Page "religion" Paragraph 71

Actually, the dispute between Parker and the society of his time, both ecclesiastical and social, was a real one, a bitter one.

It cannot be smoothed over by now cherishing his sarcasms as delightful bits of self-deprecation or by solemnly calling for a reconsideration of the justice of the objections to him.

The fact is incontestable: that liberal world of Unitarian Boston was narrow-minded, intellectually sterile, smug, afraid of the logical consequences of its own mild ventures into iconoclasm, and quite prepared to resort to hysterical repressions when its brittle foundations were threatened.

Parker, along with Garrison and Charles Sumner, showed a magnificent moral bravery when facing mobs mobilized in defense of the Mexican War and slavery.

Nevertheless, we can find reasons for respecting even the bigotry of the populace ; ;

their passions were genuine, and the division between them and the abolitionists is clear-cut.

But Parker as the ultra-liberal minister within the pale of a church which had proclaimed itself the repository of liberality poses a different problem, which is not to be resolved by holding him up as the champion of freedom.

Even though his theological theses have become, to us, commonplaces, the fundamental interrogation he phrased is very much with us.

It has been endlessly rephrased, but I may here put it thus: at what point do the tolerant find themselves obliged to become intolerant??

And then, as they become aware that they have reached the end of their patience, what do they, to their dismay, learn for the first time about themselves??