Universalism: God Is Love
Barry Bloom, Minister of Spiritual Life
March 29, 2009

Readings
The Universalist idea of God is that of a universal, impartial, immanent spirit whose nature is love. It is the largest thought the world has ever known; it is the most revolutionary doctrine ever proclaimed; it is the most expansive hope ever dreamed. This is the God of the modern man, and the God who is in modern man. This is no tribal deity of ancient divisive civilization, this is not God of the nation or of a chosen people, but the democratic creator of the solid, indivisible world of rich and poor, black and white, good and bad, strong and weak, Jew and Gentile, bond and free. Clarence Skinner, The Social Implications of Universalism. Boston, 1915.

God is love. Love is the chief source of the highest form of happiness, whether in itself or through its activities and its products. In all his being and all his doing, how happy God must be! Love is the supreme inspiration. Love is the greatest hunger of the heart. Rev. B. F. Bowles, Universalist minister, 1857. Husband of Ada Bowles, Universalist minister, one of the first women to be ordained in the US.

Sermon
Two weeks ago you received a musical history lesson from the younger members of our congregation in The Flaming Chalice, the musical written by David Burrows. In it you were reminded of our Unitarian and Universalist history. You were reminded that the word Unitarian described their belief in One God, in contrast to the trinity. The Unitarians became well established in the colonies, then the new America, and by the beginning of the 19th Century, were established in a powerful position in New England with many wealthy and powerful members. Many of the Unitarian clergy were trained at Harvard College. Their churches in New England were the postcard churches of high steeples and historic visage.

Not so the Universalists. The Universalists were the poor cousins who gathered round the corner and down the street in more modest buildings. Their clergy were trained in the school of life experience. Made up primarily of blue collarfolks with a liberal bent, they had little in common with their Unitarian counterparts except a shared liberal point of view. Through the 19th and 20th Centuries, the two found themselves at the same gatherings supporting the same causes, such as freeing of the slaves and creation of the underground railroad, the empowerment of women, universal suffrage, and later, in our era, the civil rights movement, GLBT rights, and many other liberal causes. Same social philosophies, but strikingly different ways of seeing and practicing religion.

The Universalists date their own belief back to the same Greek philosopher Origen, from the 2nd Century AD, whothe Unitarians quote in regard to the trinity. He had also held that we were not condemned by Godas sinners, that we were, in fact, the progeny of a loving God who was interested in our welfare. Centuries later, during the Reformation, that belief clashed with John Calvin’s idea of predestination, that only the chosen are saved. As well as clashing, profoundly, with the dogma of the Christian Church from the 3rd Century on, that we are sinners condemned to burn in hell without the intercession of Christ. To the Universalists, all people were children of God, without exception. And they were all saved as we never had been condemned. God is love, they believed. That was the core of their heresy.

Universalism was brought to this country from England by John Murrayin 1770. He eventually started the first American Universalist church in Gloucester, MA. By 1793 the Universalist Church was organized as a national organization. More evangelical than the Unitarians, they soon spread across the eastern U.S. and Canada. Hosea Ballou would become the most famous and recognized minister of the new faith, and its greatest leader during the 19th Century, but Murray was the founding father. Some stories, then more history. There was a mystical note to Universalism. Hear it in the stories.

John Murray. Lost everything. New World. Thomas Potter. Becalmed in New Jersey. Regained his passion. Was attacked several times‚ this argument is solid and weighty, but it is neither rational or convincing. From Gloucester traveled and founded many churches.
Dr. George de Benneville. Aristocracy. Young man. To be guilloteened. Rider came as blade went up. Later, ill, clinically dead for 42 hours. Left Europe for America at age 38. Started churches in Phil area. Became friend of Native Americans.
Hosea Ballou. Born 1771, a year after John Murray came to America. Greatest thinker tho no formal education. He grew up in the frontier of New Hampshire with little chance to receive formal instruction. His book, A Treatise on Atonement, published in 1805, defined Universalism from that time on. He linked Universal salvation to Jeffersonian democracy. (Was published while Jefferson was president). He said, Each person has certain inalienable rights,not according to their birth or their wealth, but because they are human. Balloufollowed the Unitarians at this point in rejecting the trinity. In the book, he clearly stated the case for universal salvation, and set the groundwork for the later, broader understanding that all humans in the world, not just Christians, were the recipients of God’s love. As stated in a UU pamphlet, The Universalist Church, with Ballou’s writing to inspire and lead them, came to believe in a God who embraced everyone, and this eventually became central to their belief that lasting truth is found in all religions, and that dignity and worth is innate to all people regardless of sex, color, race, or class.
The national organization that evolved was, like the Unitarians, run according to congregational polity, the only hierarchy being one of mutual respect.

In our modern minds, the Universalist beliefs seem filled with common sense, but the differences between the Universalists and other Christian churches of the time were considered extreme. Note this excerpt from Universalism in America by Ernest Cassara. Universalists were viewed with suspicion and hate by their fellow Christians, who considered them immoral and subversive. Universalists were threatened with serious civil disabilities. In Massachusetts, for example, it was argued by many that they should be barred from service on juries and not allowed to testify in court because no one who did not believe in eternal punishment could be trusted with such serious responsibilities. In order to insulate their children from such prejudice and hate, the Universalists created a number of elementary and secondary schools. Beginning in the 1850s, they also created a number of colleges for the propagation of Universalist thought including Tufts University in Boston, St. Lawrence University, and Throop College in California, which became the California Institute of Technology. Their progressive thought was put into action in many ways. The first woman to be ordained by an American denomination was Olympia Brown, ordained in 1863 by the Universalists. She was a strong leader in the movement to enfranchise women with not only the vote, but with respect and equality.

READ OLYMPIA BROWN
Olympia Brown. It can be no possible advantage to a man that his mother was socially a toy, financially a dependant, politically a slave. On the contrary, the stream can notrise higher than its source, and if women are fettered, dependent, ignorant, their sons will be narrow in mind, craven and cowardly. When women are free and independent, and by experience in the business of the world, shall have grown into the stature of true womanhood, then, indeed, we may look for a race of noble men such as the world has never seen. The larger woman’s experience is, the better is she fitted for every duty, the more intelligently can she take any position to which she is called.

From the beginning Universalists reached out to those who were often marginalized in society as they themselves were. A freed slave was one of the charter members of the first Universalist church in Gloucester. In 1889, Joseph Jordan was ordained as the first African American Universalist minister.

A few Universalists made well known contributions to American life:

Horace Greeley, the publisher of Go West, young man, Go West fame.
Thomas Starr King, the namesake for the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, CA, was credited with this quote: Universalists believe that God is too good to damn people, and the Unitarians believe that people are too good to be damned by God.
Clara Barton, the angel of the battlefield during the Civil War, became the founder of the American Red Cross.
Charles Spear was in the forefront of prison reform during the same period.

During the 20th Century the Universalists experienced many of the same growing pains and transformations as the Unitarians and other liberal churches. Humanism swept through both movements bringing a more pragmatic way to see the sacred in life, one without the excessive religiosity from the past. It also launched a debate in both movements that continues to this day about where the truth of our spiritual experience lies. Finally, given their many commonalities, the two merged in 1961 creating the Unitarian Universalist Church.

I personally identify with the Universalists. I appreciate both sides of our tradition, but I am more Universalist than Unitarian. What I really appreciate, however, is the wholeness of the two together, the left and right brain parts brought together into whole brain function, if you will. The head and the heart, the mind and the spirit. Part of my appreciation for the Universalists comes from putting myself in their shoes during their earlier years. Remember that they lived in a world in which the Christian religion was black and white. No dissenting views allowed. The dogma of the church taught that ever since Adam, Eve, and the snake, that Man was depraved, that we were sinful and evil, that Christ died for our sins, the Great Redeemer, and that only if we accepted Christ as our savior and be baptized into the faith were we saved. So saved, we would go to heaven for eternity when we died. If you were not saved, you would go to hell and suffer eternal damnation.

Then along came the Universalists saying that we were not inherently evil, but were inherently good. That God was a God of love, that he loved all of us, without exception. That God, himself, was love. There was nothing you needed to do to prove yourself worthy, just by being here we were worthy.

And that all of us would go to heaven! There was nothing we had to do to gain admittance other than being a much loved child of God, which included everybody on earth! Well, you see, in the context of the time, how those beliefs were threatening to others. Our Universalist ancestors were deeply courageous to carry their heretical belief to the people of this country. And they were not shy about it. As I said earlier, they were great evangelizers, bringing their joyful belief to many in the East and Canada especially.

Their joy was what you remember. Their services were filled with the music of joy and celebration. There were demonstrative energetic accolades to the God of love. Because of the threat that they represented to the rest of the community, they came together to truly support and love one another even more, as an extension of their God of love. From all reports, they were warm, open hearted, and nurturing. I’m sure that it was wonderful and freeing to them, and frightening to all those around them who had been taught to be afraid of a damning God. Remember that the first Universalist church, in Gloucester, was only a few miles down the road from Salem and its witch trials. Always the dark and the light live in close proximity.

There is much to learn from our twin traditions. The head and heart held out to us to embrace, both of great value. Head, heart, and spirit combined to lead us into the best of who we can be as believers in a liberal religion. To lead us to open our hearts to all, to practice love learned from a Universalist God who embodied love itself, all the while utilizing our experience to bring healing to a broken world.
Such is our heritage. May we be worthy of it. Amen.