I’ll be blogging lighter this next week. I have two projects that will be taking up some time.
- A special feature online on historical Universalist views of baptism.
- Reading James Relly’s Union: or a treatise of the Consanguinity and Affinity between Christ and his Church. It isn’t an easy read, but this is the real hero behind the John Murray in America story. To review: John Murray was once Relly’s opponant, but he and his first wife became converts, and John a Rellyan preacher in England. After her (and their son’s) death, and his stint in debtor’s prison, he made his famous 1770 trek to get lost in America, only to be found by Thomas Potter, and later to organize the Universalist church in Gloucester, Massachusetts. But that first church in Gloucester wouldn’t have been possible if there hadn’t been a Rellyan study group there, a member of which was Judith Sargent, the author and catechist. (She and John Murray would later marry.)