Abbott, Lyman

(born Dec. 18, 1835, Roxbury, Mass., U.S.—died Oct. 22, 1922, New York, N.Y.) U.S. minister. Son of the writer Jacob Abbott (1803–79), he left law practice to study theology and was ordained in 1860. He became editor of the Illustrated Christian Weekly in 1870 and editor in chief of Henry Ward Beecher's Christian Union in 1881. In 1888 he succeeded to Beecher's pulpit in Brooklyn. A leading exponent of the Social Gospel movement, he sought to apply Christianity to social and industrial problems, rejecting both socialism and laissez-faire economics. On other problems Abbott presented the viewpoint of liberal evangelical Protestantism.

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