Emerson's Rhetorical Bomb at Harvard Divinity Became Foundational to U.S. Culture With Murfin Verse

 

A centennial edition of the speech that threw down a gauntlet.

It was a fine Summer Sunday afternoon on July 15, 1838 when fewer than 100 people jammed into a small second floor Divinity Hall chapel at Harvard.  The occasion was the commencement ceremony for the latest crop of Harvard Divinity School graduates.  There were seven that year, six of whom were in attendance.  That was more than enough young men to meet the needs of Unitarian congregations that were clustered mostly in New England.  The class selected the main speaker for the day—a youngish former Unitarian minister now making a name for himself as a lecturer, essayist, and poet.  His heterodox views were well known, but Harvard authorities probably hoped that he would mute them in deference to his old alma mater and prevailing Unitarian sensibilities.

That Ralph Waldo Emerson did not do.

Instead, he read an indictment of Unitarian worship and preaching, which he charged was disconnected from life and drained of spirituality. He went on to a critique of Christianity in general as practiced.  He discounted the miracles of the Bible, and rejected the divinity of Christ, mocking the attention to the person of Jesus as a distraction from his message.  He offered novel alternatives to the authority of the Church—the direct experience of the divine.  It was a clarion call for what might be called post-Christian religion.  There would soon be a name for it—a name Emerson did not particularly like—Transcendentalism.

The young graduates may have been inspired by the challenge Emerson laid before them.  Their professors, the worthies of Harvard, the parents of the graduates, the learned clergy of Boston, and both the denominational and public press were united in outrage, especially when Emerson’s Divinity School Address was published.  Despite his soaring reputation as America’s most significant intellectual and most original philosopher Emerson would be banned from speaking again at Harvard for more than 30 years.

The leading Unitarian journal, The Christian Examiner dismissed Emerson’s comments as, “…so far as they are intelligible, are utterly distasteful to the instructors of the school, and to Unitarian ministers generally, by whom they are esteemed to be neither good divinity nor good sense.”

                                    Harvard professor and historian of American Unitarianism Andrews Norton led the conservative charge against Emerson's perceived apostasy.

Andrews Norton, a professor at Harvard, the recent author of the definitive history of Unitarian thought, and with William Ellery Channing a leading figure in the denomination, led the charge against Emerson and his heresy.  The so-called “Unitarian Pope” responded to Emerson in an address the following year to the alumni of the Divinity School at their Commencement reunion.  His lecture, the Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity, indicted the European philosophers Spinoza, Schleiermacher, Strauss, and Hegel, on whom he blamed transcendental error and refuted Emerson by indirection, without mentioning him or taking explicit issue with his views.

When Emerson’s friend and ally George Ripley answered and refuted Norton in a pamphlet of his own, the controversy erupted on a more personal note and Norton, a daring liberal thinker in his youth, spent most of the rest of his life as a neo-orthodox reactionary to the new theological thinking, and in the process muddied his own reputation.

If the establishment rallied against Emerson and his new-fangled ideas, he had his supporters.  Along with Ripley other ministers offered support including Frederic Henry Hedge, who first convened the meeting of what would become known as the Transcendentalist Club, and rising star Theodore Parker who would come to fame as the preacher of his own proto-mega church and as a fiery abolitionist who was also shunned by the closed club of Unitarian ministers.  Channing, who occasionally attended Transcendentalist Club meetings, while disagreeing with Emerson on some points, refrained from joining the attack on him. 

Emerson also enjoyed the support of the growing salon of intellectuals he gathered around him and who became collectively one of the most significant, if not the most significant, philosophical movements in American history.  These included Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May), the Peabody Sisters, Orestes Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, William Henry Channing (not to be confused with his near-namesake cousin), Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller among others.  Together they would amplify Emerson’s philosophy and imbed it deeply into American culture.

The young ministers who invited Emerson that day and the generations that followed them would themselves become, more or less, Transcendentalist.  Within a generation they supplanted the old establishment and bring Unitarianism itself into conformation with the new ideas.  Which is why Emerson later in life could comfortably return to his old faith home and why Harvard, at long last, forgave their most illustrious son and not only invited him back to speak but elected him to the Board of Overseers.

All is forgiven now at Harvard.  The cramped Chapel where Emerson delivered his address is now named for him and the speech is annually celebrated.

But if the Divinity School Address was simply a revolution in the minor American sect of Unitarianism, it would be, at best, a footnote to history.  But its implications reverberated across American culture and resonate today.  In fact, they resonate with even more urgency and reflect the values of a growing generation that has defined itself as “spiritual but not religious.”  Emerson sounds almost as if he were speaking for them.

So what, exactly, did he say?  Here are some samples. 

In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! In its fruitful soils; in its navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone; in its forests of all woods; in its animals; in its chemical ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and life, it is well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. The planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history delights to honor.

But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. Behold these outrunning laws, which our imperfect apprehension can see tend this way and that, but not come full circle. Behold these infinite relations, so like, so unlike; many, yet one. I would study, I would know, I would admire forever. These works of thought have been the entertainments of the human spirit in all ages…

… The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary. It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. By it, is the universe made safe and habitable, not by science or power. Thought may work cold and intransitive in things, and find no end or unity; but the dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart, gives and is the assurance that Law is sovereign over all natures; and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy.

This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. Through it, the soul first knows itself. It corrects the capital mistake of the infant man, who seeks to be great by following the great, and hopes to derive advantages from another, — by showing the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason. When he says, “I ought;” when love warms him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his soul from Supreme Wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment. In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown….

… Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, “I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.” But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, “This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.” The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain…

… Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man. The manner in which his name is surrounded with expressions, which were once sallies of admiration and love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all generous sympathy and liking. All who hear me, feel, that the language that describes Christ to Europe and America, is not the style of friendship and enthusiasm to a good and noble heart, but is appropriated and formal, — paints a demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo. Accept the injurious impositions of our early catachetical instruction, and even honesty and self-denial were but splendid sins, if they did not wear the Christian name. One would rather be “A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,” than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature, and finding not names and places, not land and professions, but even virtue and truth foreclosed and monopolized. You shall not be a man even. You shall not own the world; you shall not dare, and live after the infinite Law that is in you, and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms; but you must subordinate your nature to Christ's nature; you must accept our interpretations; and take his portrait as the vulgar draw it…

… Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. We are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as best we can, a solitude that hears not. I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine. This man had ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head aches; his heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that he had ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history. The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, — life passed through the fire of thought. But of the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a countryman; or any other fact of his biography. It seemed strange that the people should come to church. It seemed as if their houses were very unentertaining, that they should prefer this thoughtless clamor. It shows that there is a commanding attraction in the moral sentiment, that can lend a faint tint of light to dullness and ignorance, coming in its name and place. The good hearer is sure he has been touched sometimes; is sure there is somewhat to be reached, and some word that can reach it. When he listens to these vain words, he comforts himself by their relation to his remembrance of better hours, and so they clatter and echo unchallenged…

… Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, “I also am a man.” Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s.

Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. Not too anxious to visit periodically all families and each family in your parish connection, — when you meet one of these men or women, be to them a divine man; be to them thought and virtue; let their timid aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts be genially tempted out in your atmosphere; let their doubts know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you have wondered. By trusting your own heart, you shall gain more confidence in other men. For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we only were. Discharge to men the priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall be followed with their love as by an angel…

… I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.

 

                           

                                    Emerson about the time of the Divinity School Address.

In reflecting on all of this one lazy Sunday afternoon some years ago, I set down my own thoughts.

Here’s to You, Ralph Waldo

 

You have reached across time

and found me dozing on an afternoon,

reached your hand down

and shaken me by the toe

until I stir bewildered.

 

Wake up! you cry,

the world is waiting to be noticed,

the very autumn air vibrant with miracles,

the incessant sun prying into every dark space

for you, if you will see it,

if you will be it!

 

The deadest of white males,

you have climbed long-limbered

from the pages of a book

splayed open on my desk,

swept your arm wide around the random piles,

            half-read volumes,

half-completed projects,

half-lived life that is my study

and demanded I seize my life,

clear my head of every derivation,

even that from the dust of your own mouth,

and speak at last my own revelation.

 

So, here’s to you Ralph Waldo,

Dreamer,

Darer,

Doer.

 

—Patrick  Murfin

 

From We Build Temple in the Heart, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2004.

The American Unitarian Association—Tap Root of the Unitarian Universalist Association Has its Bicentennial

 

Note—This post required extensive research to refresh my once solid knowledge of this history.  Time erodes things. 

Last Sunday, May 25, was the 200th anniversary of the founding of the American Unitarian Association in Boston by ministers serving mostly in and around the Hub of the Universe in 1825.  The ministers all served self-governing congregations that were affiliated with the New England Standing Order, the former state church of Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. 

The Rev. Sofía Betancourt, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) wrote:

…we celebrate 200 years of the American Unitarian Association at a time when Unitarian Universalism is badly needed in our nation and in the world. We should be proud of the accomplishments and impact of liberal thought and the theology that grows from that thought. Yet too there is trouble born of comfort in thinking that we know best when it comes to restoring justice and building a world and an Earth community that allows all to fully thrive.

So how do we proceed as authoritarianism is on the rise both domestically and around the world? We must remember that we are a sanctuary people—not only in collaborating around the work of justice, but also in providing nourishment and shelter for our own spirits so that we do not give up in the face of all that is.

Happy anniversary, beloveds. May this milestone year be one that galvanizes us in all the ways we are called to live into this moment and organize around our shared values in community.

Liberal preachers had been drifting away from the rigid orthodoxy of hell-fire-and-damnation Calvinism that arose from Puritanism since before the American Revolution.  Inspired by the Enlightenment these ministers were increasingly skeptical of the Doctrine of Predestination, the literal as opposed to symbolic or poetic absolute truth of every Bible story, proof by miracles, and finally even the divinity of the man named Jesus and the Doctrine of the Trinity. 

Rev. William Ellery Channing defined Unitarianism in his Baltimore ordination sermon in 1819 and was a prime mover in establishing the American Unitarian Association.

These differences became more profound after The Rev. William Ellery Channing preached an ordination sermon for Rev. Jarred Sparks at the First Independent Church of Baltimore on May 5, 1819.  The speech published in pamphlet form as Unitarian Christianity outlined a broad platform of belief and gave the movement an identity and a name—unitarianism.  Unitarianism was once an epithet used against non-Christian monotheists  including despised Jews and Muslims and a handful of heretic anti-Trinitarians.  Channing threw it in the face of the descendants of Cotton Mather—Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God—who dominated the Standing Order.  Asserting unitarianism was not even the main focus of the address.  The right to read and interpret scripture using individual consciousness and reason was.

An open breach of the old Standing Order became inevitable.  The traditionalists became the Congregational Church and dominated outside the environs of Boston and port cities.  The fiercely independent liberals resisted any form of ecclesiastical, Presbytery, or other denominational structure.  They adhered to the Cambridge Platform of totally independent and self-governing congregations.  Aside from voluntary reciprocal cooperation of neighboring congregations and informal cooperation among ministers the newly define Unitarians lacked any cohesion.

Andrews Norton, influential Harvard scholars was among the insurrectionists who founded the AUA but within a few years the so-called Unitarian Pope--was the leading voice for suppressing dissent from  a new orthodozy.

The need to compete with the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Quakers, Universalists and other denominations with well-established national and regional press and resources for publishing tracts, pamphlets, and sermons.  After private conversations and letter exchanges William Ellery Channing; Andrews Norton, Harvard Professor of Sacred Literature  known to friends and enemies alike as “the Unitarian Pope;” and Henry Ware, the senior along with wealthy and influential laymen like convened a semi-chaotic meeting in January 1825.  The meeting call stated they were to consider “the practicality and expediency of forming a Unitarian convention or association, to consist of clergymen and laymen, to meet annually or oftener.” 

After a day of wrangling the meeting adjourned with the intent of forming a committee or commission to study and make recommendations.  Like many such committees it never really got together.   According to an account in short play by Nancy McDonald Ladd in UUWorld: 

….on May 25, 1825, an energetic group of younger ministers led by James Walker, Henry Ware Jr., and Ezra Stiles Gannet, all of whom had been present for that historic debate, went rogue. They arrived at the Berry Street Conference in Boston and personally presented their own plan for a new convention of Unitarian clergy. Met with affirmation from certain members of that body, on the very next day—May 26, 1825—they chartered the American Unitarian Association.

 

 Henry Ware, Jr.  was among the young ministers who got the AUA going.

By an amazing coincidence the very same day that the British and Foreign Unitarian Association was chartered across the puddle establishing an official body for radical dissenting congregations in Britain and Ireland after restrictions on their worship were lifted by Parliament.  The kissing cousins were somewhat different in theology and Christology and significantly different in governance.  The Brits adopted a Presbyterian structure.

The new AUA was not an organizations of churches or parishes.  It was strictly a voluntary association of Ministers individual laymen with an interest in fostering the spread of Unitarianism.  It was governed by a Board and employed a part time secretary essentially someone to take notes, open the mail, and assist the elected Treasurer in the banking details of collecting and spending money.  He was also tasked with maintaining an annual roster of Ministers who were understood to be Unitarian in theology and preaching.  Within a few years the annual list became considered a more or less official recognition. 

Trouble began because it was subject to the whims, prejudices, and the reliability of information available to a clerk.  Some who wished to be included were turned down with no explanation, but usually because of some variation from an unexplained “norm” or because of scandal and perceived moral defects.  Andrews Norton became the champion of a Unitarian Orthodoxy while many younger ministers were drawn into the orbit of Transcendentalism or were influenced by Free Thinking.  Applications  were turned down from the suspected “heretics” and even from those who were suspected of any association with them.

Conversely, some enrolled ministers demanded to be removed mostly in protest to Nortons heavy hand.

Although ostracized by Unitarian traditionalist because of his outspoken abolitionism and militant support of Fugitive slaves, Rev. Theodore Parker became the inspiration for the first new minister members of the post-Civil War AUA.

There were many subsequent challenges that the barely organized AUA struggled with—divisions over slavery and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, how close to adopt radical abolitionism or distance itself from it, and especially the inability to plant new congregations outside of New England and to recruit and support missionary ministers.  Unitarians seemed doomed to be just a local tribal sect rather than a vital part of the American religious rights.  Brilliant radicals like the Rev. Theodore Parker showed a new way but were ostracized by the previous generation of rebels.

The Civil War and its aftermath demanded a new organization of congregations rather than individuals with denomination like authority—the National Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches.   A special meeting of the AUA was held on December 7, 1864 which, recognized the   need of enlarged denominational activity with a resolution calling for “a convention, to consist of the pastor and two delegates from each church or parish in the Unitarian denomination, to meet in the city of New York, to consider the interests of our cause, and to institute measures for its good.”

 

 Rev. Henry Bellows, prime mover and first Chair of the Board of the General Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches.

The Convention was held in New York on April  5 and 6, 1865 and organized the National Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches. The name was changed to General Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches at Washington, D.C. 1911.  There was resistance by Cambridge Platform purist congregations and ministers who did not, at least immediately, join the new Conference.  The prime mover was the Rev. Henry Bellows, a practical second generation Transcendentalist with immense organizations skills honed as the leader of the United States Sanitary Commission which supported sick and wounded Federal troops during the Civil War.  From 1865 to 1880 was chairman of its council.

The General Conference did not replace the AUA, which continued to be active as an individual membership organization and a continuing support for Unitarian outreach.  The National Conference, and after about 1875 the semi-independent Chicago based Western Unitarian Conference provided direct support for member congregations and their ministers.  The WCA under the leadership of the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones was the more social justice and labor friendly as well as embracing humanism, Free thought, and inspiration by non-Christian world religious traditions.  The General Conference wanted to keep Unitarianism in the Christian orbit for respectability among the “better classes” of people.  

 

Felix Adler, the ethnic German Jew who was founder of the Ethical Humanist Movement, a close ally of Jenkin Lloyd Jone's  Unity Movement, and a prominent figure in the Free Religious Association.

Many of those rejected who rejected explicit Christian identity formed the alternative Free Religious Association in the 1870’s which flourished for a few years before gradually being reabsorbed by an evolved AUA and General Conference

Former President and Chief Justice served as President of the Conference during World War I and the Red Scare after.  He also purged pacifist ministers and those with connections to radicals in the Socialist Party and Industrial Workers of the World.

The post-Great War period matched accelerating technical and industrial innovation and pervasive shock and disillusion over the carnage.  The AUA and Conference were riven over demands by traditionalists for explicit identification as Christian and demands for or limits on freedom of conscience protections.  Compromises, unacceptable to the most passionate on each side, were made.

Humanism became the dominant tendency of Unitarian and later Unitarian Universalism in the second half of the 20th Century.

Unitarian ministers, and some Universalists who were going through similar struggles, were prominent signatories to the first Humanist Manifesto in 1933.  The Manifesto gained more support during the Great Depression and another looming World War.  In 1941 the American Humanist Association was formed.  Many ministers and prominent lay people retained affiliation.   Their influence grew and by the mid-1950s Humanism was the dominant strain of Unitarianism.  They continued dominance into the early 21st Century.

Along the way the divided rolls and authority of the AUA became cumbersome and expensively duplicative.  In a major reform and reorganization the AUA subsumed the Conference but adopted much of its structure and governance including being an association of congregations.  The AUA continued to honor and accept individual members, but those members would not have much voting power at annual May Meetings (conventions) compared to representatives of congregations who cast important votes based on their membership numbers.

The post-war AUA sought to broaden to include other progressive bodies into a new Council of Liberal Religion.  Outreach went out to liberal Quakers, progressive Congregationalists, Ethical Humanists, and others.  The Congregationalists had similar goal but instead formed the new United Church of Christ with some Reform churches, and independent congregations.  Relations between the cousin organizations remained cordial and they collaborated especially on social justice issues.

  

                                                        The 19th Century seal of the Universalist General Convention.

While the Council never really took off, relations with the Universalist General Convention (later the Universalist Church in America) did.  Universalists had deep roots in New England and a semi-mythological origin story.  Believers in universal salvation by a loving God and radical egalitarianism in this life, they were organized by mostly self-taught preachers  and began forming regional conferences after the Revolutionary War.  The Universalists in the early years tended to be farmers, local merchants and trades people, some respectable if not wealthy gentry, and even laborers and (in some cases) Black Freemen.  The class divide with Unitarians, especial the old Boston Brahman elite,  was intense.  But over the next century and a half each group evolved, theological divisions blurred, and shared a general liberal religious outlook.

The interesting and complex story of the Universalist is too long to consider here.  Another day perhaps.

Prominent  Unitarian Minister Rev. Dana McLean Greeley (center) at his inauguration as first President of the new Unitarian Universalist Association flanked by Rev. Harry B. Scholefield (left) and Lawrence G. Brooks.  The dynamic leader committed the new Association and its resources to the Civil Rights movement and anti-war protest.  He was often on the streets and front lines of the struggle and was arrested.  He set a pattern of UUA leaders as outspoken social justice activists.

In the 1950s the two faiths began sharing religious education materials, curriculum, and even a youth group—Liberal Religious Youth (LRY).  Then they began cooperating on publication.  Serious talks about a possible merger heated up culminating in the consolidation (never say merger) into the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) on May 15, 1961.  The Universalist had to adopt Unitarian congregational polity.  Regional conventions, stripped of any real authority, were allowed to meet but slowly faded away.  Unitarians ended individual membership except for Life Members, the last of whom passed in the early 21st century.  A statement of principles was largely adapted for Universalist practice and eventually became the Seven Principles which were the closest to a statement of faith.  After a lengthy discussion those Principles were replaced by a set of guiding values centered around Love.

                                     The current Unitarian Universalist logo in Pride Month rainbow colors.

The UUA’s continued evolution as the most visible and influential liberal religious voice in North America is also another story on a long and winding path.