Buckminster was an early leader in bringing the German higher criticism of the Bible to America. He was also the most eloquent of the early liberal preachers in Boston. After graduating from Harvard in 1800, he was called to the Brattle Street Church in Boston and launched an almost legendary career of eloquent preaching, biblical scholarship, and literary production. He, in many ways, set the tone for the pattern of the minister as a man of letters, which prevailed in nineteenth-century Boston Unitarianism. Buckminster preached a distinctly liberal message of rational religion and character development, themes that his contemporary, William Ellery Channing, would later develop. He also influenced the denomination heavily in his adoption of the attitude of rational investigation of the Bible, subjecting it to the same scrupulous scholarly investigation given other texts from antiquity. Buckminster suffered an early death from epilepsy when his powers were only reaching their height.