200th Anniversary of Universalism – Why Celebrate?

August 8, 1993
Jacksonville

(From A SHORT HISTORY OF UNIVERSALISM, Howe):

“On September 4, 1793, a group of people who called [themselves] Universalists gathered in the village of Oxford, Massachusetts, [for] a day of preaching, prayer, fellowship, mutual support, and organizational business. Those present called their meeting a ‘General Convention’ of the ‘Universal Churches and Societies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and New York,’ and although they could not have known it at the time, their meeting marked the beginning of a new denomination.

“...Thus, from an obscure and homely beginning was born an organization that would endure as a separate entity for the next 168 years and that finds embodiment today as an integral part of the Unitarian Universalist Association.”

[In 1993] we celebrate the 200th anniversary of that meeting at Oxford when Universalism became a denomination. But as a theological proposition, universal salvation is as old as the Christian movement itself. Such early Apostolic Fathers as Origen and Clement of Alexandria openly taught that a God of justice and love inevitably would save everyone and that there would be “a final harmony of all souls with God.”

Not until the 6th century of our common era was universal salvation anathematized and declared heretical by a church council called by the Emperor Justinian. Much time could be spent on varieties of Universalist thought which arose from time to time and always declared and condemned as a heresy. The idea of universal salvation could never be squelched because it occurred again and to people that if God is good, he must be at least as good as a parent on this earth. God, the reasoning went, God must be as good and just as an earthly father or mother. And, what father or mother would condemn their child to burn in Hell forever? - no matter what that child had done.

In order to limit my remarks, I will speak of John Murray and Hosea Ballou, and then attempt a brief summary of Universalism in the 20th Century.

In 1770, Gloucester, Massachusetts was a seaport in touch with the world. Before the advent of railways, seaports were always centers of liberal thought, the first places to receive new ideas. In 1769, a man named Gregory, whether officer, sailor or passenger on a ship, no one knows, but he brought to town a book on universal salvation by James Relly. The arrival of this book in Gloucester was the beginning of organized Universalism in America. The printed page preceded the spoken word. There were converts to Universalism three years before John Murray. John Murray, in England had become a Universalist under the teaching of James Relly. In face of woeful difficulties – death of his young wife, bankruptcy, ostracism because of his preaching universal salvation, Murray had boarded ship to America to begin a new life, determined that he would preach no more. Perhaps you have read of the dramatic story of his landing on the New Jersey shore, and the call to preach again under the inspiration of Thomas Potter. Preaching as an itinerant, he was soon condemned as a heretic and disciple of Relly. Preaching in Boston, and castigated in the paper by an orthodox minister, the Gloucester people read the story and invited Murray to preach in Gloucester to the small group of Universalists. (Today, we would call that group a Fellowship.) He was well-received. For the next twenty years, with the exception of eight months service as a chaplain in our Revolutionary Army, Gloucester was his home, and he was minister of the first organized Universalist church in America, The Independent Christian Church.

These were not easy years. As Universalism grew, opposition became bitter and determined. Murray was threatened by mobs. [CJW note: stones thrown at him on the street] [Lightly crossed out: When the Universalists withheld their attendance and support from 1st Parish Church, 31 men and women sign[ed] the Articles of Association.] A small meeting house was built.

Then there was a famous lawsuit – the members of 1st Parish Church sued to force the Universalists to pay taxes to the established church. The lawsuit was protracted, but finally the Universalists won after a second trial.

The Charter of Compact agreed to by these early Universalists is well worth study, even with the somewhat archaic language, particularly the 9th Article: Whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one’s religion is inestimable: And in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associating with us should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating him from difficulty, and of enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution.”

Led by John Murray [CJW note: and lay people] in those difficult years, with their courage and sacrifice, they helped pave the way for all religions in this nation, and Massachusetts particularly, to enjoy freedom from interference by intrusive government.

[CJW note: Gloster Dalton – red sheet]

The other great name in early Universalism is Hosea Ballou. Born in 1771 on a farm in New Hampshire, he was the eleventh child of a Baptist minister. Although the family was poor and education sketchy at best, Hosea had an eager and inquiring mind. Baptized in January through the ice of a river [CJW note: would turn me off!], he did not find the Calvinism of the day acceptable. He studied the Bible and came to the conclusion that there was no hell after death and God would save all souls. One time in the lamp-light, [when] his father asked him what book he was reading, Hosea replied that it was a Universalist book. “Get that evil book out of the house,” his father commanded. So Hosea hid it in the wood-pile. His father found it there – it was the Bible.

At age 20, Hosea Ballou managed to attend an academy for a term – and studied so hard and made such progress that he was given certification to teach in the common school.

He attended the gathering of Universalists at Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1791. He heard the leading Universalist preachers and was stirred to preach the same gospel. After many efforts he acquired the presence and ability to preach effectively.

In 1793, he attended the General Convention again in Oxford. In a legendary story, a leading Universalist preacher [CJW note: Winchester] took a Bible, and pressing it against Hosea’s chest, pronounced him ordained. From then on, after brief pastorates elsewhere, he was minister of the 2nd Universalist Church in Boston for the rest of his life.

One of the main reasons why Hosea Ballou ranks with Murray as the pre-eminent names of American Universalism is the theological position Ballou established. In 1805, his most famous book A TREATISE ON THE ATONEMENT was published. Ballou attacked the doctrine of the Trinity, and under the power of his logic, most Universalists became unitarian (with a small u) years before the American Unitarian Association (AUA) was organized in 1825.

Parenthetically, it might be observed that Universalists and Unitarians took different organizational paths. The AUA was in 1825 organized as an individual membership plan. As a denomination, Unitarianism did not take form until 1865 with the Conference of Unitarian Churches. Universalism started as a denomination with organized associations limited to travel by horse and buggy. Then as transportation improved, State Conventions were organized. Even when national organization was achieved with the UCA, the State Conventions maintained their autonomy, corporate status, funds, power to ordain ministers and were well entrenched before Universalism organized on a national basis. [CJW note: there were no such comparable organizations in Unitarianism.]

In the 19th century, Universalism grew and hundred of Universalist societies were established. Some statistics indicate that at one time Universalism was the 6th largest denomination in the U.S. (But church statistics were and are notoriously unreliable.)

Universalism was torn and fractured by a bitter controversy in the 1830s and 1840s between the “Restorationists” and the “Death and Glory” advocates. Today, when to almost everyone of us particular theology is not that important, that controversy would seem most unprofitable, irrelevant, even comic. But in those years theological debate got as much attention as professional sports do today.

The Restorationists believed that sinners deserved some punishment after death for the evils they had committed in this life. Then, after a period of repentance and punishment, they would be restored to God’s love forever. The Death and Glory advocates (Hosea Ballou was one) simply proclaimed that when one dies, immediately one is transformed to Glory – to be in the presence of God forever. This was a most costly controversy in terms of growth and influence because it was so divisive.

In the 20th century, much of it within my personal memory and experience, Universalism had lost much of its power. Most of the mainline Christian churches had quit preaching Hell and brimstone. (The revival of fundamentalism in recent decades, particularly in the southern states, would hardly have been predictable in the 1st half of this century.) There was not much agitation among us over the growth of scientific thought, including evolution theories. The higher criticism of the Bible made both Unitarians and Universalists aware that scripture was not the inerrant word of God, but rather the religious literature of Judaism and Christianity. Heaven and Hell became more referred to more as allegory or metaphor rather than reality. [CJW note: that’s the hell of ... or as one minister - self]

Universalism in my experience went through many of the same conflicts and controversies as Unitarians in the first half of this century:

We experienced the same bitter conflict between theism and humanism as did the Unitarians.

We each debated whether or not we were a Christian denomination.

Both Unitarians and Universalists began to talk merger. Due to the Depression and other factors, 35 churches were already merged on the local level as Unitarian Universalist years before the two denominations consolidated in 1960.

Why did some of us become Universalist ministers in the 30s and 40s? Not because of the old “No hell” Universalism, although some felt the old beliefs still relevant. Rather, it seemed to some of us that Universalism was THE BIG IDEA: The worth and dignity of every person had become the main plank in our religious platform. Not that we expected that millions of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists would become Universalists. [CJW note: Atwood quote] Rather, respect for the right [CJW note: freedom] of others demanded that we acknowledge, advocate, and protect the right of all persons to choose the faith that would sustain them. That was the Big Idea. [CJW note: Imperialism of any kind was out – was a bad idea. Plus appreciation of their ideas.]

Dr. Levi Moore Powers from 1913 to 1919 was minister of our Gloucester church and one of the famous preachers of his day – courageous and unafraid to criticize the establishment forces. In a sermon preached about 1919, he said, “The only adequate faith is that which will make the world brotherly, and that is a genuine belief that we are brothers, all children of a Father who has no favorites. Billy Sunday says that belief in the Universal Brotherhood of man is ‘bosh’ and ‘tommyrot’ and those who live by the faith Billy Sunday preaches reward their faithful servant by giving him fifty or one hundred thousand dollars a year for proclaiming his ungodly gospel.

“But we have not so learned Christ. There is an Eastern proverb which says, ‘I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi and they were all my brothers.’ That old heathen was more of a Christian than Billy Sunday. Universalism teaches that every man we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith, and great enough to live it, the future will be ours.”

I am not a Christian theist as was Levi Powers. Today we use more gender-free language. After all, he spoke those words more than 70 years ago. Yet, if we sensed more deeply and proclaimed more fearlessly that every man and woman we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother or sister, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith and great enough to live it, the future may not be ours, but it will be the way, perhaps the only way, as we join millions of others of whatever differing faiths who share, that this pained conflicting world may be saved from destroying itself.