David Tappan

David Tappan (1752–1797) was an influential American Congregationalist minister and theologian who served as pastor of the Second Church in Boston and later as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University, where he shaped the theological education of a new generation of clergy during the early republic. His theological writings, including his Election Sermon, reflected the transitional moment between Calvinist orthodoxy and emerging liberal religious thought in New England, as he sought to reconcile traditional Reformed doctrine with Enlightenment rationalism. Tappan's brief but significant career established him as a key intellectual figure in late eighteenth-century American Protestantism, influencing the trajectory of New England theology in the decades following the American Revolution.