James Freeman Clarke

James Freeman Clarke (April 4, 1810 – June 8, 1888) was an American minister, theologian and author. Biography Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on April 4, 1810, James Freeman Clarke was the son of Samuel Clarke and Rebecca Parker Hull, though he was raised by his grandfather James Freeman, minister at King's Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended the Boston Latin School, and later graduated from Harvard College in 1829, and Harvard Divinity School in 1833. Ordained into the Unitarian church he first became an active minister at Louisville, Kentucky, then a slave state, and soon threw himself into the national movement for the abolition of slavery. His theology was unusual for the conservative town and, reportedly, several women walked out of his first sermon. As he wrote to his friend Margaret Fuller, "I am a broken-winged hawk, seeking to fly at the sun, but fluttering in the dust." In 1839, he returned to Boston where he and his friends established (1841) the Church of the Disciples which brought together a body of people to apply the Christian religion to social problems of the day. One of the features that distinguished his church was Clarke's belief that ordination could make no distinction between him and them. They also were called to be ministers of the highest religious life. Of this church he was the minister from 1841 until 1850 and again from 1854 until his death. He was also secretary of the Unitarian Association and, in 1867-1871, professor of natural religion and Christian doctrine at Harvard.