Our Universalist Heritage

Here’s hoping this Sunday’s sermon finds you well.

He had decided never to preach again. And who could blame him? A lay preacher, John Murray had been excommunicated from the Methodist church in England for his belief in Universalism. On top of that, around the time of his excommunication both his son and his wife died. When he couldn’t pay their medical bills, Murray was forced to spend a term in debtor’s prison. When, in 1770, he set sail for America, he was determined to make a living doing anything but preaching.

But fate, or God, or good luck intervened. His ship, which was bound for New York City, ran aground on a sandbar in New Jersey. As Murray headed inland with a search party to find food and spend a few days waiting for the wind to change, he met a poor, uneducated farmer, Thomas Potter. Potter was a deeply religious man, and he had built a chapel in one of his fields into which he invited visiting preachers, hoping someone would preach a message which struck a chord with him. He asked Murray to preach the following Sunday. Murray argued that the wind would change before that day and blow his ship back onto its course, but Potter believed that which brought Murray to him would keep him until his message had been delivered. That Sunday, Murray preached on the universal grace of God.

Here’s what historian Charles A. Howe writes about that sermon: “Murray’s sermon on universal grace, delivered to Potter and his neighbors on September 30, 1770, was evidently exactly the one Potter had long been waiting to hear, and its effect on Murray himself was likewise profound – by the time he had finished, his reservations about preaching were gone forever (p. 2).”[1] Murray went on to become the father of American Universalism, founding a denomination which would evolve far beyond Murray’s own theology, eventually joining with the Unitarians to become the Unitarian Universalists.

There’s a rich history of social action and theological growth in American Universalism. But to understand the actions and the evolution of the universalists, we first have to understand their founding doctrine.

Universalism was forged in the fire of Calvinism. In fact, it can be argued (and I would argue) that the early American Universalists were persons who saw the ugly side of Calvinism combined with the horrors of a belief in hell and cried out in disgust.

POWER POINT

I want to offer you examples of each theology in sermon form. First, from Calvinist minister Jonathan Edwards’ 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: “Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity: when God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were into an infinite gloom, he will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much, in any other sense than only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires: nothing shall be withheld, because it’s so hard for you to bear. Ezek. 8:18, “Therefore will I also deal in fury; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.”

Now, the words of Universalist John Murray, from about the same time, preaching to his group of travelling Universalist preachers: “Go out into the highways and byways of America, your new country. Give the people, blanketed with a decaying and crumbling Calvinism, something of your new vision. You may possess only a small light but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men. Give them, not hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God (p. 9).”

In 1790, the Universalists adopted the Winchester Profession as their statement of doctrine. It named the Bible as its foundational document and stated that Jesus was a revelation of God who would eventually restore all humanity back to “holiness and happiness.” Still it was careful to add that it was left up to the individual churches how to adopt and apply these principles.

When you believe God is going to save everyone, you can’t help but see people, even difficult people, with eyes of compassion and love. That, after all, is the way a Universalist believed God saw every human being. As a beloved child who would eventually come home to stay. The belief that everyone is worthy of salvation and therefore worthy of love and concern formed the foundation of Universalist social action.

The Universalist Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Constitution, wrote: “A belief in God’s love to all his creatures, and that he will finally restore all of them that are miserable to happiness, is a polar truth. It leads to truth upon all subjects, more especially upon the subject of government. It establishes the equality of mankind – it abolishes the punishment of death for any crime – and converts jails into houses of repentance and reformation.”

Universalists worked on issues including women’s rights, in which layperson Mary Livermore played an important role. They worked for prison reform, the abolition of capital punishment, education, fair wages. They labored to help the North in the Civil War, with dozens of Universalist ministers joining as chaplains. Clara Barton, the Universalist layperson, was a Civil War nurse. She went on, of course, to found the Red Cross.

Their involvement in the Civil War was evidence that one of the most important social issues for the Universalists was slavery. At the General Convention of 1843, the Universalists split their own denomination into north and south by going on record condemning slavery. They wrote in their declaration that slavery was “contrary to the plainest dictates of natural justice and Christian love.”

Because of similar interests in social justice and freedom of religion, there was some talk of a merger with the Unitarians even shortly after the Civil War, but the unification wouldn’t materialize until 1961. Folks on each side saw that there was a chasm between the Unitarians and the Universalists.

While the Unitarians were seen mainly as intellectuals, the early American Universalists were in large part uneducated and less wealthy, sort of the country cousins of the Unitarians. One Unitarian who heard the early Universalist minister Hosea Ballou speak wrote out part of Ballou’s message phonetically: “Brethering, I perceed to devil-ope and illusterate the follerin’ p’ints (p. 44).” That wasn’t intended as a compliment. One Universalist, on the other hand, said the Unitarians were more interested “in analyzing the nature of infinity than in the spirit of love. I feel that I ought to put on my company manners when I go into a Unitarian church (p. 119).” As well, the Universalists through the 1800s and even into the 20^th century were almost exclusively a Christian denomination, preaching mainly the message that all would eventually be saved through Jesus, while the Unitarians were already moving beyond an exclusively Christian message.

We may have moved past Christian Universalist theology for the most part, but Unitarian Universalism bears forever the marks of early American Universalism. The Universalists’ message of God’s universal love was the perfect balance to the Unitarians’ intellectual brand of faith. Our first principle, which proclaims the worth and dignity of every person, is “predominantly Universalist in character, rooted historically in the conviction that all are worthy of salvation (p. 137).”

Charles Howe writes, “Some years ago, (I, Howe) identified seven values that Universalists brought with them to the merger (1n 1961 with the Unitarians): a theology founded on the affirmation of love; a thoroughly democratic church government; a social conscience motivated by the belief in the supreme worth of every person; a conviction that liberal religion can and should speak to all sorts and conditions of people; an insistence on the equality of women and men in both church and society; a recognition that liberal religion requires emotional warmth as well as intellectual rigor; and, finally, the great vision of inclusiveness implied by the Universalist name (p. 137).”

May our association, may our church, may each and all of us, daily live out these Universalist ideals of worth, dignity, equality. And may these high ideals continually call us to the hard work of social justice and human compassion. Amen.

 

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[1] Unless otherwise noted, all citations are from: Howe, Charles A. The Larger Faith: A Short History of American Universalism Boston: Skinner House Books. 1993.