WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING,
NEWPORT, RI, 1780-1842.
William Ellery Channing was born in 1780 to a Newport familydivided over slavery, and grew up to become a leading anti-slavery polemicist. This tension provided the dynamism ofChanning's spiritual development.
The opening sentence of his essay on SLAVERY reads "Thefirst question to be proposed by a rational being is, not what isprofitable, but what is Right." For Channing, his Fatherrepresented what was 'profitable, expedient' and his grandfather,what was 'Right.'
Channing's maternal grandfather and name sake, a Signer of
the Declaration of Independence for RI, William Ellery, was anti-
slavery. Moses Brown wrote that Ellery "in 1775 appeared much
opposed to slavery & the trade." In the Continental Congress in
1785, Ellery seconded Rufus King's motion that the Land Ordinance
of 1785 prohibit slavery. Ellery became federal Customs
Collector for Newport after Rhode Island ratified the
Constitution in 1790. For thirty years Ellery commanded searches
and seizures of suspected slave vessels, writing to the U.S.
Secretary of the Treasury of "the inhuman, iniquitous and illegal
slave-trade."
Channing's father, William Channing, was a lawyer, first
United States District Attorney for Rhode Island and many times
elected Attorney General of Rhode Island. The elder Channing
tended the interests of the slave traders in the Rhode Island
General Court and defended them, in particular his brother-in-law
Caleb Gardner, when brought before the bar of justice for slave
trading. Most likely only the untimely death of Channing's
father prevented a direct confrontation between these two federal
officials, the U.S. District Attorney failing to prosecute,
indeed defending, those whom the U.S. Custom Collector was
seeking to arrest. The 1794 "Act to prohibit the carrying on the
Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or
country" would have put William Ellery and William Channing into
direct confrontation. The District Attorney in Rhode Island
prosecuted twenty-two cases under this law. But William Channing
was not that District Attorney, for he died on Sept. 17, 1793.
It was during the time of Channing's uncle, Caleb Gardner's,
trial in 1792 for slave trading, that 12 year old William Ellery
Channing first learned of the injustice of slaving. He knew the
institution from birth as he was raised by slaves, most notably
Duchess Quamino. In 1842 in Lenox, MA, he spoke on the eighth
anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies.
Looking backward, he recalled it was the Rev. Samuel Hopkins of
Newport who first "directed my attention to slavery fifty years
ago." Hopkins once wrote, "this town is the most guilty,
respecting the slave trade, as it has been, in a great measure,
built up by the blood of the poor Africans."
Shortly after graduation from Harvard College, Channing
became the minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston in
1803. There he became the leader of liberal wing of the
successor of New England's Puritans. This led to the split
between the "Congregationalists" and the "Unitarians" with
Channing the leading spokesperson of the 'liberals' or
Unitarians.
Among the theological issues between the descendants of the
Puritans was the problem of honesty. The orthodox claimed the
liberals were deceiving their congregations about their views of
Jesus. The origins of Channing's interest in honesty in
religious matters goes back to his childhood. Charles Timothy
Brooks, the first minister of the Unitarian church in Newport
relates that the slavery controversy of his childhood "deepened
in him the conviction that integrity was the essence of religion.
By his own testimony, he learned the same lesson of the colored
people, the domestics, and the neighbors of the family."
From his youth, his confidant and biographer Elizabeth
Palmer Peabody tells us, Channing "neglected what people said, in
the endeavor to divine by their actions what they really meant."
Authenticity provided the meaning of his ministry: "good practice
is the end of preaching, and [you] will labor to make your people
holy livers, rather than skillful disputants"? This influenced his
view of Jesus, who came "not only to teach with his lips, but to
be a living manifestation of his religion."
Channing's revulsion from traditional dogma led him to see
that Christ was not needed as a god to magically save people, as
in medieval theology. In Unitarian Christianity he rejects such
views: "... this system is unfavorable to the character. It ...
leads men to think, that Christ came to change God's mind rather
than their own." In his rebellion Channing gives "a new
illustration" of the orthodox view (called "his most dramatic
passage"): Suppose ... that a teacher should come among you, and
should tell you, that the Creator, in order to pardon his
children, had erected a gallows in the centre of the universe,
and had publicly executed upon it, in room of the offenders, an
Infinite Being, .... and suppose him to add, that all beings in
heaven and earth are required to fix their eyes on this fearful
sight, .... Channing went on to say we would consider that "this
central gallows threw gloom over the universe" and such acts of
pardon showed "terror, not parental love."
A central issue between the descendants of the Puritans was
how to read the Bible: was every word divinely imprinted, or was
it written by humans? Channing's most famous sermon was given in
1819 at the ordination of Jared Sparks as the minister of the
Unitarian Church in Baltimore. In Unitarian Christianity became
the platform of the liberals. In it, Channing historicizes the
Bible: "Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this,
that the Bible is a book written for men, in the language of men,
and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that
of other books." Written at different times of history by
historical figures, understanding the Bible was no simple matter
for Channing. "We profess not to know a book, which demands a
more frequent exercise of reason than the Bible."
Soon Channing began to understand Jesus as an historical
figure, not a cult object. In the sermon Character of Christ,
Channing wants his congregation to see the historical figure.
"It is the duty of a moral and religious teacher, almost to
create a new sense in men, that they may learn in what a world of
beauty and magnificence they live." He asks that we "transport
ourselves to the times when Jesus lived." Channing communicates
such a sense of reality and amazement that if Channing did not
believe in God, one thinks he would had to have invented God in
order to explain the Man form Nazareth. "Here I ask you whether
the character of Jesus be not the most extraordinary in history."
The extraordinariness of Jesus himself is the most important
evidence of his divine source for Channing.
Jesus comes with "the consciousness of more than human
greatness." In Character of Christ Channing describes Jesus's
"conviction of the greatness of human soul, ... the germs of
power and perfection which might be unfolded for ever." We are
to grow, evermore, in the likeness of Christ, in the likeness of
God. "We were made to grow."
This unity of high and low in Jesus was essential for
Channing. "His own lofty consciousness did not sever him from
the multitude; for he saw in his own greatness the model of what
men might become." The practical import of the image was clear
for Channing. Jesus possessed his soul in peace. Not only was he
calm, but his calmness rises into sublimity when we consider the
storms which raged about him, and the vastness of the prospects
in which his spirit found repose. I say, then, that serenity and
self-possession were peculiarly the attributes of Jesus.
This is the central image for the Unitarian moralists of
ante-bellum Boston. "The man of well regulated feelings" was the
goal of Unitarian thought according to Daniel Walker Howe.
Concluding his study, Howe wrote, Most relevant of all to our own
age is [the Unitarian moralist's] plea for a cultivated humanity,
for the moral education and integration of the human
personality... Whatever storms might roar without, the virtuous
man should always maintain his inward peace."
By the mid-1820's, Channing was established as one of the
most prominent clergyman of his day. John Quincy Adams remarked
that the Boston Brahmins almost worshipped Channing "as a saint."
Ralph Waldo Emerson simply called him "our Bishop." Writing of
Channing's participation in the anti-slavery struggle, fire-side
poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier said, "As to the
matter of courage and self-sacrifice, very few of us have evinced
so much of both... [Channing] threw upon the altar the proudest
reputation, in letters and theology, of his day."
Abhorring controversy, Channing was not anxious to enter
into the slavery crusade. Finally, an associate of William Lloyd
Garrison, Samuel J. May, prevailed upon Channing to write on the
issue. Channing's first work on the subject, SLAVERY, was
written at the family retreat, Oakland Farms on E. Main Road in
Portsmouth, RI, and published in 1835. He found the greatest
evil of slavery to be the lust for power: "... slavery, above all
other influences, nourishes the passion for power and its kindred
vices. There is no passion which needs a stronger curb." {WORKS
II:79} Years after the Civil War, May recalled that it was
Channing's essay which made anti-slavery a fit topic for the
homes of middle class Americans.
The next years saw several more anti-slavery publications by
Channing. Some credit Channing's letter on the Annexation of
Texas to Henry Clay as having forestalled the War with Mexico for
ten years. His Duties of the Free States is considered to be his
finest writing. The Duties ... addresses the question whether
the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and the CONSTITUTION are racist,
pro-slavery documents, which many of the Garrisonian
abolitionists argued before Channing's essay.
His anti-slavery writings increasingly alienated Channing
from his Boston Brahmin, Federal Street, congregation where many
textile manufacturers attended. The tension culminated in 1840
and lead to Channing's withdrawal from the church. In his last
public address, drawing upon a life long involvement in the issue
shortly before his death in 1842, Channing appealed to the people
of Lenox to listen to him. It reveals the heights of Channing's
spiritual development in the crucible of the slavery debates.
I stand here unasked, uninvited. .... I speak only from the
impulse of my own mind. I am the organ of no association,
the representative of no feelings by my own. ... I am giving
you ... not the thoughts of others, but my own independent
judgments. I stand alone, I speak in the name of no party.
I have no connection, but that of friendship and respect,
with the opposers of Slavery in this country or abroad. Do
not mix me up with other men good or bad; but listen to me as
a separate witness, standing on my own ground, and desirous
to express with all plainness what seems to be the truth.
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