Parker, Theodore. “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity.”

Parker delivers the sermon at the ordination of Charles Shackford at the Hawes Place Church. In it, he rejects what he calls the “supernatural” elements of Christianity” in favor of a personal intuition of divinity, and declares that “if it could be proved that Jesus of Nazareth had never lived, still Christianity would stand firm and fear no evil.” The sermon becomes the center of a long controversy between the “radical” Transcendentalists and the “conservatives,” who denounce Parker as an “infidel and blasphemer.” The Boston Association, which is made up of leading orthodox ministers, accuse him of “deserting Christianity because he denied the validity of miracles, and abandoning Unitarianism because he denied the divinity of Christ.”