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Protestant clergyman and reformer, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, USA. One of 13 children of clergyman Lyman Beecher (one of his sisters was author Harriet Beecher Stowe), he graduated from Amherst in 1834 and studied under his father at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1839 he became pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Ind, where he developed a forceful, emotional preaching style. Named the first pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, NY, in 1847, he crusaded from the pulpit for temperance and against slavery and became one of the most influential public figures of his time. He supported Free Soil political candidates and, later, Republicans; on the outbreak of the Civil War his church raised and equipped a volunteer regiment. He edited the religious publications The Independent and The Christian Union (later Outlook) during the 1860s and 1870s. He was acquitted on an adultery charge after a sensational trial in 1874. His many books include Evolution and Religion (1885).