S. Parkes Cadman

Samuel Parkes Cadman
S. Parkes Cadman at age 46 in 1910
Born	December 18, 1864 Wellington, Shropshire, England
Died	July 12, 1936(1936-07-12) (aged 71) Plattsburg, New York, US
Education	Richmond College, University of London; Wesleyan College
Occupation	Protestant Christian
Children	Frederick, Lillian, Marie
Parent(s)	Samuel Cadman and Betsy (Parkes) Cadman
Church	Congregational Christian Churches
Congregations served	Metropolitan Methodist Church, New York City, (1895-1901); Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, New York (1901-1936)
Offices held	New York radio pastor (1923-1928); Speaker, NBC radio network (1928-1936); President, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America (1924-1928)

Samuel Parkes Cadman (December 18, 1864 – July 12, 1936), better known as S. Parkes Cadman, was an English-born American clergyman, newspaper writer, and pioneer Christian radio broadcaster of the 1920s and 1930s. He was an early advocate of ecumenism and an outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism and racial intolerance. By the time of his death in 1936, he was called "the foremost minister of Congregational faith" by the New York Times.

S. Parkes Cadman was born in Wellington, Shropshire, England, where he worked in a coal mine for ten years, beginning at age 11. A voracious reader, he read books while working in the mine, in between hauling loads of coal. He became interested in theology and began speaking at age 18 as a lay preacher in local Methodist churches. He studied at Richmond College of the University of London and at Wesley College seminary. While a seminarian in 1888, he heard Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army speak in London, recalling years later, "I have not heard since anything which moved me more deeply than that remarkable address . . . delivered in the purest English, with faultless diction, in a voice like the pealing of a silver bell across a still lake."

After graduating from seminary, Cadman moved to the United States, to pastor a local Methodist church in Millbrook, New York. In 1895, he started the Metropolitan Methodist Church (now the The United Methodist Church of the Village) on Seventh Avenue between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets, in New York City, where his preaching attracted large crowds. In 1901, he left the Metropolitan Methodist Church to lead the Central Congregational Church of Brooklyn, New York, where he would minister for 35 years until his death in 1936. The church grew to become one of the largest U.S. Congregationalist assemblies during his pastorate.

In 1923, he pioneered the use of the then-new medium of radio to broadcast his sermons, becoming "the first of the 'radio pastors', his sermons reach[ing] the ears of millions", said the New York Times. In 1928, he began a weekly Sunday afternoon radio broadcast on the NBC radio network, his powerful oratory reaching a nationwide audience of five million persons. He was also a frequent speaker from 1928 to 1936 on NBC's Sunday morning program, The National Radio Pulpit, sharing the long-running series' microphone with Ralph W. Sockman.