Category: Universalist history

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Paul Dean at 240

Today is the 240th birthday of Universalist minister Paul Dean.

He is much less well remembered than his Boston colleague and contemporary Hosea Ballou, and when I recently learned that Dean (and his wife) have an unmarked grave in the same cemetery that Ballou has a grand monument with a statue. I’ve started transcribing his only book the 1832 A Course of Lectures in Defence of the Final Restoration and I will release chapters of it on this site, starting today.

But first, a taste. Dean, on why not to believe the orthodox Calvinist position on election:

Lastly, we object to this as a scripture doctrine, because we think it calculated most unreasonably to discourage and drive, even into despair, beyond the reach of hope, the erring, weak minded, and scrupulous, who most of all need to be soothed in affliction, and encouraged to reform, and then to grow in grace daily. — Nor is this all; — on the other hand it has a tendency to countenance the arrogant, and lift up with pride the presuming, and embolden the hardened hypocrite.

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A pivot to Paul Dean

I’ve been reading Universalist history for decades, but the details of the Restorationist Controversy (UUDB.org) escaped me. I know the broad strokes, the theological points, the key players and the slogans, mostly from Richard Eddy, but the social, economic and ecclesiologial dimensions weren’t clear until I read Peter Hughes’s two (2000, 2002) essays in The Journal of Unitarian and Universalist History. They’re online here and here respectively (HathiTrust.com) and I highly recommend them.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I read it in jags, breaking to find “where are they now” by which I meant the later careers and legacies of the main figures.

Then I looked for Paul Dean‘s grave. (UUDB.org) I have a soft spot for him, both for being a prominent Trinitarian Universalist, and for his curious ministry in Charleston, South Carolina. I’m also a Restorationist in theology and ethos, as was he. I think I would have liked him.

He is buried in Mt. Auburn like Murray and Ballou, but his grave is unmarked. (FindAGrave.com) That’s when my blood ran cold. Perhaps there’s some unphotographed common Dean marker, but there’s no evidence of it with the other photos. On the other hand, the grand statue of his Boston colleague (FindAGrave.com) and rival makes me think that Ballou has enough attention at the moment. He certainly had his way in life.

I was going to transcribe Hosea Ballou’s work on the parables for Lent, but I think Paul Dean is worth a pivot. He wrote several pamphlets, but only one book — A Course of Lectures in Defence of the Final Restoration (1832)(Archive.org) — and that’s what I’ll be transcribing instead. I hope to have some it ready by his 240th birthday, on March 28.

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Deacons in The Universalist

The Universalist, one of the two national Universalist newspapers of the 1880s and 1890s, is available online and with searchable (if imperfect) text. It also gives a view from “the west” namely Chicago and Cincinnati. What does it say about deacons?

In one case, it speaks of a deacon who participated in the 1887 Universalist General Convention, but in the main, deacons appear in one of two ways:

  1. Elderly Universalist men, noted in an obituary.
  2. As a stock character in an entertaining, but hard-boiled tale. (One time, we get a deacon’s wife with a switch ending.) The deacon — an older, established and respected or feared man — has rigid or misplaced morals that place him or the ones he loves in harm’s way. I get a sense that these deacons aren’t Universalist, but they are so broadly drawn that who knows?

I like a soap opera as much as the next person, but it’s not the ecclesiology I was looking for, so I’ll leave further reading to interested parties.

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Universalist newspaper family tree

Universalists loved their newspapers. They spread Universalist doctrine and culture, particularly in areas where there there were no churches or no resident ministers. Controversies played out in them, news propagated through their pages and late into the pre-consolidation era, the polity required notices be published in them. Last week, I found more than a decade of pre- and post-consolidation Universalist magazines, which are the antecedent of today’s UUWorld, and the heir of dozens of Universalist titles. Universalist loved their periodicals, but not always liked paying for them and so the history is made up of consolidation upon consolidation.

Chart of Universalist periodicals

I was looking for, and today found, this chart (linking from this list of publications at the Harvard Divinity School Library site) which I had seen before but lost the citation. It charts out the antecedents of the Christian Leader, which would be renamed on more time to the Universalist Leader before being merged with the Unitarian Register. Which means that these aren’t all of the Universalist periodicals that existed. Some winked out of existence before it could be merged with another. And then there’s the Universalist Herald, which survives and never merged, still going since 1847. (Go ahead and subscribe.)

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Transcribing Ballou on the Parables

I’ve been working through my study list and will be reporting out more soon. But since this is the first day of Lent, I thought I’d add a project to the mix (which I may or may not complete by Holy Week.)

Long ago, I learned that I am more likely to read a document and remember it if I transcribe it for the web. (My first project, Channing’s “Unitarian Christianity” was pre-web and I posted it via Gopher. Back then that meant having a book open and typing it out.) Time to do another one.

I’ve chosen the 1812 edition of Hosea Ballou’s Notes on the Parables. Because of all the long-ses, it’s an OCR mess, and not good for searching. A cleanup is worthwhile.

Why this? I wanted to see something of his early work, and something other than his Treatise on Atonement, which has already been transcribed. (DanielHarper.org) I’ll be posting it section by section as I complete it, and then find a home for it on one of my web properties once it’s done.

[February 23, 2023. There was another transcription project I stumbled across … on this blog. I wrote about it here in 2005 and the text of A Series of Letters in Defence of Divine Revelation may be read here.)

In the meantime, listen to this only other work of his that I know is being kept in current use: the hymn, sung with shape notes, “Come let us raise our voices high.”

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Found: Universalist Leader

I was searching for early Universalist convention records when I happened on a trove of midcentury issues of Universalist Leader and Unitarian Universalist Register-Leader, the magazines which became what is today the UU World.

This is really exciting, since documents from the late pre-consolidation and early post-consolidation (1961 onwards) eras are hard to find, at least working from Washington, D.C. Earlier anyway, denominational business was published in depth with documents drafts, so fingers crossed.

What lead me there? A search which showed groovy maps of Universalist state conventions and Unitarian districts before consolidation, and the UUA districts thereafter. I didn’t know the Alabama and Mississippi conventions survived to consolidation, for instance.

Line map of pre-consolidation Universalist state conventions, clustered in the eastern half of North America

At the Harvard Divinity School Library (Harvard-Andover Theological Library) site:

Universalist Leader, January 1954-December 1954

Universalist Leader, January 1955-December 1955

Universalist Leader, January 1956-December 1956

Universalist Leader, January 1957-December 1957

Universalist Leader, January 1958-December 1958

Universalist Leader, January 1959-December 1959

Universalist Leader, January 1960-December 1960

Universalist Leader, January 1961-April 1961

Unitarian Register and Universalist Leader, May 1961-December 1961

Unitarian Register and Universalist Leader, May 1962-Midsummer 1962

Unitarian Universalist Register-Leader, October 1962-December 1962

Unitarian Universalist Register-Leader, January 1963-December 1963

Unitarian Universalist Register-Leader, January 1964-April 1964

Leader, May 1964-December 1964 with Register/Leader Spotlight

Leader, January 1965-April 1965 with Register/Leader Spotlight

The variously titled Universalist Leader and Christian Leader up through 1927 have entered the public domain and are easy to find. I’ll keep any eye out for issues between 1928 and 1953, and would appreciate leads.

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Reviewing the Atlanta Universalist

Today was a rough day: oral surgery and then rest at home. All I wanted to do was read, and there was this newspaper from the 1880s I found online. How could I resist?

The Atlanta Universalist ran from 1879 to 1882, first under the editorship of Universalist minister William Clayton Bowman then under Daniel Bragg Clayton (1817-1906), an evergreen ministerial and publishing figure in Southern Universalism. Clayton Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church, Newberry, South Carolina is named for him.

Further, the paper is presented as a part of the Georgia Historic Newspapers. I wonder if it’s related to the Georgia Newspaper Project: my first job at the University of Georgia many, many years ago, where I was as a camera operator and its good to see the familiar four-page layout of this weekly, later semi-monthly publication. They have a small sample of titles from Clayton’s editorship, and the strain was clear. (Why won’t people pay their subscription fees?) These publisher-ministers also preached circuits and when Clayton lost his publishing partner, he had to halve the number of issues.

The issues were not four packed pages of hard-hitting Universalist theology. It was a pleasing mix of entertaining stories with a message, news clips, useful information, so-so jokes and advertising (the train schedules are my favorite) with the expected sermon texts, church news (including where he would be preaching) and denominational updates. It’s an assortment that works well for anyone who scrolls news and videos on a phone. Perhaps we’re not all that different.

Here are some of the stories that I read before I zonked out again. If I read more, I’ll add them to the bottom later.

April 6, 1881. Atlanta church location and schedule. List of officers and deacons. Page 3. The Unitarian minister preaches to the Atlanta church “with hearty approval.” (they later merged, fwiw) and Clayton visits and preaches with Bowman. Book lists and fun ads. Page 4. “Two Women Wedded,” a news clip from Boston likely of interest in students of lesbian or transgender history.

Sepbember 8, misdated as August 31, 1881. E. G. Janeway speaks to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association about hygiene as a means to prevent disease, presumably in New York. Focus on ventilation in buildings. Page 2. Clayton preaches sermon in the Mechanicsburg neighborhood of Atlanta showing that Jesus did pray for the whole world in John 17, and that while Judas was lost, Jesus seeks the lost. Affirmed that Judas was an apostle, but lost this status or role. Notice of the Georgia Universalist Convention to be held “the Friday before the 5th Sunday in October” for three days, at the Mulberry Church (a.k.a. Rockwell Universalist, Winder, Georgia), with information about trains and onward transportation. Clayton announces preaching at Flowery Branch (Hall County), Walton County (south of Athens) and Walker County (northwest corner of the state.) page 3. The question of the taxation of churches. A chronology of comets and train schedules that makes me realize how much we lost. page 4. Recipes. The apple pancakes and gingerbread loaf sound delicious.

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You’ll be shocked how this Universalist was tied to famous murders

Or maybe you won’t. The prosecuting attorney in the Lizzy Bordon case was Hosea Morrill Knowlton, a Universalist and the son of a Universalist minister. He also bicycled and was president of the Madrigal Society, which would be a nicer way to be remembered than being associated with, well, you know.

“A Portrait of Hosea Knowlton, District Attorney for the Prosecution in the Lizzie Borden Trial” by Denise Noe (The Hatchet: A Journal of Lizzie Borden and Victorian Studies)

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Love Unrelenting: documentary and video channel

About a year ago, Steven HAuse interviewed me at Universalist National Memorial Church as part of his project to make a documentary — Love Unrelenting — about the theology and history of universal salvation. He gave me a head’s-up when he separately published the clips that didn’t fit into the documentary and then the film itself. But being sensitive about how I sound and look on video, and knowing that I would be sharing airtime with some of the leading figures of a revived universalist work, I just couldn’t watch it.

But I owed it to him to watch it, and used the cold weather to pull it up on YouTube; I’m glad I did. HAute set out the three usual Christian doctrines of human destiny: the “traditional option” eternal conscious torment, conditional immortality (also know as annihilationism) and universal reconciliation, and let proponents of each speak from their convictions. But the goal was to highlight universal reconciliation and so wrestled with the biblical, theological and ethical dimensions, introducing them in an approachable manner.

The audience is not Unitarian Universalists, or even our remaining Universalist Christians, but potential members of new generation of believers in universal reconciliation, many of whom come out of Evangelical backgrounds, and may or may not be interested in particular Universalist churches. (None I’ve seen express an interest in the UUA, and they often make the point to distinguish themselves from it.) The arguments and approaches are very familiar to any student of pre-1920s Universalism, which makes perfect sense as so many of those long-past Universalists would have walked the same path. Plus, it’s heartening to me to hear the same affirmations that God has both the desire and the power to save all; it can be lonely in this part of the vineyard. Like Simeon (today’s lectionary gospel), I know that this hope will never perish.

Also, I was cheered to see friends, colleagues, a seminary mate (not then universalist) and others I’ve corresponded with over the years. I saw for the first time footage and interviews from the Doujin (Dojin) Christian Church, Tokyo (Japanese language site): the last survivor of the Universalist Japan mission. In the extra clips, I saw for the first time video and interviews with Primitive Baptist Universalists. I am so happy and cheered. HAuse has made an incredible document; you should subscribe to his channel and watch these videos.

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New research interest

I’ve done some preliminary research on a twentieth-century Universalist minister who popped up when I was down an internet hole. He’s not completely forgotten, but not a celebrity either, and my digging showed him first to be interesting, then complex, and then more than a little horrifiying. There’s a story there.

It’s going to take some archival research, so don’t expect anything soon and because I might want to prepare this for publication I’m not going to share any details now.