S Parkes Cadman

Early life

S. Parkes Cadman was born in Wellington, Shropshire, England, where he worked in a coal mine for ten years, beginning at age 11. A voracious reader, he read books while working in the mine, in between hauling loads of coal. He became interested in theology and began speaking at age 18 as a lay preacher in local Methodist churches. He studied at Richmond College of the University of London and at Wesley College seminary. While a seminarian in 1888, he heard Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army speak in London, recalling years later, "I have not heard since anything which moved me more deeply than that remarkable address . . . delivered in the purest English, with faultless diction, in a voice like the pealing of a silver bell across a still lake."

New York churches

After graduating from seminary, Cadman moved to the United States, to pastor a local Methodist church in Millbrook, New York. In 1895, he started the Metropolitan Methodist Church (now the The United Methodist Church of the Village) on Seventh Avenue between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets, in New York City, where his preaching attracted large crowds. In 1901, he left the Metropolitan Methodist Church to lead the Central Congregational Church of Brooklyn, New York, where he would minister for 35 years until his death in 1936. The church grew to become one of the largest U.S. Congregationalist assemblies during his pastorate.

Radio broadcasting

In 1923, he pioneered the use of the then-new medium of radio to broadcast his sermons, becoming "the first of the 'radio pastors', his sermons reach[ing] the ears of millions", said the New York Times. In 1928, he began a weekly Sunday afternoon radio broadcast on the NBC radio network, his powerful oratory reaching a nationwide audience of five million persons. He was also a frequent speaker from 1928 to 1936 on NBC's Sunday morning program, The National Radio Pulpit, sharing the long-running series' microphone with Ralph W. Sockman.

Newspaper column

Cadman began writing a daily newspaper column for the New York Herald Tribune in 1926. It was soon syndicated nationwide as Dr. Cadman's Daily Column, giving advice, answering readers' questions, and providing commentary on current events from a Christian perspective.

On December 2, 1934, he wrote an article condemning the Nazi German government for the firing of theologian Karl Barth from a German university post as a result of the professor's outspoken opposition to the Nazi regime and adamant refusal to sign an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Cadman praised Barth's courage, comparing him to Christian leaders of the past such as John Calvin and John Knox. Cadman later called for the U.S. to boycott the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, because of the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies.

Books

Among the many books authored by Cadman are:

Quotations

During the course of his church ministry and extensive writings spanning a forty-year period, Cadman became widely quoted. Among his better-known statements are:

He also was a strong supporter of Scouting, writing:

National church and community leader

Rev. Cadman was one of the founders of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, an association of several Protestant denominations and the forerunner of today's National Council of Churches, and served as president of the council between 1924-1928. He was also named the second Honorary Moderator of the Congregational Christian Churches, succeeding former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. He was one of the co-founders in 1927 of the National Conference on Christians and Jews, now known as the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), along with Charles Evans Hughes and others, to oppose the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism in the 1920s and 1930s. He was appointed chairman of the National Committee for Chinese Famine Relief in 1928 to provide assistance for nine million Chinese facing starvation.

Death

On Sunday, July 5, 1936, S. Parkes Cadman was preaching at an interfaith service in upstate Westport, New York, when he suddenly collapsed from acute appendicitis. He died a week later, on July 12, at a Plattsburg, New York, hospital of peritonitis. After his death, he was lauded by NBC president Lenox R. Lohr, who said, "As the first minister of the air, he was identified with radio beginning in 1923. Since that time more than 500 sermons reflecting the inspiring thought of Dr. Cadman have been broadcast." New York City's Episcopal Bishop William T. Manning said Cadman had "a noble record of service as a citizen and as a Christian minister." Rev. Cadman was buried in Brooklyn, New York, where he is memorialized in Cadman Plaza, named in his honor by New York City in 1939. The Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn was renamed Cadman Memorial Church in 1942 in his memory.

In a high irony, however, Cadman Church was a prime player in opposition to an ecumenical movement that witnessed the Congregational Christian Churches merge with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ. In 1949, the church sued the Congregational Christian moderator in order to forestall merger talks; the case stayed in the courts for several years before being dismissed and the merger taking place in 1957. Today, Cadman Church is a member of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, a group of congregations that opposed the UCC merger.