Tag Archives: Universalist history

Itinerants to Freethinkers: Universalist preaching in New Bedford

Part one: 1825 to 1875

During the 1820s and 1830s, at least a few itinerant Universalist preachers visited New Bedford. By tradition, Rev. Hosea Ballou, the greatest of the early Universalist theologians and preachers, came to speak in New Bedford c. 1825. In 1831, one William Morse preached a sermon on Universalism in New Bedford titled “On Revival of Religion. A Sermon delivered in New Bedford, April 17, 1831,” which was printed by Benjamin T. Congdon. In 1836, one Abraham Norwood preached Universalism in New Bedford and Fairhaven, with mixed success.

The first settled Universalist preacher was Rev. John Murray Spear, who preached abolitionism along with his Universalism. While he was minister, from 1836 to 1841, the Universalists built a church building on School Street (since demolished, the site is now the parking lot for Pilgrim UCC Church); they also were one of the few Massachusetts churches of any denomination to unequivocally declare their support for abolition. Nathan Johnson, a prominent African American citizen of New Bedford and conductor on the Underground Railroad, became a member of the Universalist Church. Frederick Douglass is known to have visited the church, but only to argue against the doctrine of universal salvation; Spear met Douglass during this visit, and the two men wound up sharing the lecture platform for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society many times in later years.

In 1841, Spear was hounded out of New Bedford for helping a fugitive slave evade her master. Spears’ biographer John Beuscher writes: “A slave, Lucy Faggins, traveled with the family that owned her to visit New Bedford, which was home to a sizable community of free Negroes. Spear was instrumental in arranging the legal process through which Faggins was able to opt for freedom. For depriving the southern family of their household ‘servant’ Spear was vilified in public as a ‘nigger stealer,’ threatened with legal action, and forced to resign his New Bedford pulpit.”

Following Spear’s sudden departure, Rev. Levi L. Sadler (1806?-1857) served as a supply minister during 1841. Sadler had previously preached in the recently-settled states of Ohio (1833, 1837) and Michigan (1835). Continue reading →

Hymn by Hosea Ballou

Hosea Ballou is one of the theological giants of my religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism. Back in 1805, Ballou wrote A Treatise on Atonement, still the major exposition of North American Universalism (you can read it online here). Unfortunately, Ballou was not what you’d call a great writer. When trying to describe his writing style, the adjective “clunky” comes immediately to mind.

Because he was a mediocre writer, hardly anyone reads his Treatise any more, and hardly anyone bothers to sing any of the hundreds of hymns he wrote. This is unfortunate, because buried in Ballou’s clunky prose is a vision of a universe run by Love, where someday the power of Love is going to make everything turn out well.

I recently discovered that one of Ballou’s hymns is still in print — not in the current Unitarian Universalist hymnal, but in The Sacred Harp, a songbook widely used by shape-note singers. It’s number 411 in The Sacred Harp, and it goes like this:

1. Come, let us raise our voices high,
And from a sacred song,
To him who rules the earth and sky,
And does our days prolong.
Who through the night gave us to rest,
This morning cheered our eyes;
And with the thousands of the blest,
In health made us to rise.

2. Early to God we’ll send our prayer,
Make hast to pray and praise,
That he may make our good his care,
And guide us all our days.
And when the night of death comes on,
And we shall end our days,
May his rich grace the theme prolong,
Of his eternal praise.

Hosea Ballou, 1808 (C.M.D.)

No, I’m not proposing that we include this hymn in the next edition of the Unitarian Universalist hymnal. In The Sacred Harp book, Ballou’s hymn is set to a fuguing tune, fairly complex music that is far beyond the singing ability of the average American congregation (though it might be fun for a church choir), and the hymn itself is not quite good enough for me to want to go to the trouble of finding another, easier, tune for it. But it’s nice to know that people still do sing this old Universalist hymn, even though most of those who sing it probably have no idea who Hosea Ballou was, or what Universalism might be.

Universalist composer

I’ve been looking through some shape-note hymnals, and came across this interesting tidbit in The Norumbega Harmony, in the introductory essay by Stephen Marini*:

“The greatest musical influence in Maine… was Supply Belcher…. Belcher’s primary successor was Abraham Maxim, a native of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who settled during the 17090s in Turner [Maine], where he taught singing schools and converted to Universalism. Maxim’s Oriental Harmony (1802) and Northern Harmony (1805) reflect the [William] Billings-Belcher influence that thoroughly dominated Maine’s singing school tradition.”

Although he is little more than a footnote today, Maxim (b. 1773 – d. 1829 Palmyra, Somerset County, Maine) must be the earliest North American Universalist composer whose works survive today. The Norumbega Harmony contains two compositions by Maxim, settings of hymns by Isaac Watts. Both compositions are fuguing tunes (for the record, Buckfield, p. 166 is an L.M. tune; Machais, p. 169, is a P.M. tune), and a quick look reveals that both seem musically interesting. Universalist hymnodists and choirs, take note!

* Stephen Marini is the historian who wrote the ground-breaking Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England, a third of which book covered the indigenous Universalism of central New England; thus Marini knows his early New England Universalism. Marini’s other major scholarly publication is Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture.

Universalist miracle story

This afternoon, the First Universalist Society in Franklin, Mass., installed Rev. Ann Willever as their Family Minister. I’ve know Ann since both of us were non-ordained Directors of Religious Education, so of course I went to this installation (Ann even asked me to give the opening words!). This is a big step for First Universalist — they had dwindled away to almost nothing by the early 1970s, and sold their old church building. But unlike the many churches that closed down during that decade of economic downturn and social turmoil, First Universalist managed to hold on. They met in rented space, and persevered, and grew big enough to afford one full-time minister, and grew some more and added a very part-time Director of Religious Education, and then a few years ago they got big enough and bold enough to build a new church building, and then they needed space for Sunday school and weekday meetings so they held a “Miracle Sunday” and raised enough money on one Sunday to pay for the new building, and now they have added a second called minister to their staff.

You may say, This is no miracle, this is simply an example of perseverance and hard work. That is true. But one thing I noticed this afternoon at the installation service: everyone in that church was pleasant, and kind, and they obviously cared for one another, and the children and teenagers were obviously loved and cared for by the adults. It was just a lovely community to be a part of, even for just a couple of hours on one Sunday afternoon. It is a loving community, not in the sappy sense, but in the real honest sense of a community that loves one another through respect and care. That’s the real miracle: the means by which this was all accomplished was actually not hard work (though hard work was required) nor perseverance (though that too was required); the means by which all this was accomplished was love. Call me maudlin, but that’s what I call a Universalist miracle.

John Murray Sails to the New World

I’m away from Internet access today, leading a workshop on Unitarian Universalist history. While I’m away, I thought I’d leave you with this story, which is part of a work-in-progress, a book of stories for liberal religious kids. The source for the story is The Life of Rev. John Murray, by John Murray, ed. and completed by Judith Sargent Murray; 8th edition ed. L. S. Everett (Boston, 1854), pp. 128 ff. There are lots of versions of this story out there. But I went back to the source, and wrote this shorter version from scratch, putting my own (slightly cynical) theological spin on it. It’s fun to ask people from the congregation, or children from the class, to act out the various parts of this story (someone always wants to do the death scene).

John Murray Sails to the New World

Most Unitarian Universalists don’t spend very much time talking about miracles. We’re not all that interested in miracles, and many of us don’t believe in miracles anyway. But did you know that we have our very own Universalist miracle? Let me tell you about the miracle of John Murray.

John Murray lived in England, with his wife and his baby. John Murray and his wife had started out going to an ordinary church, and people in that ordinary church believed that if you were bad, when you died you would go to a very unpleasant place called Hell. Fortunately, John Murray’s wife, Eliza, found a Universalist church where she learned that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and therefore no one would ever go to Hell after they died. Soon, she brought her husband to that church, too, and they became enthusiastic about their new Universalist religion. John even became a Universalist preacher.

Then something very sad happened. Eliza and their baby got very sick and died. John was so sad that he decided to give up preaching Universalism, leave England, and go to America to start a new life. So he got on a boat that was sailing for America.

Well, they sailed and they sailed and they sailed, and at last they were almost to America. But as they got close to shore, the boat got stuck on a sand bar! They couldn’t get off that sandbar, so the captain sent John Murray ashore to fetch back some food and water.

John Murray went ashore. They were far from any port, or even any town, and as he walked along he saw a very strange sight. He saw a small farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere, and nearby he saw a church. What was a church doing in such a lonely place?

John Murray introduced himself to the owner of the church, a man named Thomas Potter. John asked him what the church was for, and Thomas Potter answered that he had built the church, but that he was waiting for a preacher who would preach about a loving God, who would preach that there was no such thing as Hell. Well, said John Murray, I used to preach just exactly that — I was a Universalist preacher — but now I don’t preach any more.

Thomas Potter grew excited, and said, “You’re just the one I’ve been waiting for! Come preach to me and my neighbors in my church!”

But John Murray said, No, I have to get back on my ship that’s stuck on the sandbar. Well, said Thomas Potter, if your ship is still stuck on that sandbar on Sunday, will you come preach in my church then? Yes, said John Murray, because he was sure that the ship would be free of the sandbar by then.

Days went by.

When Sunday came around, there was the ship, still stuck on the sandbar. And so John Murray came ashore, and preached a sermon on Universalism to everyone in that neighborhood. He was such a good preacher, he kept on preaching Universalism, and he went on to found the very first Universalist church in New England, which is still a Universalist church in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

So that’s our Universalist miracle: because the wind didn’t shift, John Murray started preaching Universalism, and became the most famous Universalist preacher of his day. We know it happened this way, because that’s exactly how John Murray tells the story in the autobiography. It’s our own Unitarian Universalist miracle.

Back in the day…

Are Unitarian Universalists sports-deficient as I have claimed? It turns out that back in the day, Universalists played some serious basketball. A denominational history expert sent me an email message to which was attached a scan of a newspaper clipping dating from 1960, just before the Universalists and the Unitarians consolidated into the Unitarian Universalist Association:

First Universalist has won the Somerville [Mass.] Y.M.C.A. Junior Church Basketball league championship for the third straight year by defeating West Somerville Baptist, 70-14.

By winning three successive years, First Universalist retired the Somerville Elks Trophy, which was presented to Rev. Elmer D. Colcord by “Y” President Norman Ray….

College Avenue Methodist finished in second place, one game behind, when it defeated West Somerville Congregational, 47-18….

The article goes on to state that First Universalist finished the 1960 season with a 13-1 record. That’s an impressive record, but what I find most impressive is the score of that final season game — the Universalists kicked some serious Baptist butt.

This raises an interesting question: were the Unitarians actually good at any sport? The man who president of the American Unitarian Association at the time of consolidation did play varsity football at Harvard, but one wonders if he was an exception rather than the Unitarian rule.

As always, your comments and speculations on this subject — a subject of great import — are more than welcome.

(For the record, I played on my college’s ultimate frisbee team. I don’t think we ever won a game.)

Universalism in New Bedford

I’m on study leave this week, and today I’ve been doing a little research on 19th C. Universalism in New Bedford.

There’s some good stories buried in the mass (mess?) of data below: material about the Universalist Hosea Knowlton, who was the prosecutor during the Lizzie Borden trial; about Nathan Johnson, an African American who was a member of the Universalist church in New Bedford c. 1840; about Rev. W. C. Stiles, who converted from Universalism to “orthodox” Congregationalism in 1880; and more.

Since this won’t appeal to everyone, I’ll put the bulk of the material after a jump…. Continue reading →

Not-so-new biography

Somehow I missed it. John Buescher published a biography of John Murray Spear, the first minister of First Universalist Church of New Bedford, back in 2006. I had read Buescher’s The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and Nineteenth Century Religious Experience, with its chapter on Spear, and had known then that Buescher was preparing a full-length biography of Spear. But somehow I missed the fact that Buescher had published The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear: Agitator for the Spirit Land a year and a half ago.

Spear’s tenure at First Universalist here in New Bedford was remarkable in of itself. Spear was an ardent abolitionist, and managed to attract the prominent African American Nathan Johnson to join the Universalist church — Johnson was active with the Underground Railroad, and is probably most famous for providing shelter and a new name for Frederick Douglass when Douglass finally made it to the safety of New Bedford in 1837.

In midlife, Spear left Universalism to become a spiritualist — and perhaps it because of this that today’s Unitarian Universalists don’t talk about him much. But that doesn’t mean that you have to ignore Spear. You can buy his biography here.