore Parker
  • Theodore Parker and Martin Luther King: 2 Lives, One Dream
  • Theodore Parker: a Magnificent Unitarian Forbear

    Theodore Parker was our Savonarola, an excellent scholar, in frank and affectionate communication with the best minds of his day, yet the tribune of the people, and the stout Reformer to urge and defend every cause of humanity with and for the humblest of mankind. He was no artist. Highly refined persons might easily miss in him the element of beauty. What he said was mere fact, almost offended you, so bald and detached; little cared he. He stood altogether for practical truth; and so to the last. He used every day and hour of his short life, and his character appeared in the last moments with the same firm control as in the midday of strength. I habitually apply to him the words of French philosopher who speaks of "the man of Nature who abominates the steam engine and the factory. His vast lungs breath independence with the air of the mountains and the woods"
    Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1880

    Links

  • Parker's Grave Site
  • The Transcendentalists
  • Unitarian Universalist Historical Society
  • another Parker site
  • Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church in West Roxbury, MA, the first parish Parker ever served

    Last Updated 05/04/02
    To Return to Faith and Social Justice, click Here