Sentence:  Incurably optimistic , dogmatic , and utterly fearless , in his youth a devout Baptist , in spite of his friendship for the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier ( 1807 - 1892 ) he eventually attacked the orthodox churches for what he <WSD>deemed</WSD> their cowardly compromising on the slavery issue and in his invariably ardent manner was emphatically unorthodox and denied the plenary inspiration of the Bible . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  keep in mind or convey as a conviction or view