Henry Ward Beecher

American Protestant cleric

• Born: June 24, 1813
• Birthplace: Litchfield, Connecticut
• Died: March 8, 1887
• Place of death: Brooklyn, New York

The best-known American Protestant cleric of his time, Beecher was pastor of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church for forty years. He became one of the most articulate ministers in the United States and broke with traditional methods of preaching in both style and content, while ushering in a new era of homiletic expertise that reached far beyond his podium.

Early Life

Henry Ward Beecher was born June 24, 1813, in Litchfield, Connecticut, one of thirteen children. His father, the Reverend Lyman Beecher, was descended from colonial settlers dating back to the 1630’s. The elder Beecher was one of the leading lights in the American pulpit, as well as an outstanding theologian and educator. His mother, Roxana Foote, whose lineage could be traced back to seventeenth century England, died of consumption when Henry was three years old. Many of the elder Beecher’s children later became preachers, and one of his daughters, Harriet Beecher Stowe, became a writer, philanthropist, and abolitionist.

Because there were so many children, there was little time for each one to receive personal attention. Henry’s stepmother, Harriett Porter, however, engendered in them at least a sense of awe, if not affection. However, for the most part, Henry was a loner, growing up somewhat aloof in disposition and self-centered in outlook.

At the age of ten, he was sent away to school but had little success in his studies. Later, he went to a school conducted by his sister Catharine in Hartford—the only boy among some forty girls. He then enrolled in Mount Pleasant Classical Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, where, for the first time, he had contact with boys his own age. There, Beecher attained some measure of popularity and encountered teachers who taught him to study and to express himself.

In 1830, Beecher entered Amherst College, where he read English classics and began writing for one of the college publications. However, his spiritual life languished. Because his father expected all of his sons to follow him into the ministry, Beecher, following his graduation from Amherst, matriculated at Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, where his father was president. Beecher’s time was about equally divided between his studies and extracurricular activities, particularly writing. Theology held no charm for him, and his father’s Calvinism repelled him. One May morning, alone in the Ohio woods, however, Beecher underwent a religious experience that shaped his ideas about God and provided the structure for his spiritual life, providing a broad area for preaching that conformed to his own temperament and lifestyle.

Life’s Work

After his graduation from Lane Seminary in 1837, Beecher became minister at the Presbyterian Church at Lawrenceburg, Indiana. There, he married Eunice White Bullard, with whom he would have ten children. On November 9, 1838, Beecher was ordained by the New School Presbytery of Cincinnati. The following July, he moved to the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, where he remained until October, 1848, when he went to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, a Congregational church.

In appearance, Beecher was imposing. It has been said that he was one of the most striking figures in Brooklyn. A man of medium height and large girth, his broad shoulders accorded a resting place for his hair and a foundation for his lionesque head. His voice was responsive to every shade of emotion.

During the decade of his first two pastorates, Beecher had gradually developed his principles and his style of preaching, which was intended to bring about a moral change in his listeners. His sermons began to be published—sermons that dealt with moral renewal. Certain of these were gathered into a book, Seven Lectures to Young Men , published in 1844.

Like all the Beechers, he was opposed to slavery, but his thoughts on the subject were complicated and perhaps contradictory. In 1860, he announced a six-point creed on slavery: First a man may hold a slave and do no wrong; second, immediate emancipation is impossible; third, a slaveholder may still be considered a good Christian; fourth, the influence of slavery is not always evil; fifth, some slaveholders are doing more for the cause of freedom than some violent reformers; finally, antislavery bigotry is worse than the Papacy. His position on this issue probably evolved from his desire to present the Gospel to as many and as varied a group of people as possible.

Plymouth Church had only recently been organized and built when Beecher arrived. Soon afterward, the edifice burned. A new structure was then built, a large auditorium that could accommodate more than three thousand people. From his platform—he did not desire a pulpit—he gained fame as a man of eloquence and high ideals and was widely considered to be the best preacher of the age. Even after 1874, when he was accused of committing adultery with one of his parishioners, he continued to be seen almost as a national saint. This veneration was a measure of the degree to which his message had captured the spirit of popular Protestantism of the time.

Beecher’s messages were frequently directed at relieving the anxieties of his affluent Brooklyn suburban audience, who sensed a conflict between their new wealth and the stern Puritan morality in which they had been reared. He preached a gospel of “virtuous wealth” as a commendable moral example to the poor, providing relief from traditional Calvinistic theological anxieties with a general liberalism that gradually unfolded as his sensibilities developed along with those of his national audience.

Beecher urged that American preaching strive for unassailable goals that would “inspire men with an idea of manhood” and kindle the “nobility of a heart opened when God has touched it.” The Brooklyn preacher had discovered a formula that would, for many years, allay the apprehensions of the respectable, evangelical Americans concerning the new science and learning. He commented,

While we are taught by the scientists in truths that belong to sensual nature, while we are taught by the economists of things that belong to the social nature, we need the Christian ministry to teach us those things which are invisible.

Beecher was among the first American preachers to accept Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, by which he sought to reinterpret essential Christian convictions “in terms congenial with the assured convictions of the latest scientific theories.” Beecher’s acceptance of evolution had a tremendous impact on the American Protestant community. The theory of evolution, coupled with biblical criticism coming out of Germany, produced the dominant Protestant theology of the late nineteenth century, a position that was in ascendance until the rise of neoorthodoxy during the 1930’s.

In 1861, Beecher became editor of the Independent , a Congregational journal; from 1870 to 1881, he was editor of the nondenominational Christian Union , which he founded. In this latter position he wrote what were considered some of the strongest editorials in the American press. His sermons were reproduced in weekly columns; others were published as pamphlets.

Beecher launched attacks against slavery, but he was not an abolitionist. He opposed the Fugitive Slave Law and the Compromise of 1850. He urged northerners to emigrate to Kansas, using force to make it free soil. At the same time, he decried bitterness toward the South. When the Civil War erupted, he pushed for a strong prosecution by the North. In his orations, Beecher skillfully equated Christian redemptive meaning with the spirit of the Union. In 1863, he visited England, where he boldly presented the position of the North.

It is questionable whether Beecher’s speeches accomplished much, but they did no harm to his popularity. When hostilities ceased, Beecher went to Fort Sumter to give the oration celebrating the fourth anniversary of that fort’s fall. Beecher favored Andrew Johnson’s position regarding Reconstruction; he longed to see the Union reunited and the military government in the South brought to a speedy end. Indeed, he was so sympathetic to Reconstruction that he brought down upon himself the wrath of his congregation and was forced to recant.

Neither a scholar nor an original thinker, Beecher was often very impetuous in enunciating his position on various topics before thoroughly considering the logical ramifications of such pronouncements. Uninterested in theory so much as in practical application, he abhorred theological controversy, probably because his father had so delighted in it.

Significance

Beecher possessed the ability to present the most advanced thought of his generation in easily understood language and to stamp it indelibly, by means of word pictures, upon the minds of his listeners. Those who heard him were mesmerized by his delivery; those who read him were tantalized by his clarity. Many twentieth century Protestant preachers employ the same approach in their preaching, unaware that, a century earlier, Beecher was in the vanguard of those who employed such a method. Similarly, his Yale Lectures on Preaching (1872-1874) still rank as the apogee of instruction in the entire field of the ministry.

Henry Ward Beecher continued to be, as long as he lived, the most prominent preacher in the United States. Through a continuous stream of published sermons, in pamphlets as well as collected volumes, he preached to a whole country as completely as had any man before the coming of the radio. Beecher strongly influenced the style of delivery, worship, music, and content that has become the standard in the modern pulpit. Further, his social conscience and oratorical skill made him a spiritual and moral force in his time.

Bibliography

Abbott, Lyman. Henry Ward Beecher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903. A sympathetic biography of Beecher, written by one who was converted by his preaching and who succeeded him at Plymouth Church. Contains Beecher’s 1882 theological statement, which resulted in his leaving the Congregational Church.

Beecher, Henry Ward. Yale Lectures on Preaching. New York: J. B. Ford, 1872-1874. Probably the best material on Beecher’s art of preaching and pastoral work.

Clark, Clifford E., Jr. Henry Ward Beecher: Spokesman for Middle-Class America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. Interprets Beecher as one who defended the middle-class ethics and ethos of Plymouth Church, particularly during the Panic of 1873.

Fox, Richard Wrightman. Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Chronicles Beecher’s adultery trial, in which author Theodore Tilton, a Beecher confidant, accused Beecher of having an affair with his wife, Elizabeth Tilton. Beecher was not convicted, but Fox contends the nation was shocked by the allegations of immorality and the trial forever tainted Beecher’s reputation.

Garrison, Winfred Ernest. The March of Faith: The Story of Religion in America Since 1865. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933. This survey includes a sympathetic account of Beecher, placing him in the context of his times.

Hibben, Paxton. Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait. New York: George H. Doran, 1927. This essentially negative biographical study asserts that Beecher was not a pioneer in the great work of liberalizing American theology and religion, but rather was able to present modern ideas in a form that the masses could grasp. Hibben argues that Beecher’s personal development, moving from a rejection of his father’s Calvinism to embrace religious liberalism, mirrored a transformation in American society.

McLoughlin, William G. The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecher: An Essay on the Shifting Values of Mid-Victorian America, 1840-1870. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. Claims that the meaning of Beecher’s life lies in the story of the great shift between the Age of Jackson and the Gilded Age. Like Hibben (see above), it points out how the development of Beecher’s theological views corresponded to the major social, economic, political, and religious shifts in American society between 1840 and 1875.

Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Places Beecher in the forefront of those who viewed progress in science and morality as the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Rugoff, Milton. The Beechers: An American Family in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Places Henry Ward Beecher in the family context of the Beechers, beginning with Lyman, and extending to Henry’s brothers and sisters. Four chapters give a fairly objective biography of Beecher, including a succinct presentation and appraisal of Beecher’s trial for adultery. Based on extensive documents.

Ryan, Halford R. Henry Ward Beecher: Peripatetic Preacher. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. Although Beecher’s career was the ministry, Ryan argues his true calling was public speaking. The book contains reprints of Beecher’s public speeches and sermons, with an analysis of his rhetorical style.