Octavius Brooks Frothingham

Religious leader and writer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He graduated from Harvard (1843), studied divinity there and was pastor of North Church, Salem, MA for eight years before leaving in a dispute over his anti-slavery activities. In 1859 he became pastor of the Third Congregational Unitarian Society in New York City. A theological liberal, he founded the Boston Free Religious Association (1867) and headed it for 11 years. He published a biography of Theodore Parker, a study of New England transcendentalism, and a summary of his own religious thought, The Religion of Humanity (1876). He retired from the ministry in 1879 and was in poor health for the rest of his life.

Octavius Brooks Frothingham (November 26, 1822 - November 27, 1895), was an American clergyman and author.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham (1793- 1870), a prominent Unitarian preacher, and through his mother's family he was related to Phillips Brooks. From 1855 to 1860 he was pastor of a new Unitarian society in Jersey City, where he gave up the Lord's Supper, thinking that it ministered to self-satisfaction; and it was as a radical Unitarian that he became pastor of another young church in New York City in 1860.

In 1865, when he had practically given up transcendentalism, his church building was sold and his congregation began to worship in Lyric Hall under the name of the Independent Liberal Church;

To this later period of his life belongs his best literary work. he was not only an anti-slavery leader when abolition was not popular even in New England, and a radical and rationalist when it was impossible for him to stay conveniently in the Unitarian Church, but be was the first president of the National Free Religious Association (1867) and an early and ardent disciple of Darwin and Spencer.

His principal published works are:

Stories from the Life of the Teacher (1863) A Child's Book of Religion (1866), and other works of religious teaching for children several volumes of sermons Beliefs of Unbelievers (1876) The Cradle of the Christ: a Study in Primitive Christianity (1877) The Spirit of New Faith (1877) The Rising and the Setting Faith (1878), and other expositions of the new faith he preached Life of Theodore Parker (1874) Transcendentalism in New England (1876), which is largely biographical Gerrit Smith, a Biography (1878) George Ripley (1882), in the American Men of Letters series Memoir of William Henry Channing (1886) Boston Unitarianism, 1820-1850 (1890), really a biography of his father Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890 (1891)

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