Editing William Ellery Channing (section)

==Life and work==

===Early life===
Channing, the son of William Channing and Lucy Ellery, was born April{{nbsp}}7, 1780, in [[Newport, Rhode Island]]. He was a grandson of [[William Ellery]] (1727–1820), a signer of the [[United States Declaration of Independence]], Deputy Governor of Rhode Island, Chief Justice, and influential citizen. As a child, he was cared for by the formerly enslaved woman [[Duchess Quamino]], who  later influenced his views on [[abolitionism]].<ref name=Mendelsohn1971>{{Cite book |last=Mendelsohn |first=Jack |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qjaiBZFRsw8C |title=Channing: The Reluctant Radical |publisher=Little, Brown & Co |year=1971 |isbn=0-933-840-28-4 |pages=209}}</ref> He became a [[New England]] [[Liberalism|liberal]], rejecting the [[Calvinism|Calvinist]] doctrines of [[total depravity]] and [[divine election]].

Channing enrolled at [[Harvard College]] at a troubled time, particularly because of the recent [[French Revolution]]. He later wrote of these years:

{{quote|College was never in a worse state than when I entered it. Society was passing through a most critical stage. The French Revolution had diseased the imagination and unsettled the understanding of men everywhere. The old foundations of social order, loyalty, tradition, habit, reverence for antiquity, were everywhere shaken, if not subverted. The authority of the past was gone.<ref name=Broaddus22>Broaddus, Dorothy C. ''Genteel Rhetoric: Writing High Culture in Nineteenth-Century Boston''. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina, 1999: 22. {{ISBN|1-57003-244-0}}.</ref>}}

Graduating first in his class in 1798, he was elected commencement speaker though he was prohibited by the Harvard College faculty from mentioning the [[French Revolution|Revolution]] and other political subjects in his address.<ref name=Broaddus22/>

===As Theologian===
In opposition to traditional American Calvinist orthodoxy, Channing preferred a gentle, loving relationship with God. He opposed [[Reformed Christianity]] for

{{quote|... proclaiming a God who is to be dreaded. We are told to love and imitate God, but also that God does things we would consider most cruel in any human parent, "were he to bring his children into life totally depraved and then to pursue them with endless punishment"|Channing 1957: 56.<ref name=Channing39>Channing, William Ellery. "The Moral Argument Against Calvinism". pp.  39–59 in ''Unitarian Christianity and Other Essays''. Edited by Irving H. Bartlett. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill; 1957 [1820]. Cited in Finlan, Stephen. "Jesus in Atonement Theories". In ''The Blackwell Companion to Jesus''.  Edited by Delbert Burkett. London: Blackwell; 2010: 21.</ref>}}

Channing's inner struggle continued through two years during which he lived in [[Richmond, Virginia]], working as a tutor for [[David Meade Randolph]]. He came to his definitive faith only through much spiritual turmoil and difficulty. Channing was called as pastor of the [[Federal Street Church (Boston)|Federal Street Church]] in Boston in 1803, where he remained for the rest of his life. He lived through the increasing tension between religious liberals and conservatives and took a moderate position, rejecting the extremes of both groups. In 1809 he was elected a [[Fellow]] of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]].<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter C|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterC.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=September 9, 2016}}</ref>

In 1815, Channing engaged in a noted controversy on the principles of [[Unitarianism]] with [[Samuel Worcester (theologian)|Samuel Worcester]], (1770–1821).<ref name=acab>{{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Worcester, Noah (clergyman)|display=Worcester, Noah, clergyman|year=1889}}</ref> A review of a pamphlet on American Unitarianism (''American Unitarianism; or a Brief History of the Progress and Present State of the Unitarian Churches of America''), attributed to [[Jeremiah Evarts]], was published in ''[[The Panoplist]]'' in June 1815. Channing objected to the way Unitarians in the United States were portrayed in the review. Worcester replied to this objection, and an exchange of pamphlets followed.<ref name=dab>{{Cite DAB|title=Worcester, Samuel|author=Harris Elwood Starr|year=1936}}</ref>

Notwithstanding his moderate position, Channing later became the primary spokesman and interpreter of Unitarianism, after sixteen years at Boston's Federal Street Church. He was invited to come south again to [[Maryland]] to preach the ordination sermon of the future noted educator and theologian [[Jared Sparks]] (1789–1866), the first minister (1819–1823) called to the newly organized congregation (1817) in [[Baltimore]] known as the [[First Unitarian Church (Baltimore, Maryland)|First Independent Church of Baltimore]] (located at West Franklin and North Charles Streets, in a landmark two-year-old structure designed by noted French émigré architect [[Maximilian Godefroy|J. Maximilian M. Godefroy]]), later known, after a merger with Second Universalist Church in 1935, as the [[First Unitarian Church (Baltimore, Maryland)|First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Unitarian and Universalist)]], which was forever after known as "The Baltimore Sermon".<ref name="American Unitarian Conference"/> The sermon, or address, was given on Wednesday, May{{nbsp}}5, 1819, and was entitled "Unitarian Christianity". In it, he explicated the distinctive tenets of the developing Unitarian movement, one of which was the rejection of the [[Trinity]]. Other important tenets were the belief in human goodness and the subjection of theological ideas to the light of [[reason]]. (The anniversary of the address is celebrated and observed annually by the [[Maryland]] churches of the [[Unitarian Universalist Association]] and its [[Districts of the Unitarian Universalist Association|Joseph Priestley District]] as "Union Sunday", with occasional [[ecumenical]] guests from other Christian bodies.) Based on these sermons, writer and critic [[John Neal]] in his 1824–25 critical work ''[[American Writers]]'' called Channing one of the best preachers in the country. He said: "Such of his writings as have been published are remarkable for simplicity, clearness, and power."<ref>{{cite book | last = Daggett | first = Windsor | title = A Down-East Yankee From the District of Maine | publisher = A.J. Huston | location = Portland, Maine | year = 1920 | url = https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007921667 | oclc = 1048477735 | page = 13}}</ref>

In 1828, he gave another famous ordination sermon, entitled "Likeness to God". The idea of the human potential to be like God, which Channing advocated as grounded firmly in scripture, was seen as heretical by the [[Calvinist]] religious establishment of his day. It is in this address that Channing first advocated the possibility for revelation through reason rather than solely from Scripture. ''American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia'' classes him as one of several figures who "took a more [[Pantheism|pantheist]] or [[Pandeism|pandeist]] approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world."<ref>{{Cite book |title = American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia |author = [[John Lachs]] and [[Robert Talisse]] |year = 2007 |isbn = 978-0415939263 |page = 310 |publisher = Routledge }}</ref>

Even at the end of his life he adhered to the non-[[Socinianism|Socinian]] belief in the [[preexistence of Christ]]:

{{quote|I have always inclined to the doctrine of the preexistence of Christ, though am not insensible to the weight of your objections|Boston, March&nbsp;31, 1832<ref>''Memoir of William Ellery Channing: with extracts from his correspondence'', Volume{{nbsp}}2 p.{{nbsp}}416</ref>}}

===Later years===

In later years, Channing addressed the topic of [[slavery]] although he was never an ardent [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]]. Channing wrote a book in 1835 entitled ''Slavery.''<ref>[https://archive.org/details/slavery02changoog SLAVERY]</ref> Channing has, however, been described as a [[Romantic racism|romantic racist]].<ref>''Black Abolitionism: A Quest for Human Dignity'', Beverly Eileen Mitchell, pp. 133–38</ref> He held a common American belief about the inferiority of African people and slaves and held a belief that once freed, Africans would need overseers. The overseers (largely former slave masters) were necessary because the slaves would lapse into laziness. Furthermore, he did not join the abolitionist movement because he did not agree with their way of conducting themselves, and he felt that voluntary associations limited a person's autonomy. Therefore, he often chose to remain separate from organizations and reform movements. This middle position characterized his attitude about most questions although his eloquence and strong influence on the religious world incurred the enmity of many extremists. Channing had an enormous influence over the religious (and social) life of New England, and America, in the nineteenth century.

Toward the end of his life, Channing embraced immediate abolitionism. His evolving view of abolitionism was fostered by the success of British [[Abolitionism in the United Kingdom|abolition]] in the [[British West Indies]] in 1834 and the absence of the expected social and economic upheaval in the post-emancipated [[Caribbean Sea|Caribbean]].

In 1837, Channing published a pamphlet, in the form of an [[open letter]] to Senator Henry Clay, opposing the annexation of [[Texas]], arguing that the [[Texas Revolution|revolution]] there was "criminal."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Channing |first1=William Ellery |title=A letter to the Hon. Henry Clay, on the annexation of Texas to the United States |date=1837 |publisher=James Munroe and Company |location=Boston |pages=7–10 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015025900153&view=2up&seq=10&size=125 |access-date=26 February 2021}}</ref>

Channing wrote extensively about the emerging new national literature of the United States, saying that national literature is "the expression of a nation's mind in writing", and "the concentration of intellect for the purpose of spreading itself abroad and multiplying its energy".<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=F_MilVnnDugC&pg=PA1242 Remarks on National Literature]</ref>

===Death===
Channing died in [[Old Bennington, Vermont]], where a [[cenotaph]] is placed in his memory. He is buried in [[Mount Auburn Cemetery]], [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]].<ref>[https://dev.mountauburn.org/william-ellery-channing-1780-1842/ Mount Auburn Cemetery]</ref>