Joseph Parrish Thompson

Who was Joseph Parrish Thompson?

Joseph Parrish Thompson was an abolitionist and Congregationalist minister. He was pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle in New York from 1845 to 1871 and was one of the founders in 1848 of The Independent, a anti-slavery religious weekly based in New York, serving as one of its editors until 1862. He was the author of a number of works including Church and State in the United States and Man in Genesis and Geology, a work addressing issues of science and faith in the light of Darwinism. He graduated in 1838 from Yale, where he was a member of Skull & Bones, followed by theological studies at Andover and New Haven, and was ordained pastor of the Chapel Street church in New Haven in November 1840. He was the brother-in-law of Daniel Coit Gilman, having married Gilman's sister Elizabeth. He devoted much of his time to Oriental studies, with the results of these labors appearing in Bibliotheca Sacra, the North American Review, and other journals. He traveled abroad in 1852-1854, and from 1873 until his death in 1879 he lived in Berlin.