biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1720–66)
|
| biography:
| Protestant clergyman, born on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA. A minister's son, he graduated from Harvard (1744) and became pastor of West Church, Boston, three years later. He was a theological liberal opposed to Calvinist notions of predestination, and is acknowledged as a forerunner of Unitarianism. A political liberal also, he delivered a sermon on the Stamp Act (1765) that advocated resistance to unjust laws, thus helping to create a climate in which the independence movement could flourish. |
|
|
