Lyman Abbott

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Lyman Abbott, 1901. (credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Dec. 18, 1835, Roxbury, Mass., U.S. — died Oct. 22, 1922, New York, N.Y.) U.S. minister. Son of the writer Jacob Abbott (1803 – 79), he left law practice to study theology and was ordained in 1860. He became editor of the Illustrated Christian Weekly in 1870 and editor in chief of Henry Ward Beecher's Christian Union in 1881. In 1888 he succeeded to Beecher's pulpit in Brooklyn. A leading exponent of the Social Gospel movement, he sought to apply Christianity to social and industrial problems, rejecting both socialism and laissez-faire economics. On other problems Abbott presented the viewpoint of liberal evangelical Protestantism.

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Lyman Abbott (1835-1922) was American Protestantism's foremost interpreter of the scientific, theological, and social revolutions challenging the nation after the Civil War.

Lyman Abbott was born on Dec. 18, 1835, in Roxbury, Mass., the son of Jacob Abbott, clergyman and author of the celebrated "Rollo" books for children. Upon graduation from New York University, young Abbott successfully practiced law but soon entered the Congregational ministry. His first pastorate after ordination in 1860 was in Terre Haute, Ind., and although Civil War sympathies in the community were divided, Abbott ardently upheld the Union. With the coming of peace, he joined the American Union Commission in the healing work of reconstruction. When a subsequent New York pastorate left him discouraged, he turned to a new calling, journalism. He wrote for Harper's Magazine and edited the new Illustrated Christian Weekly, then joined Henry Ward Beecher in the editorship of the Christian Union (after 1893 the Outlook). With Beecher's withdrawal in 1881, Abbott became editor in chief; until his death in 1922, this influential journal was Abbott's major vehicle of expression.

Abbott also succeeded Beecher in 1888 as pastor of the prestigious Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. For 10 years his quiet, conversational sermons (quite in contrast to those of the colorful Beecher) and his Sunday evening lectures on current topics brought him widening fame, as did his many speaking engagements and much-admired books. In sum, no Protestant leader had so large a following over such a long period as did Abbott, and no churchleader surpassed him in interpreting the great issues of the day for American Protestants.

It was Abbott's mission to persuade Americans that science and faith were compatible, that the new scientific theory of evolution was "God's way of doing things," and that the new liberal theology did not mean the death of God. For him the new science and scholarship further proved that God governed the world, man was essentially good and constantly improving, and history was progressing in accordance with a divine plan. He wished to make religion relevant to life, believing that ethics rather than creeds were central to Christianity and that the churches should speak to social problems.

Abbott possessed a rare ability to sense the way the wind was blowing, and he seldom attempted to go against it - not because he was cowardly but because he was by nature a moderate who distrusted radicalism in all forms. He was an evolutionist but not a Darwinian, a religious liberal but not an agnostic, an antislavery man but not an abolitionist, a temperance advocate but not a prohibitionist, and an industrial democrat but not a socialist.

Abbott had a long and full and satisfying life, knowing the love of his wife and six children and the adulation of thousands. When he spoke, an entire generation of Protestants listened.

But Abbott was neither an original nor a profound thinker, and the limitations of his moderate, essentially middle-class position are suggested by the fact that he acquiesced in the increasing segregation of African Americans, lamented the extension of political rights to women, deplored labor violence, rationalized American imperialism, vociferously urged early intervention in World War I (following the lead of his friend Theodore Roosevelt, whom he had backed in 1912 for the presidency on the Progressive party ticket), and approved the suppression of wartime dissent.

Further Reading

Ira V. Brown, Lyman Abbott (1953), is a fine biography. Abbott's own Reminiscences (1916) is helpful. For Protestantism's response to the challenges of modernism, industrialization, and urbanization see Charles H. Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915 (1940); Aaron I. Abell, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism, 1865-1900 (1943); Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (1949); and Francis P. Weisenburger, Ordeal of Faith: The Crisis of Church-going America, 1865-1900 (1959).

Quotes:

"It is easy to condemn, it is better to pity."

"Patience is passion tamed."

"The highest qualities of character must be earned."

"A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice- but as yet unstained."

Lyman Abbott
Born	December 18, 1835(1835-12-18) Roxbury, Massachusetts
Died	October 22, 1922 (aged 86)
Resting place	New Windsor Cemetery
Children	Lawrence Fraser Abbott

Lyman Abbott (December 18, 1835 – October 22, 1922) was an American Congregationalist theologian, editor, and author.^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links

Biography

Abbott was born at Roxbury, Massachusetts, the son of the prolific author, educator and historian Jacob Abbott. Lyman Abbott grew up in Farmington, Maine and later in New York City.^[2]

He graduated from the New York University in 1853, where he was a member of the Eucleian Society, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1856; but soon abandoned the legal profession, and, after studying theology with his uncle, John Stevens Cabot Abbott, was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church in 1860. He was pastor of the Congregational Church in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1860-1865, and of the New England Church in New York City in 1865-1869. From 1865 to 1868 he was secretary of the American Union Commission (later called the American Freedmen's Bureau). In 1869 he resigned his pastorate to devote himself to literature. He was an associate editor of Harper's Magazine, was editor of the Illustrated Christian Weekly for six years, and was co-editor (1876-1881) of The Christian Union with Henry Ward Beecher, whom he succeeded in 1888 as pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. From this pastorate he resigned ten years later. From 1881 he was editor-in-chief of The Christian Union, renamed The Outlook in 1893; this periodical reflected his efforts toward social reform, and, in theology, a liberality, humanitarian and nearly unitarian. The latter characteristics marked his published works also.

Abbott's opinions differed from those of Beecher. Abbott was a constant advocate of social reform, and was an advocate of Theodore Roosevelt's progressivism for almost 20 years. He would later adopt a pronouncedly liberal theology. He was also a pronounced Christian Evolutionist.^[3]

His son, Lawrence Fraser Abbott, accompanied President Roosevelt on a tour of Europe and Africa (1909-10). In 1913 Lyman Abbott was expelled from the American Peace Society because military preparedness was vigorously advocated in the Outlook,^[4] which he edited, and because he was a member of the Army and Navy League. During the War he was a strong supporter of the government's war policies.

Lyman Abbott died on October 22, 1922 and was buried in the New Windsor Cemetery in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York.

Works

• Jesus of Nazareth (1869);
• Illustrated Commentary on the New Testament (4 vols., 1875);
• A Study in Human Nature (1885);
• Life of Christ (1894);
• The Evolution of Christianity (Lowell Lectures, 1896); (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009, ISBN 9781108000192)
• The Theology of an Evolutionist (1897);
• Christianity and Social Problems (1897);
• Life and Letters of Paul, (1898);
• The Life that Really is (1899);
• Problems of Life (1900);
• The Rights of Man (1901);
• Henry Ward Beecher (1903);
• The Christian Ministry (1905);
• The Personality of God (1905);
• Industrial Problems (1905);
• Christ's Secret of Happiness (1907);
• The Home Builder (1908);
• The Temple (1909);
• The Spirit of Democracy (1910);
• America in the Making (Yale lectures on the responsibility of citizenship, 1911);
• Letters to Unknown Friends (1913);
• Reminiscences (1915);
• The Twentieth Century Crusade (1918); and
• What Christianity Means to Me (1921).

He edited Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher (2 vols., 1868).

In two of these works, The Evolution of Christianity and The Theology of an Evolutionist, Abbott applied the concept of evolution in a Christian theological perspective. Although he himself objected to being called an advocate of Darwinism, he was an obtimistic advocte of evolution who though that "what Jesus saw, humanity is becoming."

Notes

1. ^ Abbott, Lyman in the Christian Cyclopedia
2. ^ Van Doren, Charles and Robert McHenry, ed., Webster's American Biographies. (Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 1984) p. 4
3. ^ "Lyman Abbott's sermon; the last in "The Theology of an Evolutionist" series.". New York Times. May 4, 1896. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9805E6D7123EE333A25757C0A9639C94679ED7CF. 
4. ^ New International Encyclopedia

References

Reid, Daniel G., et al. Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downers Grove, IL:InterVarsity Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8308-1776-X.

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Abbott, Lyman.

• Works by Lyman Abbott at Project Gutenberg
• Free scores by Lyman Abbott in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

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