Author: DUFFY, JOHN, EDITOR
Title: Parson Clapp of the Strangers' Church of New Orleans
Description: Baton Rouge, La: Louisiana State University, 1957. First Edition. First Printing; Hardcover. Hardcover is grey with gray/green cloth spine with black lettering on spine. Pasted paper label on front cover, black lettering on white. B/W frontispiece of Parson Clapp. LOC # 57-9481. Overall, pages are clean and tight, showing signs of minor, careful use. Theodore Clapp, born in Massachusetts ( 1792 - 1866) was an early Unitarian preacher in the southern United States. He established an outpost of liberal religion in New Orleans and built it into a beacon of religious moderation. His childhood memories, he wrote, were laced with the pain he felt at the Calvinist preaching he heard about God's "hatred of man." This went against the grain of the boy's affectionate and positive nature. Despite his early aversion to doctrinaire Calvinism, he graduated from Yale and entered the Andover (Calvinist) Theological Seminary near Boston in 1816. After graduation, he traveled to Lexington, Kentucky and then to Louisville, teaching school and sporadically preaching. In 1822 Clapp was invited to New Orleans to become pastor of the Congregational Church, only the second Protestant church in the city. Unlike his contemporary Protestant clerics, who thought the city a cesspool of vice, Clapp found the beauty, liberal mores, and cultural mix of the predominantly Catholic city to his taste, embracing its unique character. In 1823, his church established itself as the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans and associated with the Mississippi Presbytery. The financially troubled College of Orleans made him its President in 1824, but was able to keep its doors open only long enough for Clapp to create a scandal by holding balls at the school for free people of color and slaves. "Interspersed with his descriptions of life and death in New Orleans can be found numerous didactic stories and illustrations; nor is Dr. Clapp averse to inserting an occasional sermon here and there..." ; Louisiana State University Studies, Social Science Series #7 Series; 6 x 9 1/4 ; ix, 191 pages; Cover shows signs of water exposure, sunning, creasing on paper over boards, light staining. Some foxing and rub marks on end papers, and a few other leafs.. Very Good- .

Keywords: Unitarianism; Biography; Southern Living; Southern United States; Anti-Bellum America; American History; African American History; Black History; Black Americans; Medicine/Health/Health Care Cultural History Education History American History Geography Bi