Finding a Universalist among the Esperantists

Well, I finally found a reference to a Universalist — in fact, a minister — in an Esperanto setting, and I wasn’t even looking. With the online publication of the main Universalist publication — alternately titled the Universalist Leader or the Christian Leader — I was able to look up question I had about the little-documented World War Two era. But I found a different answer

I took a family trip to New York last year, and we stayed in the Hotel New Yorker. Wasn’t there a Universalist conference there? So I searched for it by name. No Universalist conference during the war years, but the 1939 Esperanto Association of North America (EANA) had its annual meeting there, and the Rev. Cornelius Greenway, minister of the All Souls Universalist Church, Brooklyn (now incorporated in the All Souls Bethlehem Church) gave the sermon for the July 1 non-sectarian service there.

Was there more to learn? While the EANA went extinct decades ago, its rival, Esperanto-USA (formally the Esperanto League of North America), keeps copies of the EANA newsletter Amerika Esperantisto online because of its historical importance. The whole sermon was reprinted by request in that issue, but there are two odd things to note.

1. Even though it was a non-sectarian service (nesekta diservo) Greenway cited the first two of the “Five Points” declaration in furtherance of his theme.
2. Oh, and the sermon is entirely in English. Seems he and his family learned some Esperanto in his youth in the Netherlands but forgot it all. Not terribly auspicious, but then I may be the only Universalist minister with a working knowledge of Esperanto, and I wouldn’t dare preach in it. And Greenway’s experience in post-WWI peace negotiations would have meant a lot to the conference participants, two months before the European war would start.

So you can read the sermon (and an outline of the service, much of which was in Esperanto) in the newsletter, all in English, starting at page 3. It’s not a work for the ages, despite its reception at the time.

Other references to Universalism in the Leader convey half-hearted hopes for its use in peace work; its use as a metaphor for something of universal interest; and — oddly — a quotation to advertise (a sample) the then-denominational St. Lawrence University. It seems Universalist knew about Esperanto, but didn’t know it and certainly didn’t use it for church work.