American Heretic

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) was a powerful preacher who rejected the authority of the Bible and of Jesus, a brilliant scholar who became a popular agitator for the abolition of slavery and for women’s rights, and a political theorist who defined democracy as “government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people” — words that inspired Abraham Lincoln. Parker had more influence than anyone except Ralph Waldo Emerson in shaping Transcendentalism in America. In American Heretic , Dean