The Scientific Theist: A Life of Francis Ellingwood Abbot

by Sydney E. Ahlstrom

This work is based on Sydney Ahlstrom's 1951 Harvard dissertation. The biography of Francis Ellingwood Abbot has been completely rewritten to focus on the context of his life and, as such, provides a vista into the intellectual and religious world of America in the late nineteenth century. Ahlstrom and one of his former students, Robert Bruce Mullin, began reworking the dissertation in 1983. The authors chronicle Abbot's early life and education, in particular those elements that reveal the social world of antebellum Unitarianism. He was a child of propert Boston Unitarianism, trained at the Boston Latin School and Harvard College. In the preface, Mullin states, "No one reflected better than Abbot the assumptions of morality, order, and sober piety - tempered by the poetic spirit of romanticism - that constituted the world of antebellum Unitarianism." But Abbot was not content to settle for the lush Victorian sentimental piety of his age and was thus deemed a "radical." Abbot struggled with many of the same issues that we are faced with today - the reconciliation of science and religion, reason and revelation, and obscenity and censorship. In direct response to Darwin's Origin of the Species, he was driven by the need to reconcile religion and science. he concluded that only by grounding religion in the new scientific method could it again be anchored in truth. As a representative figure of Victorian radicalism, Abbot present an essential perspective for understanding that period. Furthermore, a keen sense for the important issues and their timeliness makes this book especially important for historians, theologians, philosophers, and students.

184 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1987