Histories-Herstories of the UU Society in Stamford:

The Stage

The Rev. Ron Sala

Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

April 6, 2003 

 

Hell

I grew up in the suburbs. How many former suburban kids here? Yes, the great American heartland. My particular piece of the heartland was Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, there’s a town called Centralia. Have you heard of it? We drove through there on a school trip once. Quiet little town. Very quiet—since hardly anyone lives there anymore. Under the town, you see, an underground coal fire has been burning since 1962. All attempts at putting the fire out have proven useless. At various places all over town, coal smoke wafts up from the earth. Experts say the fire might burn for another 100 years.¹

I think Centralia is a good metaphor for the childhoods many of have experienced. In outward appearance, everything looks fine. But there’s something wrong. We go to our church and grownups, who presumably know about such things, tell us about a place called hell. Hell is a place, we were told, that, like Centralia, had fire burning day and night. However, in hell, unlike Centralia, the people, or rather their souls, couldn’t move away. Rather, they had to spend forever, not just a lifetime, but all eternity, in there, not just in the smoke of that furnace but in the very flames!

Who were the poor people who would suffer such a fate? They looked just like anyone else, but had not accepted Jesus as the personal savior and lord. At any moment, they could die in their sins and have to spend forever in hell.

This was very real to us. I remember back to my teen days when a neighbor boy and I were working for an elderly man who lived across the street. Mr. Kraus was his name, a nice old guy from Germany. Mr. Kraus was an atheist, we found out. This distressed my friend and me, since we were both Born Again Christians. We knew that if he passed away (and we didn’t think he had long to go) he would go straight to hell. Our efforts to set him right didn’t go anywhere. He told us the whole church business didn’t make a bit of sense to him….

How many people for so many centuries have lived with this nightmare scenario that God would punish people forever in hell? How could a loving God damn people forever for atheism, for disbelief, for not belonging to the “one true faith”? Weren’t they just thinking for themselves? What’s wrong with that? And even the worst of people could hardly have committed enough sin in a lifetime of no more than 70 or 100 years to merit an eternity in hell? How can one believe that God is loving while at the same time maintaining that God wants people to spend an eternity in utter torment?

These are some of the questions that have bothered theologians and other religious people for centuries. And even, today many people struggle with this gloomy worldview. A recent Gallup poll showed that 73% of Americans believe in hell.

But there have been people throughout the history of Christianity who have questioned the doctrine of eternal damnation, either by holding that punishment after death would be limited in duration or by denying the existence of a literal hell altogether. This is the Universalist tradition we are the proud recipients of. 

Roots

Universalism, not as a denomination but as an idea, goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. “Until the sixth century it appears that the prevailing idea was that all persons eventually would arrive in heaven.”² Such Church fathers as Clement of Alexandria; Origen; Diodurus, Bishop of Tarsus; and Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia all disbelieved in eternal damnation.³

It wasn’t until the year 544 that a Church council under Justinian, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, declared Universalism a heresy.

Even so, there were those who bravely defied the ban on believing in universal salvation. Some examples are Archbishop Germanus, who taught the doctrine in the eighth century; Clement, who was active in Germany and France and condemned by the Church in 744), or Duns Scotus Erigna, in ninth century Ireland.

Twentieth century Universalist minister and author Clinton Lee Scott writes, 

The monasteries of both the Eastern and the Western Churches gave asylum to men to whom the salvation of all persons was a cherished conviction. There were also among the various dissenting Christian sects, the Albigenses, the Lollards, the Men of Understanding, and especially the German Mystics, not only the seeds of the future flowering of Universalism, but also example of the outright teaching that eventually all … would be restored to God.”⁴ 

Then, in England, in 1749, James Relly published a book called Union, which claimed the Christ’s atonement on the cross guaranteed salvation not just for some but for all. A young man named John Murray vigorously resisted Relly’s ideas until he himself became convinced of them. He preached universal salvation in England until the death of his son and wife and an arrest for the debt he incurred for their medical care persuaded him to sail to America, intending never to preach again. But like Jonah of old, a sea journey was not to be the end of his career.⁵

After his ship ran aground at Good Luck, New Jersey, Murray encountered a certain Thomas Potter who also believed in universal salvation. Mr. Potter had built a chapel and prayed God to send him a minister to preach in it. Though he was reluctant at first, Potter convinced Murray to preach again, and he soon applied himself wholeheartedly to the task. He preached in New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Connecticut, before settling in Gloucester, Massachusetts for a permanent ministry.⁶

John Murray wasn’t alone in proclaiming universal salvation in the new world. There were other preachers traveling the highways and byways of America in the late eighteenth century with the same message, but Murray is remembered for his extraordinary vigor and wide influence. 

Theology

There were other strains of American universalism, such as the preaching of the Frenchman George de Benneville and the German spiritual Reformers in the Mid-Atlantic States. But New England Universalism was mainly of the James Relly school, believing that, while each person is born in original sin passed down from Adam, that sin was overcome for all by Christ on the cross.⁷

I have opened our 1870 Bible to a favorite Universalist verse, 1 Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Universalists were theological radicals in the eyes of the orthodox of their time and ours. All the same, they appear quite theologically conservative by the standards of Unitarian Universalism today. They held that the Bible was the unquestioned word of God and studied their Bibles diligently. They especially concentrated on close readings of the biblical text that supported the doctrine of universal salvation, often turn considering the various ways Hebrew and Greek words translated as “forever” or “everlasting” changed their meanings depending on context. And I should mention that our own Dr. Dodge, whom Dot will tell you more about, made “notable contributions to Universalist systematic theology.⁸”

Universalists did have their theological disagreements, just like everyone else. Various camps differed on the way universal salvation worked. They especially disagreed on whether all souls receive their just punishment on earth and go straight to heaven or must be punished for a limited time before being fit for heaven. For instance, prominent Universalist minister Elhanan Winchester “thought that a hardened sinner might have to be under discipline for fifty thousand years before he was fit for paradise!”⁹

Those believing in a period of punishment are known as “Restorationists,” because they held that all souls would eventually be restored to God. Those who rejected any punishment after death are known as “Ultra-Universalists.”

Hosea Ballou, one of the leading lights of nineteenth century Universalism, though an “Ultra-Universalist” himself, appealed to the cherished Universalist value of tolerance, saying, “If we agree in brotherly love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.”¹⁰ 

Denomination

Acceptance of differing views has always been a necessary component of our movement, as we have always held varying opinions on the big questions of life. Clinton Lee Scott writes, “The people who identified themselves with the Universalist movement were, on the whole, extremely individualistic. They had come out of other churches that were not to their liking….”¹¹ Does that sound familiar?

That individualism tended to be an impediment to the formation of denominational bodies beyond the local congregation, but over the nineteenth century, Universalism became increasingly organized, first at the local level, then by state and region, and finally nationally. The Connecticut Universalist Convention was founded in 1832,¹² but a national organization, the Universalist General Convention, was not formed until 1866.¹³ The denomination changed its name to “The Universalist Church of America” in 1942. 

Social Gospel

Liberal theology wasn’t the only thing that set Universalists apart. Our early acceptance of women’s ministry is also a point of pride. Contemporary UU Joan Van Becelaere writes,

Following the courageous example of Maria Cook, who in 1811 became the first woman to preach from Universalist pulpits, Olympia Brown in 1863 became the first woman to be theologically trained and ordained by an American church body. In 1870, Universalist Mary Livermore joined the growing ranks of women clergy and soon became known as "the Queen of the Platform" for her preaching on the Lyceum circuit.¹⁴

Universalists were also very involved in what is known as the Social Gospel movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which sought to bring betterment to industrial society and emphasize the ways salvation can refer to the community as well as the individual and to the here as well as the hereafter.

Writing in 1958, in a report on the proposed merger of the Universalist and Unitarian denominations, Max Kapp refers to the many changes that took place in Universalism over the twentieth century. He writes,

In recent decades, a marked effort to broaden the meaning of Universalism beyond Christian dimensions has been made, especially among the younger clergy and laity. Universalism has sometimes been defined as ‘Universe Religion’ or ‘Religion for One World’, emphasizing not the doctrine of Christian salvation, but the universal aspiration of [hu]man[ity] toward the good life as evidenced in the wisdom and ethics of all the great world faiths. Deepened appreciation for the full circle of spiritual discovery has been stressed. The need to transcend primitive and pre-scientific insights in the light of modern knowledge has been emphasized, together with the need for human beings to discover each other as partners in the shaping of human destiny.¹⁵

Now

Today, as a merged Unitarian Universalist denomination, we would find many disagreements with our early forebears, yet without them, there would be no us. And many of their values, including freedom of conscience, the separation of church and state, social betterment, and the preciousness of the human personality are ours today.

I will conclude with a little gem that Dot, our tireless historian, called to my attention. It’s from the directory of the Stamford Universalist Church for 1925-26, but I hope it describes us as well today. It’s called “Our Platform”: 

Big enough to include all in love.

Bold enough to dare to think independently.

Broad enough to see another’s view-point.

Narrow enough to use discretion in its acceptance.

Conservative enough to retain the good.

Progressive enough to seek ever for more truth and light.

¹ http://www.centraliapa.com/

² Scott, Clinton Lee, The Universalist Church of America: A Short History, (Boston: Universalist Historical Society, 1957), 1.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid., 2.

⁵ Bisbee, The Rev. Frederick A. Bisbee, D.D., From Good Luck to Gloucester: The Book of the Pilgrimage, 26.

⁶ Scott, 15.

⁷ Ibid., 35-36.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Ibid., 38.

¹⁰ Ibid., 39.

¹¹ Ibid., 28.

¹² Ibid., 30.

¹³ Kapp, Max, “Historical Sketch Of Universalism” [http://online.sksm.edu/univ/MergerInfoManual/merger2.html].

¹⁴ Van Becelaere, Joan & others “Spiral of History—a ritual of learning” [http://www.cuups.org/content/resources/re/spiralhistoryprint.html]

¹⁵ http://online.sksm.edu/univ/MergerInfoManual/merger2.html