James Freeman Clarke

James Freeman Clarke

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

Parents and youth

James Freeman Clarke was the third of the six children of Samuel Clarke (1779-1830) and Rebecca Clarke, b. Hull. His childhood was encouraged and cared for by step-grandfather James Freemann (1759-1835), one of the pioneers of Unitarianism in New England, who was the first clergyman to lead his parish (Kings Chapel, Boston) in 1782 into the new faith. His grandfather, whose name he also bore, taught him the basics of ancient languages, literature and philosophy in a playful way. This early positive experience and the subsequent everyday school life with unimaginative memorization later prompted him to reform the school system. As the first regular school he attended the Boston Latin School from the age of ten , which he left again at the age of fifteen. He then went to Harvard College . He then studied from 1829 to 1833 at the Harvard Theology School (Harvard Divinity School).

Friendship with Margaret Fuller

During his time at Harvard, he met Margaret Fuller , who was the same age and distantly related , with whom he had a platonic relationship until her untimely death. Since women were not allowed to study, Clarke gave her access to the library. They learned German together. From her he received suggestions for studying German literature, which later made him a Goethe expert and mediator of German literature in America. He was also able to work on George Ripley's 15-volume collection of European and German literature. Clarke was one of the editors of the first biography of Margaret Fuller , alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Henry Channing.

Church history

The year 1833, in which Clarke's theology studies ended, was also the year in which Massachusetts became one of the last states to complete the complete separation of church and state. In the neighboring state of Rhode Island , freedom of religion had been in effect since 1643. The loss of the position as a quasi-state church resulted in a considerable decline in membership for the Protestant churches in the individual states. On average, less than 10 percent of American citizens were willing to volunteer to join a church. The turning away from the faithful expressed not only a general dissatisfaction with the routine and sobriety of church practice up to now, but also a discomfort with the privileges of the churches from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers . The younger churchmen responded with reforms in almost all areas of church work, worship, and personal pastoral care. James Freeman Clarke was one of these reformers and counted as part of the second great awakening ( Great Awakening ) the pioneers of the Free Church movement .

Time in Kentucky

After his ordination and 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 wild customs on the other. He became friends with Ephraim Peabody, the pastor of the Unitarian Congregation in Cincinnati , Ohio. Together they founded the first transcendentalist magazine The Western Messenger in 1835 , with which they disseminated liberal religious principles and contemporary domestic and foreign literature. Emerson's first poems appeared here. Kentucky was one of the slave-holding states at the time. Clarke denounced slavery as a sin, but refrained from denouncing the slave owners. In 1837 he accepted an invitation from the merchant Harm Jan Huidekoper, Meadville , Pennsylvania, who had co-founded the Unitarian Church and the theological school there. His daughter Anna married Clarke in 1839. Two years later he moved to Boston with his wife and first child.

Boston

In Boston, against conservative opposition, he founded his own Unitarian congregation, which, unlike the established churches, was not responsible for a specific district, but addressed people from all over Boston and the surrounding area. He called it the Church of the Disciples (Church of the Disciples), whereby he saw himself as a disciple among other disciples - the parishioners. Together they were responsible for the church, with which he adopted Martin Luther's principle of the priesthood of all believers . Further principles were voluntary payment of contributions, recognition and strengthening of lay work and the equality of all parishioners. With this he ended the unchristian custom of keeping the front seats near the altar free for wealthy families. With the adoption of devotional forms of the Catholics, Methodists and Quakers he was a forerunner of the ecumenical movement . With the exception of the years 1850 to 1853, in which he stayed in Europe and in the house of his in-laws in Meadville after a typhoid disease, he was pastor of this church for a total of 45 years until his death.

Grave of James Freeman Clarke and his wife Anna (Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts)

Offices and Vocations

In addition to his work in Louisville and Boston, he was a co-founder of the Unitarian Church in Chicago. In Massachusetts the Senate elected him a chaplain, who had to initiate the sessions with a prayer. Clarke has served on a number of boards and boards at Harvard , the Boston Public Library, and the United States Unitarian Association. At Harvard he taught comparative religion , natural theology and Christian doctrine . To his contemporaries he was a tireless admonisher and thought leader on many social problems. He served on numerous commissions and committees and was involved in reforms to improve education, the prison system, address the urban housing shortage and organize immigration. Clarke advocated the abolition of slavery and the death penalty. He turned against corruption in business and politics and called for equal rights for women. In the course of advancing industrialization, he was on the side of the trade unions.

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

During the American Civil War , he made the Brook Farm property , which he had acquired after the failure of the social utopian project, available free of charge to the troops of the northern states for training purposes. In Camp Andrew established there , as in other camps and hospitals , Clarke worked as a military chaplain.

Since 1874 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1879 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Quote

“A politician […] is a man who thinks of the next election; while the statesman thinks of the next generation. ”(The politician is a man who thinks about the next elections; whereas the statesman thinks about the next generation.)

Selection of his works

• Orthodoxy: Its Truth and Errors (1866)
• Ten Great Religions (1871)
• Common Sense in Religions (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)

literature

• Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence . Edward Everett Hale (Ed.), Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston and New York 1892.
• Ernst Benz : Church history from an ecumenical point of view. EJ Brill, Leiden 1961.
• Arthur S. Bolster, Jr.: James Freeman Clarke . Disciple of Advancing Truth, Boston 1955.
• Wesley J. Thomas: James Freeman Clarke, Apostle of German Culture to America . John W. Luce & Company Publishers, Boston 1949.

Web links

• Literature by and about James Freeman Clarke in the catalog of the German National Library
• Correspondence in the Houghton Library , Harvard University
• Letters to Margaret Fuller in the Houghton Library, Harvard University

Individual evidence

1. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna 1894, Vol. 4, p. 207.
2. ↑ Wesley J. Thomas (Ed.): The Letters of James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller . Hamburg, Cram, de Gruyter & Co., 1957.
3. ^ Wesley J. Thomas: James Freeman Clarke, Apostle of German Culture to America . John W. Luce & Company Publishers, Boston 1949.
4. ^ Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature.
5. ↑ Theological Real Encyclopedia . Vol. 11, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1983, p. 556.
6. ^ Ernst Benz: Church history from an ecumenical point of view . EJ Brill, Leiden 1961, p. 93.
7. ^ Member History: James F. Clarke. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 20, 2018 . 
8. ^ Wanted a statesman (1870), quoted from Wikiquote , accessed November 16, 2015.