The Case of Reverend Theodore Clapp

When I first stumbled upon mention of the Reverend Theodore Clapp in the database Sabin Americana, I believed him to be an interesting topic for a post. The document that piqued that interest was titled Slavery: A Sermon, Delivered in the First Congregational Church in New Orleans, April 15, 1838. Well, this was the type of document I expected to find. But subsequent research into Rev. Clapp revealed much more than the story of a Southern pastor attempting to justify that terrible institution. Rather, it revealed the faith journey of a man who struggled to reconcile Christian orthodoxy with his own personal beliefs and experiences.

Theodore Clapp was born in 1792 in Easthampton, Massachusetts. He graduated Yale and spent one year at Andover Theological Seminary. At the age of 29, Clapp visited a resort in Kentucky. While meant to refresh the spirit, apparently the facility was lacking in capability to assist its patrons in receiving spiritual nourishment. A Sunday morning breakfast conversation, Rev Clapp relates in his autobiography, led to the realization that the visitors concerned with Sunday service observation would have to improvise. Rev Clapp was enlisted to lead the service, resulting in his reputation as an orator being spread to the city of New Orleans. The congregation of the Presbyterian church in New Orleans had just lost their own young pastor to illness. Rev Learned impressed many in his brief time with his congregation and they wanted a pastor of similar personality and skill to replace him. Clapp reluctantly traveled south, agreeing only to a temporary term preaching to the congregation. He couldn’t imagine spending his life in a region so different than his native New England. The city and its people soon took sway over Clapp. He would go on to live the next 35 years of his life in New Orleans.

Whether or not it can be truly discerned if Clapp’s theological journey was a product of his time in New Orleans, he certainly changed. Clapp arrived in the city a young, relatively orthodox protestant minister. He soon found himself stimulated by the hospitable religious environment. Believing the city’s Catholic clergy would view him with suspicion, Clapp was instead welcomed by several of his Christian colleagues. He found himself joining their charitable causes and engaging in lively theological debate. Eventually condemned by the Presbyterian hierarchy, Clapp resolved to form a “congregationalist” church, retaining all but the most strict adherents of Presbyterianism.

Amazingly, despite the ever-increasing liberalization of his Christian views, the other influential change in Rev. Clapp insulated him from condemnation by his fellow clergy. Clapp, after coming to New Orleans had slowly been swayed to become an ardent defender of slavery. Clapp’s charity, ecumenicalism, and views on the peculiar institution won him the support of many high-minded individuals in the city.

Chief amongst Clapp’s patrons was Judah Touro. Touro, a Sephardic Jewish immigrant who, like Clapp, had grown up in New England, found common cause with the reverend. Touro came to New Orleans in the early days of the American period. Already a prominent businessman by the War of 1812, he showed his love for the city when he enlisted in General Jackson’s defense of the city in 1815. He was left with a horrific injury at the hands of a twelve-pound cannonball that removed a sizeable portion of his leg. His reputation on grew as he engaged in countless acts of philanthropy. He founded the state’s first free hospital, which still stands today as Touro Infirmary. Over the course of his life, he would contribute untold thousands, anonymously when possible, across the country. His admiration of Clapp’s open-mindedness toward the Jewish community literally kept a roof over the head of Clapp and his congregation, with Touro purchasing the former Presbyterian Church for Clapp’s use.

It may never be known if Clapp truly believed in tolerance of slavery or if he espoused the view as a tactic of survival in a city he otherwise enjoyed immensely. Unitarianism had come to be known as a liberal theology associated with the abolitionist movement. But Clapp’s continued assurances to his congregation, brother clergymen, and congregation kept him in high esteem. The pastors that succeeded Clapp could combine liberal Christian theology and defense of slavery. By the outbreak of the Civil War, Clapp’s former church had been burned and its last pastor fled home to Massachusetts. Clap, himself, had left New Orleans in 1857 to return to the very place he’d departed for New Orleans all those years before, Louisville, Kentucky. The man of contradictions would spend the rest of his life there, dying in 1866.

Sources

Channing, William Ellery, and Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Presbytery of Mississippi. A report of the trial of the Rev. Theodore Clapp before the Mississippi Presbytery : at their sessions in May and December 1832. New Orleans: Hotchkiss & Co, 1833. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 (accessed November 12, 2023). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0102923925/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=55ab4f3b&pg=1.

Clapp, Theodore. Autobiographical sketches and recollections, during a thirty-five years' residence in New Orleans. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & company, 1857. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 (accessed November 12, 2023). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0103742117/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=351c376f&pg=1.

Clapp, Theodore. Slavery : a sermon, delivered in the First Congregational church in New Orleans, April 15, 1838. New Orleans: J. Gibson, printer, 1838. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 (accessed November 12, 2023). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0100360919/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=5c0ab662&pg=1.

Reilly, Timothy F. “Parson Clapp of New Orleans: Antebellum Social Critic, Religious Radical, and Member of the Establishment.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 16, no. 2 (1975): 167–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4231459.