Universalist Spirituality
Universalist Spirituality
by Richard Trudeau
By "spirituality" I mean not religion itself, but the feelings, attitudes, and assumptions that
accompany religion. We Unitarian Universalists scour the world's religious traditions for a
spirituality we will find satisfying, while often overlooking a genuine UU spirituality, of
Universalist origin, that is relevant today.
Universalist spirituality can be found within UUism, of course, but it has been dismembered. Its
components are no longer connected to one another, and some have been left out. Moreover,
contradictory material from Unitarian spirituality has been mixed in, with the result that a
coherent spirituality is difficult to discern. It's no wonder so many of us become "UU Buddhists,"
"UU Pagans," "UU Christians," and the like.
To retrieve Universalist spirituality it will be necessary to distinguish it from Unitarian spirituality.
And the best way to accomplish this is to contrast the two in their early days in New England,
when Universalism and Unitarianism were very different.
Calvinism
Both Universalism and Unitarianism were reactions to Calvinism, so we will begin there.
Calvinism was not a denomination, but rather a theology that in the 1600s and 1700s
dominated most Protestant churches in New England.
In Calvinism God was an absolute monarch, on whom we are totally dependent, every moment
of our lives, with every breath we take. This God had spoken through the Bible, and was
experienced on a daily basis through nature, "God's other book." And while the ministers'
sermons focused mostly on the former, for the people in the pews the experience of God came
more directly from the latter. For the average man and woman, "the Creator" was experienced
in large part through "the creation"—the physical universe1.
In Calvinism God has judged all people and found them wanting. We are all sinful, and deserve
everlasting hellfire. But God is also "loving," because God has been persuaded by Jesus to
allow some people into heaven anyway. These are "the elect," who will be saved. The elect
don’t deserve to be saved, though--in Calvinism, no one does. The basis on which God has
chosen the elect (a choice made at the beginning of time!) is a complete mystery. One thing,
however, is clear: if you are slated for hell, there is nothing you can do to earn your way into
heaven.
Unitarianism
Even though the Universalist reaction to Calvinism came first, I would like to begin with the
Unitarian one.
In speaking of early Unitarianism in America, I will focus on the year 1815. The Unitarians
hadn't yet organized as a denomination, and were just beginning to accept the "Unitarian"
name (bestowed by opponents2). But they knew who they were, and what the issues were.
In 1815, the battles of Lexington and Concord were forty years in the past. The Unitarians were
United States citizens. Their God was different from the Calvinist God. God was not so much
like a monarch as like a U.S. President--an executor of laws to which the executor also was
subject. The laws were the laws of morality, which the Unitarians thought of as natural laws,
discernable by human intelligence.
"We cannot bow before a being, however great and powerful, who governs tyrannically," wrote
William Ellery Channing3. "We venerate not the loftiness of God's throne, but the equity and
goodness in which it is established."
The Unitarians were by and large successful, prominent people, who felt they had earned their
social status. To the Unitarians the Calvinist system of salvation seemed grossly unfair,
because salvation was divorced from merit. The Unitarians responded with their doctrine of
"salvation by character." Those who develop a high moral character, they said, will thereby
earn their way into heaven.
The Unitarians thus saw humanity as morally stratified. Just as some people are more
successful than others in gaining wealth, access to power, or status, the Unitarian view of
humanity in moral terms was that some people would succeed in developing a high moral
character and some would not. Those who succeeded would be saved, while those who failed
would be condemned.
Before continuing we should note how misleading the name "Unitarian" was. For these religious
liberals the principal issue was not the doctrine of the trinity--though they were skeptical about
that also--but whether salvation can be merited2.
Traditional Unitarian Spirituality
I want to summarize early Unitarian spirituality under three headings: their view of God, their
answer to the question "What do you have to do to be saved?" and their view of humanity.
God. God is the executor of the laws of morality, to which God also is subject.
What do you have to do to be saved? You have to strive all your life to do good, developing a
high moral character.
Humanity. Humanity is morally stratified. Some will succeed in developing a high moral
character and will be saved, while others will not succeed and will be condemned.
Universalism
In speaking of early Universalism in America I will focus on the year 1780. As with Unitarians in
1815, Universalists hadn't yet organized as a denomination, and were just beginning to accept
the "Universalist" name (bestowed by opponents). But they knew who they were, and what the
issues were.
In 1780 the Revolutionary War was still going on. There was no United States. There was no
President, and never had been one. The Universalists accepted the Calvinist idea of God as
an absolute monarch, experienced mostly through the physical universe, on which we are
totally dependent, every moment of our lives, with every breath we take.
The notion that the divine is experienced through the physical universe was more prominent
among the early Universalists than the early Unitarians4. One reason is that such was
generally more a part of the spirituality of less-educated people. American Universalism started
as a movement of laypeople having little formal education (and for decades even its clergy had
little formal education). American Unitarianism started as a movement among clergy who had
been educated at Harvard. Another factor is geographical. The Unitarians lived in long-
established settlements around Boston, where nature was experienced as lawful and for the
most part under control. The Universalists lived on what was then the frontier--the hill country
of central Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and southern Vermont. Trying to scratch
out a living on a hill-farm under frontier conditions, they experienced nature as more immediate
and powerful.
While the Universalists accepted from Calvinism the concept of God as an absolute monarch,
for them God was not a condemning judge but rather a loving parent who would somehow find
a way to save everybody. Hosea Ballou argued against Calvinism and in favor of Universalism
in this anecdote about a father of ten:
"Suppose … the father has provisions enough for the whole, and his object in the bestowing
of it upon them is to cause the greatest possible happiness among his children. Which way
would good sense and parental affection choose, either to feed five to the full, and starve the
rest to death, that their dying groans might give the others a better appetite and their food a
good relish, or to let them all be hungry enough to relish their food well, and all alike partake of
it?"5
In Universalism God may still have been an absolute monarch, but we were all princes and
princesses that God was determined to save. Salvation is the free gift of a loving God to all
people. The official name for this doctrine is "universal salvation," and it gave the Universalists
their name. Note that the Universalists retained from Calvinism not only the idea of God as an
absolute monarch but also the idea that salvation is unrelated to merit—in Hosea Ballou's
provocative phrase, "salvation irrespective of character."6
To many, universal salvation was a shocking idea. Without the fear of hellfire, why should
people do good? In several states Universalists were not allowed to give testimony at trials or
to serve on juries, because it was felt that they would have no motive to be honest. Once the
Unitarians got themselves organized even they would join the chorus. Concerning Universalism
the Unitarian weekly newspaper would editorialize,
"…multitudes who embrace these doctrines, embrace them because they are so congenial with
the debased and perverted feelings of their corrupted and depraved hearts; because being a
religion without sanctions, it lays no restraint on their vicious propensities and passions, and
their impure and depraved habits…."7
Universalists responded with characteristic originality. God wants to make people happy, they
said8, not only in the afterlife, but also in this life; so God has given us such a nature that we
find doing good to be deeply fulfilling. If someone is in trouble, others will gather around to
help, because the nature God has given us impels them to do so; and the result is that not
only is the one in trouble helped and so made happier, but those helping are fulfilled and so
also made happier. Doing good is the way to be happy now.
Under this viewpoint all people are morally equal. Evildoers are not themselves evil, but only
unenlightened. They have not yet realized that the way to be happy in this life is to do good
rather than evil. It is a large part of the purpose of churches to help people to perceive this
subtle truth.
Traditional Universalist Spirituality
I will summarize early Universalist spirituality under the same three headings I used for
Unitarian spirituality: their view of God, their answer to the question "What do you have to do to
be saved?" and their view of humanity.
God. God is an absolute monarch, experienced mostly through the physical universe, on which
we are totally dependent, every moment of our lives, with every breath we take.
What do you have to do to be saved? You don't have to do anything. Salvation is the free gift
of God, who loves us all and wants us to be happy.
Humanity. Humanity is a community of moral equals, bound together by ties of mutual concern.
Unitarian Spirituality for Skeptics
There's a problem with everything I've said, and it is that today most religious liberals don’t
think of God, or the afterlife, in the way people did two hundred years ago--if they think of them
at all. And so the question arises: What happens to traditional Unitarian spirituality, and to
traditional Universalist spirituality, if God and the afterlife are omitted? Is anything left? For
Unitarian spirituality, not much is left. For Universalist spirituality, quite a bit is left.
God. Recall that in traditional Unitarian spirituality, God is the executor of the laws of morality. If
God is removed, there is no longer an executor, but there are still the laws of morality, which
we can still choose to think of as natural laws that are discernible by human intelligence.
What do you have to do to be saved? Without an afterlife, "being saved" will have to be
understood differently—as perhaps "being an OK person." Then the answer to this question is
the same as before: You have to strive all your life to do good, developing a high moral
character.
Humanity. The resulting view of humanity is also the same as before: Humanity is morally
stratified, because some will succeed in developing a high moral character and some will not.
When Unitarian spirituality is updated for skeptics, it amounts to little more than an injunction to
do good, along with an implication that you are not an OK person unless you strive mightily to
do so.
Universalist Spirituality for Skeptics
God. If God is removed from traditional Universalist spirituality there remains the feeling that we
are totally dependent on the physical universe, every moment of our lives, with every breath
we take.
What do you have to do to be saved? Taking "saved" to mean "being an OK person," then the
answer to this question is: You don't have to do anything. You're OK, just the way you are.
Humanity. It is still true that by our nature we find it deeply fulfilling to do good; and evildoers
are still not evil, they just haven’t realized that the way to be enduringly happy is to do good.
The resulting view of humanity is the same as before: Humanity is a community of moral
equals, bound together by ties of mutual concern.
We UUs often describe our faith by referring to the list of commonly-held values known as the
Seven Principles. When individual UUs are asked to name their favorite Principle, most cite
either the First ("the inherent worth and dignity of every person") or the Seventh ("respect for
the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part").
This is Universalist spirituality rising to the surface. "The inherent worth and dignity of every
person"9 is just a formal way of saying, "You're OK, just the way you are." And "respect for the
interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part" is just a formal way of saying, "We
are totally dependent on the physical universe, every moment of our lives, with every breath
we take."
UU spirituality is, at bottom, Universalist spirituality, though this is muddied by lingering
messages from Unitarianism. Is the reason for doing good to be happy, as in Universalism, or
to develop yourself into an OK person, as in Unitarianism? (If being an OK person is something
one has to develop, do we really affirm that every person has inherent worth and dignity?) Is
humanity a community of moral equals, as in Universalism, or morally stratified, as in
Unitarianism? (If humanity is morally stratified, do we really affirm that every person has
inherent worth and dignity?)
I will close by summarizing Universalist spirituality in a way that accommodates a wide range of
religious perspectives.
Universalist Spirituality
● There is a power greater than we are, experienced in the physical universe, on which we are
totally dependent, every moment of our lives, with every breath we take.
● To be saved you don’t have to do anything. You're OK, just the way you are.
● Humanity is a community of moral equals, bound together by ties of mutual concern.
Postscript
These considerations lead to a potentially divisive question which I had not planned on raising
when I began this essay but which I now feel I must raise: Is it time to retire the name
"Unitarian"? Where I live, in eastern Massachusetts, many UU congregations have the name
"First Parish Unitarian." The term "first parish" has been obsolete since 1833, and is confusing
to newcomers (to find the congregation in the phone book you have to look under "First"!).
The term is retained for reasons of historical pride. Is the UU movement retaining the
misleading name "Unitarian" only for reasons of historical pride?
Unitarian Universalism Is a Really Long Name is the title of a recent children's book published
by Skinner House. Yes, "Unitarian Universalism" is a really long name. Might "Universalism" be
an improvement? It is not only shorter but also, I believe, truer to our spirituality.
Notes
1Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England by David
D. Hall (Harvard University Press, 1990), especially Chapter 2.
2The opponents of the as-yet-unnamed religious liberals within the New England established
churches called them "Unitarians" after a similar group in England (a few of whom, like Joseph
Priestly, had emigrated to the United States). For the English group the defining issue was
opposition to the doctrine of the trinity, but for the New England liberals it was opposition to
predestination.
3"Unitarian Christianity" (1819) in Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism (Skinner House,
1986), p. 70.
4Mark Harris speaks of this aspect of Universalist spirituality in "Hosea Ballou's Treatise at
200" (The Unitarian Universalist Christian 60 [2005], pp. 5-19). For an example (atypical
because of Judith Sargent Murray's social status and John Murray's national origin) see
Judith's May 16, 1790 letter to Mary Turner Sargent in "Mingling Souls Upon Paper": An
Eighteenth Century Love Story by Bonnie Hurd Smith (Judith Sargent Murray Society, 2007),
pp. 129-130.
Nature would become a prominent component of Unitarian spirituality in the late 1800s, when
the Unitarian mainstream finally embraced the ideas that Emerson and others had promulgated
several decades earlier.
5Treatise on Atonement (Skinner House, 1986), p. 142.
6This is the title of an article by Ballou in Trumpet and Universalist Magazine XXII (August 18,
1849), p. 37.
7Christian Register III: 41 (May 21, 1824), p. 162.
8In a delightful coinage Hosea Ballou said that God wants to "happify" people.
9This Principle derives from the 1935-1953 Universalist declaration of faith, where it is
expressed as "We avow our faith in … the supreme worth of every human personality."
Rev. Richard Trudeau is minister of the UU Church of Weymouth, Massachusetts.
by Richard Trudeau
By "spirituality" I mean not religion itself, but the feelings, attitudes, and assumptions that
accompany religion. We Unitarian Universalists scour the world's religious traditions for a
spirituality we will find satisfying, while often overlooking a genuine UU spirituality, of
Universalist origin, that is relevant today.
Universalist spirituality can be found within UUism, of course, but it has been dismembered. Its
components are no longer connected to one another, and some have been left out. Moreover,
contradictory material from Unitarian spirituality has been mixed in, with the result that a
coherent spirituality is difficult to discern. It's no wonder so many of us become "UU Buddhists,"
"UU Pagans," "UU Christians," and the like.
To retrieve Universalist spirituality it will be necessary to distinguish it from Unitarian spirituality.
And the best way to accomplish this is to contrast the two in their early days in New England,
when Universalism and Unitarianism were very different.
Calvinism
Both Universalism and Unitarianism were reactions to Calvinism, so we will begin there.
Calvinism was not a denomination, but rather a theology that in the 1600s and 1700s
dominated most Protestant churches in New England.
In Calvinism God was an absolute monarch, on whom we are totally dependent, every moment
of our lives, with every breath we take. This God had spoken through the Bible, and was
experienced on a daily basis through nature, "God's other book." And while the ministers'
sermons focused mostly on the former, for the people in the pews the experience of God came
more directly from the latter. For the average man and woman, "the Creator" was experienced
in large part through "the creation"—the physical universe1.
In Calvinism God has judged all people and found them wanting. We are all sinful, and deserve
everlasting hellfire. But God is also "loving," because God has been persuaded by Jesus to
allow some people into heaven anyway. These are "the elect," who will be saved. The elect
don’t deserve to be saved, though--in Calvinism, no one does. The basis on which God has
chosen the elect (a choice made at the beginning of time!) is a complete mystery. One thing,
however, is clear: if you are slated for hell, there is nothing you can do to earn your way into
heaven.
Unitarianism
Even though the Universalist reaction to Calvinism came first, I would like to begin with the
Unitarian one.
In speaking of early Unitarianism in America, I will focus on the year 1815. The Unitarians
hadn't yet organized as a denomination, and were just beginning to accept the "Unitarian"
name (bestowed by opponents2). But they knew who they were, and what the issues were.
In 1815, the battles of Lexington and Concord were forty years in the past. The Unitarians were
United States citizens. Their God was different from the Calvinist God. God was not so much
like a monarch as like a U.S. President--an executor of laws to which the executor also was
subject. The laws were the laws of morality, which the Unitarians thought of as natural laws,
discernable by human intelligence.
"We cannot bow before a being, however great and powerful, who governs tyrannically," wrote
William Ellery Channing3. "We venerate not the loftiness of God's throne, but the equity and
goodness in which it is established."
The Unitarians were by and large successful, prominent people, who felt they had earned their
social status. To the Unitarians the Calvinist system of salvation seemed grossly unfair,
because salvation was divorced from merit. The Unitarians responded with their doctrine of
"salvation by character." Those who develop a high moral character, they said, will thereby
earn their way into heaven.
The Unitarians thus saw humanity as morally stratified. Just as some people are more
successful than others in gaining wealth, access to power, or status, the Unitarian view of
humanity in moral terms was that some people would succeed in developing a high moral
character and some would not. Those who succeeded would be saved, while those who failed
would be condemned.
Before continuing we should note how misleading the name "Unitarian" was. For these religious
liberals the principal issue was not the doctrine of the trinity--though they were skeptical about
that also--but whether salvation can be merited2.
Traditional Unitarian Spirituality
I want to summarize early Unitarian spirituality under three headings: their view of God, their
answer to the question "What do you have to do to be saved?" and their view of humanity.
God. God is the executor of the laws of morality, to which God also is subject.
What do you have to do to be saved? You have to strive all your life to do good, developing a
high moral character.
Humanity. Humanity is morally stratified. Some will succeed in developing a high moral
character and will be saved, while others will not succeed and will be condemned.
Universalism
In speaking of early Universalism in America I will focus on the year 1780. As with Unitarians in
1815, Universalists hadn't yet organized as a denomination, and were just beginning to accept
the "Universalist" name (bestowed by opponents). But they knew who they were, and what the
issues were.
In 1780 the Revolutionary War was still going on. There was no United States. There was no
President, and never had been one. The Universalists accepted the Calvinist idea of God as
an absolute monarch, experienced mostly through the physical universe, on which we are
totally dependent, every moment of our lives, with every breath we take.
The notion that the divine is experienced through the physical universe was more prominent
among the early Universalists than the early Unitarians4. One reason is that such was
generally more a part of the spirituality of less-educated people. American Universalism started
as a movement of laypeople having little formal education (and for decades even its clergy had
little formal education). American Unitarianism started as a movement among clergy who had
been educated at Harvard. Another factor is geographical. The Unitarians lived in long-
established settlements around Boston, where nature was experienced as lawful and for the
most part under control. The Universalists lived on what was then the frontier--the hill country
of central Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and southern Vermont. Trying to scratch
out a living on a hill-farm under frontier conditions, they experienced nature as more immediate
and powerful.
While the Universalists accepted from Calvinism the concept of God as an absolute monarch,
for them God was not a condemning judge but rather a loving parent who would somehow find
a way to save everybody. Hosea Ballou argued against Calvinism and in favor of Universalism
in this anecdote about a father of ten:
"Suppose … the father has provisions enough for the whole, and his object in the bestowing
of it upon them is to cause the greatest possible happiness among his children. Which way
would good sense and parental affection choose, either to feed five to the full, and starve the
rest to death, that their dying groans might give the others a better appetite and their food a
good relish, or to let them all be hungry enough to relish their food well, and all alike partake of
it?"5
In Universalism God may still have been an absolute monarch, but we were all princes and
princesses that God was determined to save. Salvation is the free gift of a loving God to all
people. The official name for this doctrine is "universal salvation," and it gave the Universalists
their name. Note that the Universalists retained from Calvinism not only the idea of God as an
absolute monarch but also the idea that salvation is unrelated to merit—in Hosea Ballou's
provocative phrase, "salvation irrespective of character."6
To many, universal salvation was a shocking idea. Without the fear of hellfire, why should
people do good? In several states Universalists were not allowed to give testimony at trials or
to serve on juries, because it was felt that they would have no motive to be honest. Once the
Unitarians got themselves organized even they would join the chorus. Concerning Universalism
the Unitarian weekly newspaper would editorialize,
"…multitudes who embrace these doctrines, embrace them because they are so congenial with
the debased and perverted feelings of their corrupted and depraved hearts; because being a
religion without sanctions, it lays no restraint on their vicious propensities and passions, and
their impure and depraved habits…."7
Universalists responded with characteristic originality. God wants to make people happy, they
said8, not only in the afterlife, but also in this life; so God has given us such a nature that we
find doing good to be deeply fulfilling. If someone is in trouble, others will gather around to
help, because the nature God has given us impels them to do so; and the result is that not
only is the one in trouble helped and so made happier, but those helping are fulfilled and so
also made happier. Doing good is the way to be happy now.
Under this viewpoint all people are morally equal. Evildoers are not themselves evil, but only
unenlightened. They have not yet realized that the way to be happy in this life is to do good
rather than evil. It is a large part of the purpose of churches to help people to perceive this
subtle truth.
Traditional Universalist Spirituality
I will summarize early Universalist spirituality under the same three headings I used for
Unitarian spirituality: their view of God, their answer to the question "What do you have to do to
be saved?" and their view of humanity.
God. God is an absolute monarch, experienced mostly through the physical universe, on which
we are totally dependent, every moment of our lives, with every breath we take.
What do you have to do to be saved? You don't have to do anything. Salvation is the free gift
of God, who loves us all and wants us to be happy.
Humanity. Humanity is a community of moral equals, bound together by ties of mutual concern.
Unitarian Spirituality for Skeptics
There's a problem with everything I've said, and it is that today most religious liberals don’t
think of God, or the afterlife, in the way people did two hundred years ago--if they think of them
at all. And so the question arises: What happens to traditional Unitarian spirituality, and to
traditional Universalist spirituality, if God and the afterlife are omitted? Is anything left? For
Unitarian spirituality, not much is left. For Universalist spirituality, quite a bit is left.
God. Recall that in traditional Unitarian spirituality, God is the executor of the laws of morality. If
God is removed, there is no longer an executor, but there are still the laws of morality, which
we can still choose to think of as natural laws that are discernible by human intelligence.
What do you have to do to be saved? Without an afterlife, "being saved" will have to be
understood differently—as perhaps "being an OK person." Then the answer to this question is
the same as before: You have to strive all your life to do good, developing a high moral
character.
Humanity. The resulting view of humanity is also the same as before: Humanity is morally
stratified, because some will succeed in developing a high moral character and some will not.
When Unitarian spirituality is updated for skeptics, it amounts to little more than an injunction to
do good, along with an implication that you are not an OK person unless you strive mightily to
do so.
Universalist Spirituality for Skeptics
God. If God is removed from traditional Universalist spirituality there remains the feeling that we
are totally dependent on the physical universe, every moment of our lives, with every breath
we take.
What do you have to do to be saved? Taking "saved" to mean "being an OK person," then the
answer to this question is: You don't have to do anything. You're OK, just the way you are.
Humanity. It is still true that by our nature we find it deeply fulfilling to do good; and evildoers
are still not evil, they just haven’t realized that the way to be enduringly happy is to do good.
The resulting view of humanity is the same as before: Humanity is a community of moral
equals, bound together by ties of mutual concern.
We UUs often describe our faith by referring to the list of commonly-held values known as the
Seven Principles. When individual UUs are asked to name their favorite Principle, most cite
either the First ("the inherent worth and dignity of every person") or the Seventh ("respect for
the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part").
This is Universalist spirituality rising to the surface. "The inherent worth and dignity of every
person"9 is just a formal way of saying, "You're OK, just the way you are." And "respect for the
interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part" is just a formal way of saying, "We
are totally dependent on the physical universe, every moment of our lives, with every breath
we take."
UU spirituality is, at bottom, Universalist spirituality, though this is muddied by lingering
messages from Unitarianism. Is the reason for doing good to be happy, as in Universalism, or
to develop yourself into an OK person, as in Unitarianism? (If being an OK person is something
one has to develop, do we really affirm that every person has inherent worth and dignity?) Is
humanity a community of moral equals, as in Universalism, or morally stratified, as in
Unitarianism? (If humanity is morally stratified, do we really affirm that every person has
inherent worth and dignity?)
I will close by summarizing Universalist spirituality in a way that accommodates a wide range of
religious perspectives.
Universalist Spirituality
● There is a power greater than we are, experienced in the physical universe, on which we are
totally dependent, every moment of our lives, with every breath we take.
● To be saved you don’t have to do anything. You're OK, just the way you are.
● Humanity is a community of moral equals, bound together by ties of mutual concern.
Postscript
These considerations lead to a potentially divisive question which I had not planned on raising
when I began this essay but which I now feel I must raise: Is it time to retire the name
"Unitarian"? Where I live, in eastern Massachusetts, many UU congregations have the name
"First Parish Unitarian." The term "first parish" has been obsolete since 1833, and is confusing
to newcomers (to find the congregation in the phone book you have to look under "First"!).
The term is retained for reasons of historical pride. Is the UU movement retaining the
misleading name "Unitarian" only for reasons of historical pride?
Unitarian Universalism Is a Really Long Name is the title of a recent children's book published
by Skinner House. Yes, "Unitarian Universalism" is a really long name. Might "Universalism" be
an improvement? It is not only shorter but also, I believe, truer to our spirituality.
Notes
1Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England by David
D. Hall (Harvard University Press, 1990), especially Chapter 2.
2The opponents of the as-yet-unnamed religious liberals within the New England established
churches called them "Unitarians" after a similar group in England (a few of whom, like Joseph
Priestly, had emigrated to the United States). For the English group the defining issue was
opposition to the doctrine of the trinity, but for the New England liberals it was opposition to
predestination.
3"Unitarian Christianity" (1819) in Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism (Skinner House,
1986), p. 70.
4Mark Harris speaks of this aspect of Universalist spirituality in "Hosea Ballou's Treatise at
200" (The Unitarian Universalist Christian 60 [2005], pp. 5-19). For an example (atypical
because of Judith Sargent Murray's social status and John Murray's national origin) see
Judith's May 16, 1790 letter to Mary Turner Sargent in "Mingling Souls Upon Paper": An
Eighteenth Century Love Story by Bonnie Hurd Smith (Judith Sargent Murray Society, 2007),
pp. 129-130.
Nature would become a prominent component of Unitarian spirituality in the late 1800s, when
the Unitarian mainstream finally embraced the ideas that Emerson and others had promulgated
several decades earlier.
5Treatise on Atonement (Skinner House, 1986), p. 142.
6This is the title of an article by Ballou in Trumpet and Universalist Magazine XXII (August 18,
1849), p. 37.
7Christian Register III: 41 (May 21, 1824), p. 162.
8In a delightful coinage Hosea Ballou said that God wants to "happify" people.
9This Principle derives from the 1935-1953 Universalist declaration of faith, where it is
expressed as "We avow our faith in … the supreme worth of every human personality."
Rev. Richard Trudeau is minister of the UU Church of Weymouth, Massachusetts.
 |
 |