author
James Freeman Clarke
1810–1888
A leading Unitarian voice in 19th-century America, he wrote widely on religion, ethics, and social reform. His work is especially remembered for its broad, curious approach to faith, including serious attention to world religions.
4 Audiobooks
Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors
by James Freeman Clarke
Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology
by James Freeman Clarke
Christianity and Modern Thought
by Henry W. (Henry Whitney) Bellows, James Freeman Clarke, Athanase Coquerel, Orville Dewey, Charles Carroll Everett, Frederic Henry Hedge, James Martineau, Andrew P. (Andrew Preston) Peabody, George Vance Smith, Oliver Stearns
Nineteenth Century Questions
by James Freeman Clarke
About the author
Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1810, James Freeman Clarke was raised in Boston and educated at Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. He became a Unitarian minister, theologian, and prolific author whose career joined preaching, public debate, and writing.
Clarke served a Unitarian church in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1830s, where he also edited The Western Messenger. In 1841 he helped found the Church of the Disciples in Boston and remained its pastor for most of the rest of his life. He was known not only for his sermons but also for his interest in major moral causes of his day, including antislavery and wider social reform.
As a writer, he reached many readers through books on theology, devotion, ethics, and comparative religion. He is often noted as one of the early American authors to treat non-Christian religions with sustained seriousness, and his best-known works helped introduce broad audiences to the study of world faiths. He died in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1888.