Phillips Brooks

Phillips Brooks (December 13, 1835 – January 23, 1893) was an American Episcopal clergyman and author, long the rector of Boston's Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts. One of the most popular preachers of the Gilded Age, he worked to make the Christian Church more relevant to contemporaries. Among his other accomplishments, he wrote the lyrics of the Christmas hymn "O Little Town of Bethlehem".

He is honored on the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar on January 23. In addition to his moral stature, he was a man of great physical height, standing six feet four inches (1.93 m) tall.

Early life and education

Brooks was born on December 13, 1835, in Boston to William Gray Brooks and Mary Ann Phillips Brooks. His father, a Unitarian from a solid, middle-class background, started his career as a hardware and dry goods merchant. His mother was from an orthodox Congregational family. Her father was John Phillips (1776–1820), one of the founders of Andover Theological Seminary.

Rejecting the arid Unitarianism of New England, Mary Ann Brooks determined that the family would join St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Tremont St. in Boston. Three of Phillips Brooks' five brothers – Frederic, Arthur, and John Cotton – were eventually ordained in the Episcopal Church.

Phillips Brooks attended Boston Latin School, where he excelled in classical languages, followed by Harvard University. Here, he encountered literary Romanticism, the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher, and the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was elected to the A.D. Club and graduated in 1855 at the age of twenty.