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A Unitarian among the Esperantists

My natural interest in the subject led me to scan the pre-1961 Unitarians for interest in Esperanto after yesterday’s post about the Universalists. I don’t think there’s much more interest overall. While the American Unitarian Association published tracts in a variety of languages, there was not a word I’ve found in Esperanto. Articles were usually neutral. But the Esperantists did have a champion among the Unitarians.

Glenn P. Turner (Wikipedia link) was a Madison, Wisconsin lawyer, radio announcer and sometime Socialist politician. Based on his letters to the Unitarian magazine Christian Ledger — usually to stoke interest in the language — he was well informed about the workings of First Unitarian Society there, so presumably a member. (Of note, in one of his letters, there was a tiny postwar worship group of Esperantists among the British Unitarians.) On the Esperanto side, he ran a book service for many years and participated the first (1953) United States congress of the rival, reformed and current national organization. (S-ano is short for samideano, a title that literally means “a member having the same idea” and means “fellow Esperantist” but reads with a touch of “fellow-traveller.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used today non-ironically.)

Not noted in the English Wikipedia article, but cited in the Esperanto version is that he owned the Sherlock Hotel in Madison, the headquarters of the United States Esperanto congress in 1928.

Later. Somehow I missed this from the report of the 1953 congress:

Sunday, July 5

Two special Sunday services were held in the modernistic Unitarian Meeting House — the first was conducted by S-ano Sayers in English, and the second conducted in Esperanto by S-ano Lewine. The Congress photo was made at the Meeting House which, delegates were interested to learn, was built largely with money contributed by Dr. Charles A. Vilas, Secretary of the Wisconsin State Esperanto Association in 1909.

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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.

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I’m blogging again, I guess

Am I getting my blogging voice back? Time will tell. But two things are true and are worth noting:

  1. I am grateful for the kind words of support and earnest inquiries for more information I’ve gotten over the years and to this day. I also appreciate those of you who take time to read my posts and make comments.
  2. Universalist Christianity — or anything worth having — won’t prosper in the walled (and manipulated) gardens of corporate social networks. I’ve been able to speak freely over the years because I have this little patch on a server that I pay for myself, and some 22 years of posts may be found here. (Try that on Facebook.)

    To that end, and if you know how, you can also read the posts here by subscribing to the RSS feed or by subscribing to @admin @www.revscottwells.com [remove the space] through one of the distributed Mastodon nodes. (I think that’s right.) I don’t advertise and don’t worry about site hits, so read this as you want.

If you do want to help me, link to my site here, or refer people over. Thanks.

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The Open Hymnal Project is back

Like looking for a liberally-licensed Bible, I take collections of public domain hymns seriously. I went back to a site I often enjoyed but has been dormant and read

09 Oct 2025 After a long absence, I am restarting activity on the Open Hymnal Project.

with activity as recent as last week. Go ahead and bookmark it, and even if you don’t share my interest in public domain and freely-licensed hymns, the materials for Christmas (PDF) should get your attention.

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Orders of service from US Japanese internment camps

I was looking for some mid-century orders of service — more about that later — and found a trove of orders of service at the Internet Archive from Protestant union churches at some of the internment or concentration camps for Japanese Americans during the Second World War.

Such a terrible time in the nation’s history and a great hardship to those caught up in that dislocation, presumption of guilt, loss of civil rights and economic hardship. And then there are these documents, which in many ways are very ordinary and typical of the period. Did they have a role past the outline of the service or sharing church news? To maintain normalcy, project it, something else? I’ll leave it to those who have experience in the material to say. But they’re a worth a look, especially in the notices which describe the prisoners comings and goings — and their faith and values.

Link (Internet Archive)

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Which translations of the Bible are you using?

A question to my occasional readers.

I’ve been using the New Revised Standard Version since it came out decades ago, but I’m looking for an additional translation or two that ideally are (1) a bit more euphonic in worship without being a paraphrase, and (2) ideally have some kind of liberal license, which is more of a philosophical choice about the ownership of common Christian properties.

Do you have any recommendations?

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“Catholic Universalism” (1888)

Over the years, I’ve run across Henry I. Cushman’s 1888 essay “Catholic Universalism” but never sat down and read it from beginning to end in one sitting. I’ve learned the best way for me to do so is to prepare a transcription for the web, and this is the result of that effort.

Cushman was part of that generation of liturgically-minded and -productive Universalists and this essay show his influence.

I’ve added links where helpful and marked page breaks in the original in square brackets.

Pages: 1 2
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Intro video guide to Christianity

I think the Ready to Harvest channel provides objective overviews to Christian denominations, and this recent video provides a quick jargon-free introduction for non-Christians generally, though atheists are noted in the title. Each time I tried to quibble with the content, it was usually because I wanted to argue a point (so not neutrally) or thought there was room for nuance (not the point of a jargon-free introduction.) I would have liked more history, too, but that also would have made the introduction too long.

If I did have to quibble, it would be using a flaming chalice emblem to represent various Unitarian Christianities, which includes Jehovah’s Witnesses and other non-Trinitarians like the “Abrahamic Faith” churches, neither of which Unitarian (Universalist)s would identify as common kin or vice versa. But his point in bringing up the various kinds of Unitarians was to identify majority and minority opinions, and where boundary lines may be drawn. In that spirit, he specifically points out the existence and variant opinions of liberal Christians as a minority opinion through the generations and among Christians today. But — being objective — did include them, and did so fairly. Quite a lot of ground covered in just over 21 minutes.

While you’re al it, he has a 2021 video about the Christian Universalist Association — perhaps the only one I’ve seen from outside the CUA orbit — and while I hate the thumbnail, it pictures figures often mentioned in discussion of Universalism.

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Gift acceptance policy to consider

I’m a member of Esperanto-USA, and it recently adopted a new gift acceptance policy that I thought churches might use as input for developing their own. Esperanto-USA customarily publishes its governance and financial information in English, so there’s no need to learn la internacian lingvon to read it. Note how it clearly assigns responsibilities, makes clear expectations of donors for large gifts and avoids poison-pill gifts.

Esperanto-USA Gift Acceptance Policy

And while we’re at it, give your local food bank or pantry cash, not the refuse from your pantry. It’s looking like a hard fall in the United States, and cash is far more useful.