Theodore Parker: Apostasy Within Liberalism

Extract

I am not the first to detect in recent scholarship dealing with the “Transcendental” period of New England a tendency toward vindicating, or at least toward putting in a good word for, the hitherto regularly berated opponents of Emerson and Theodore Parker. Because in the 1830's and 1840's and well into the 1850's the phalanx of those most outspoken in resistance were the Unitarian clergy, the custom has been for chroniclers of the literary and theological radicalism to heap derision upon the men who occupied established pulpits in the neighborhood of Boston and who spoke for the substantial portions of the community.