Universalist Church Of America

Universalism was founded in the first century A.D. with the basic principle that God was unconditional all-encompassing Love. According to this theological trend, God, being a Perfect Father, had the wisdom and foresight not to cruelly and senselessly punish but to purposely and constructively discipline his children to cleanse, correct, and rehabilitate everyone for eternal salvation. It supports God’s purpose to make the wrongdoer into a rightdoer. Every person shall be restored to everlasting salvation.

In America, Universalism developed from the influence of 4 sources of the Pietist movement in Europe:
(1)the Protestant pietist movement --The Society Of Friends , Moravians , Methodists , Lutherans , Schwenkfelders , Brethren , and others.

The earliest expressions of Universalism in America were clearly “Pietistic,” a term which simply refers to the religion of the heart. They were most often German. And they were more firmly rooted in the Mid-Atlantic states than New England , though Rhode Island had a goodly share of Pietists .

The universalist Pietists from Rhode Island (called "Singing Quakers,") and missionaries from the Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania , including George De Benneville , visited Thomas Potter in New Jersey, and thereby paved the way for Rev. John Murray .

Universalists were the great explorers in spiritual, religious, and social development.
As early as the 1750's Dr. George de Benneville, ( 1703 - 1793 ) Born in a Huguenot family exiled in England, he arrived in America in 1741 . A physician and lay preacher, was the first to preach universal salvation in America, propagating this belief among the German immigrants of Buck's County, Pennsylvania and latter around Philadelphia and New Jersey.
In the South, Rev Giles Chapman was a former Quaker and Continental Army Chaplain who married into a Dunker family and began preaching Universal Salvation. The first Universalist church in SC and possibly in America was the Freedonia Meeting Hall situated in Newberry county.
In 1753 George de Benneville arranged for the translation of a German book about universalism, ''The Everlasting Gospel'', by Georg Klein-Nicolai of Friessdorf, Germany . Nearly forty years later, Elhanan Winchester read the book and was converted to universalism. He would become a universalist evangelist and finally bring Universalism to institutional life by founding his congregation in Philadelphia with the blessings of the elderly DeBenneville. He was influential in the printing of the Sauer/Sower Bible, second Bible printed in America, contained the proof texts for passages supporting the universal availability of salvation are emphasized by boldface type.
Through the Revolutionary period, Caleb Rich and his extended family abandoned primitive Baptism and preached universal salvation throughout Western Massachusetts and in the frontier territories of Vermont, New Hampshire and later upstate New York.

Around 1780, the Universalists began the struggle for separation of Church and State. All Massachusetts’s citizens were taxed to support the Congregational church of the community where they lived. This was the first case of separation of church and state. the Universalists won their case.
1786---This Gloucester Universalist Church was the first American church to challenge the state tax support of churches. It won its suit in the state court of Massachusetts.

Benjamin Rush , a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an avowed Universalist, was a vigorous foe of slavery, advocated the abolition of the death penalty, an advocate of better education for women and of free public schools, a pioneer in the study and treatment of mental illness, insisted that the insane had a right to be treated with respect. He published a pamphlet on the iniquity of the slave trade, and helped organize the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first antislavery society in America, and served as its president.

At its peak in the 1830s, the Universalist Church was around the 9th largest denomination in the United States.

They were one of the first religious bodies in the United States to oppose Slavery , aided in the passage of the 13, 14, and 15th amendments and promoted the Freedman's Act enfranchising the Blacks.

June 25, 1863, Olympia Brown was the first woman in America to receive national denominational ordination. She set the pace for the largest increase of women Universalist ministers so that by 1920 there were 88 women ministers, the largest in the country.

The Universalists were concerned with the rehabilitation of the soul in its transition from this sinful earth into the purity of Heaven where all persons shall spend eternity with God.
Universalism is a spiritually oriented religion. These early preachers command of Biblical text and scholarship gave them an outstanding strength in communicating with people whose earlier faith development was mostly or entirely Biblically based.

Universalism’s principle of a loving fatherhood of God for all His children led to a religiously oriented social activism. The Biblical message of the universal dignity and worth of every person was the seed bed for Judith Sargent Murray and the women to follow her to expand their horizons and mature toward the fullness of the name Universalism.

EXTERNAL LINKS

--- Murray Grove Retreat & Conference Center - Thomas Potter farm

--- The Sargent House Museum - Judith Sargent Murray house

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Universalist Church Of America