Protestant clergyman and reformer, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, USA. One of 13 children of clergyman Lyman Beecher and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, he studied at Amherst (1834) and under his father at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, OH. In 1839 he became pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, IN where he developed a forceful, emotional preaching style. Named the first pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York (1847), he crusaded from the pulpit for temperance and against slavery, and became one of the most influential public figures of his time. He supported Free Soil political candidates and later Republicans. On the outbreak of the Civil War his church raised and equipped a volunteer regiment. He edited the religious publications The Independent and The Christian Union (later Outlook) during the 1860s and 1870s, and among his many books is Evolution and Religion (1885). In 1874 he was acquitted on an adultery charge after a sensational trial.
Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was a prominent, theologically liberal American Congregationalist clergyman and social reformer, and famous speaker who was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the son of famous evangelist Lyman Beecher.
Social and political views
An advocate of women's suffrage, temperance and Darwin's theory of evolution, and a foe of slavery, Beecher held that Christianity should adapt itself to the changing culture of the times.
He raised funds to buy weapons for those willing to oppose slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, and the rifles bought with this money became known as "Beecher's Bibles".
During the American Civil War, his church raised and equipped a volunteer infantry regiment.
Preaching style
Thousands of worshipers flocked to Beecher's enormous Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Mark Twain went to see Beecher in the pulpit and described the pastor "sawing his arms in the air, howling sarcasms this way and that, discharging rockets of poetry and exploding mines of eloquence, halting now and then to stamp his foot three times in succession to emphasize a point."
"He obtained the chains with which John Brown had been bound, trampling them in the pulpit, and he also held mock 'auctions' at which the congregation purchased the freedom of real slaves," according to the Web site of the still-existing Plymouth Church.
Theology
Henry's father preached a form of Calvinist theology that "combined the old belief that 'human fate was preordained by God's plan' with a faith in the capacity of rational men and women to purge society of its sinful ways," according to historian Michael Kazin.
"For (Henry) Beecher, sinfulness was a temporary malady, which the love of God could burn away as a fierce noonday sun dries up a noxious mold," according to Kazin.
Life
Henry was the eighth child of Roxana Foote and Lyman Beecher, pastor of an established Congregationalist church in Litchfield, Connecticut.
"He grew up in a crowded parsonage with his father, who became one of the most prominent clergymen of that era, his stepmother, siblings and half siblings, and assorted relatives and servants."
Henry was especially close to his sister Harriet, two years his senior," according to the web site of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, New York City.
Beecher also attended Boston Latin School, graduated from Amherst College in 1834 and in 1837 received a degree from Lane Theological Seminary outside Cincinnati, Ohio, which his father then headed.
In 1847, he was appointed the first minister of the new Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York. That fall, Beecher and his wife, the former Eunice Bullard, and their three surviving children moved to Brooklyn.
Beecher's fame on the lecture circuit led to his becoming editor of several religious magazines, and he received large advances for a novel and for a biography of Jesus.
Beecher-Tilton Scandal
"His career took place during what one scholar has called the Protestant Century," according to Kazin, "when an eloquent preacher could be a sexy celebrity, the leader of one or more reform movements and a popular philosopher — all at the same time."
Muscular and long-haired, the preacher was close to a series of attractive young women, but his wife, Eunice, the mother of his 10 children, was "unloved."
In the highly publicized scandal known as the Beecher-Tilton Affair he was tried on charges that he had committed adultery with a friend's wife, Elizabeth Tilton. In 1870, Elizabeth had confessed to her husband, Theodore Tilton, that she had had a relationship with Henry Ward Beecher.
The charges became public when Theodore Tilton told Elizabeth Cady Stanton that his wife, Elizabeth, had confessed to a "free love" relationship with Henry Ward Beecher. Stanton repeated the story to Victoria Woodhull and Isabella Beecher Hooker.
Victoria became angry, as Henry Ward Beecher had publicly denounced her advocacy of free love. The Plymouth Church held a board of inquiry and exonerated Beecher, but excommunicated Mr. Tilton in 1873.
Tilton then sued Beecher: the trial began in January 1875, and ended in July when the jurors deliberated for six days but were unable to reach a verdict.
A second board of enquiry was held at Plymouth Church and this body also exonerated Beecher. While most of his siblings supported him, one of his sisters, the nationally known women's rights leader Isabella Beecher Hooker, openly supported one of his accusers.
Death and funeral
Beecher died of a cerebral hemorrhage and is buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery.
"Brooklyn, still an independent city, declared a day of mourning. His funeral procession to Plymouth Church - led by a Black commander of the William Lloyd Garrison Post in Massachusetts and a Virginia Confederate general and former slaveholder, marching arm in arm - paid tribute to what Beecher helped accomplish. Henry Ward Beecher was laid to rest in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery on March 11, 1887, survived by his wife Eunice, and four of the nine children born to them: Harriet, Henry, William and Herbert. — biographer Debby Applegate, in her book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher Beecher, Illinois, is his namesake, although he declined to come to the town's dedication in 1871. Gutzon Borglum who created the Mount Rushmore memorial, sculpted a statue of Beecher that stands in the garden of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights. Trumpets of Jubilee: Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lyman Beecher, Horace Greeley, P.T.
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