Hosea Ballou: A Story from Our Heritage
Sermon by Steve Edington
October 28, 2007
Two Sundays ago we did our bit here - as did UU congregations around the country - to support our UU Association's effort to get our name and message out before the American public by way of a pretty aggressive marketing campaign. Our outreach collection for today was our final round of taking your contributions to help move this campaign along.
I've noticed that whenever a "let's get the word out on who we are" type of conversation comes up, that conversation can often turn to how awkward and unwieldy the very name "Unitarian Universalist" is. It's a good point. I don't think there's another mainline denomination out there that requires ten syllables just to state its name. Besides that, so this critique - again quite correctly - goes, the very words "Unitarian" and "Universalist" don't really hold the same meanings now as they did for our fore-bearers who first used them. So, the line of argument continues, let's just shorten our name down to Unitarian and take it from there. From a strictly PR point of view, this may not be a bad idea. But when it comes to honoring and understanding and learning from the history and tradition that has brought us to this point, it's a not-so-good idea at all.
I am of the opinion that we are going to experience very little significant growth, as a liberal religious body, as long as we remain confined within the demographic boundaries we seem to have, largely inadvertently, erected for ourselves; more on that in just a moment. But one starting point here, for at least looking beyond these boundaries, is to gain a deeper appreciation for the Universalist side and story of our denominational family tree.
As many of you know, our current denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, is the result of a 1960 merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America - both of which had been in existence on this continent from the time of the founding of our nation itself. I'm devoting much of this sermon today to one of the major players in the founding of American Universalism - a fellow from the backwoods of New Hampshire named Hosea Ballou. I can safely say "backwoods of New Hampshire" because at the time of Mr. Ballou's birth in 1771 in Richmond, New Hampshire, backwoods was pretty much all there was to our fine state.
Two quick back-ups here: This is my third "UU Heritage" Sunday sermon. I started this instant tradition, for the last Sunday in October, two years ago with a sermon on the life and martyrdom of Michael Servetus - who was burned at the stake on October 27, 1553 at the hands of John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland. That Servetus sermon was done on request from the highest bidder as the "Service Auction Sermon" for that year, which was Steve Ladew. It seemed to go over pretty well so I figured I'd keep an apparently good thing going by speaking about a prominent figure in our UU story each year on the Sunday that comes closest to the date of Servetus' martyrdom. Last year it was Unitarian scientist and minister, Joseph Priestly, who's credited with bringing Unitarianism to America from England. This year I'm moving to the Universalist side with Hosea Ballou.
Second back-up: I chose Ballou because, for one reason anyway, because his life and ministry present a challenge to those demographic boundaries I just mentioned. We UUs seem to have a hard time getting outside the box of being a well-educated, professionally oriented, reasonably financially comfortable, and white bunch of folks. Well, as Jerry Seinfeld liked to say, "not that there's anything wrong with that!" At least I hope there's nothing wrong with it since I fall into each and all of the four categories I just named. But we severely limit ourselves, and our message, if that the only box we live in. I do not have a chapter and verse solution to propose this morning as to how we get beyond our class boundaries and biases - granting that it's a conversation we seriously need to have - but I can point to a part of our story that tells how we have reached and operated well beyond these boundaries in bringing the message and hope of religious liberalism.
These are same boundaries that Mr. Ballou - later Rev. Ballou - experienced in his ministry. For even after he got himself out of the back country of New Hampshire; and even after he changed his affiliation from being a Baptist minister, as was his father, to that of a Universalist; and even after he became, in 1817, the minister of the quite large Second Universalist Church of Boston, he and his congregants remained on the lower rungs of the social ladder.
As the Universalist historian, Ernest Cassara, writes, "Hosea Ballou, with his backwoods accent and meager formal education, was no social match for Dr. William Ellery Channing and the other Harvard educated Unitarians who dominated the pulpits of Boston. Ballou's congregation was made up of humble folk who, although they were to make their way up the socioeconomic ladder to relative prominence during the period of Ballou's ministry, were not entertained in the homes of the best families who filled the pews in the Unitarian churches." And then Cassara wryly adds: "It took great fortitude on Ballou's part not to become bitter when he observed the Unitarians, fellow believers in so many (ways), doing oratorical gymnastics to keep from being identified with the Universalists."
So, who was that guy? I've already given you some of the bits and pieces of his life. I'll fill in some more now. Richmond, New Hampshire is a little ways to the west of us here, about 20 miles south of Keene, and just above the Massachusetts line. As noted, this was Ballou's birthplace on April 30, 1771. He was, quite literally, a child of the American Revolution. His mother died before he was two years old, and young Hosea formed a strong attachment to his father, who would later re-marry. His father, Maturin Ballou, as noted, was a country Baptist preacher. The only formal education available to Hosea was three years in a one-room schoolhouse, or houses. But that was enough to awaken his mind to the point that he was able to self-educate himself for...well, for the rest of his life really. His devotion to his father led him into the Baptist ministry, but just at the time that a newly introduced, and quite liberalized form of Christianity - called Universalism - was making inroads into the outposts of New England.
As is often the case when a newly emerging religion is taking shape, there were any number of disagreements and disputes over what constituted true or real Universalism. Such was also the case in the first 2-3 centuries of Christianity itself before settling on the Nicene Creed. But there was general agreement among that first generation of Universalists in America that God was primarily a God of love and compassion - as contrasted to the usually angry and vengeance seeking God of the Calvinists. Such a loving God would not punish people for all of eternity for any sins they may have committed in a short and temporal life on earth. They certainly believed in the existence of sin and evil, but rejected the idea that sinfulness was a condition we were born into with no choice in the matter. These Universalists believed in the Christian God, they revered the Bible, and they believed in an afterlife; but they rejected the predominantly Calvinist theology that was preached in the New England Congregational churches of that time. Universalism, in its first generation form, believed that this loving God would eventually reconcile all souls unto Himself (and He was a "He"), and that no one would suffer eternal punishment - universal salvation, in other words. For all of their initial disagreements, the Universalists were generally united on these major points.
Think about how good that must have sounded - especially to those people toiling away in the little towns, villages, and farms of 18th and 19th century New England. People with, most likely, good minds but little formal education; and who were busting their buns from daybreak to dark just to eke out a living for themselves and their families. Then they go to church on Sunday - their one day off - and hear a sermon about what a bunch of miserable sinners they are, and how mad God is at them for their sinfulness, and how Jesus had to die a horrible death on account of their sinfulness, and maybe - but only maybe - the horrible death Jesus had to endure will mitigate God's wrath just enough so they will not have to suffer eternal punishment.
I can imagine some poor farmer sitting there thinking, "Man, the one day of the week I don't have to work like a dog and I gotta sit here and listen to this?" But, religiously speaking, these simple - but by no means simple-minded - folk, were not given any other religious alternative, except to not be religious at all. And, given the climate of the times, that could get them into all sorts of trouble in their temporal life, never mind eternity. Then along came the Universalists, with the message I just spoke of. And they came with their marching orders from Rev. John Murray, the British born founder of American Universalism who had said, "Go out into the highways and by-ways of your new country, America; Give the people something of your vision...give them not hell but hope and courage; preach the kindness and everlasting love of God."
The one who took up Murray's call with the greatest level of devotion and dedication, along with his spiritual and intellectual vigor, was Hosea Ballou. For while Murray planted the seeds of Universalism in this country when Ballou was still an infant, it was Hosea Ballou who nurtured and pruned and tended the garden clear up until his death in 1852. By that time Universalism had become one of America's major Protestant denominations. Ballou served Universalist congregations in Dana, MA, Barnard, VT, Portsmouth, NH and Salem, MA before the 35 years he spent at the Universalist Church in Boston - that ministry that ended when he died. While serving these churches, he also became the major shaper and definer of both the theology and structure of Universalism for the first half of the 19th century.
One of the first attempts those early Universalists made to codify - to get down in writing - their still emerging version and vision of liberal Universalist Christianity, was adopted by a gathering of those first generation of Universalist ministers over in Winchester, New Hampshire in 1803. It was called, appropriately enough, the "Winchester Profession." In one of my sillier moments I once tried to figure out a way of doing a variation on the song "Winchester Cathedral" by substituting "Winchester Profession." It didn't work out too well. That's a good thing.
There are two pieces of Ballou's legacy that I want to leave you with today. One I've been alluding to all along here this morning. Ballou, and the Universalists, clearly demonstrated that the message and appeal of religious liberalism can cut across class lines. As I said earlier, I don't have a magic, or easy to implement, formula for getting us out of the demographic box we UUs seem to have gotten ourselves into. One helpful first step, however, would be to recover and celebrate that part of our story, and the side of our family, of those Universalists - largely under Ballou's guidance and inspiration - who did take their liberal religious faith to a very broad swath of the American population. In 1880 the Universalist Church in America was either the 5th or 6th, depending upon who was counting, largest Protestant denomination in America. This is why it's important to keep their story in front of us today.
The other piece of the Ballou legacy I want to leave you with was his humanizing of Jesus. Right around the same time that he was helping to draft the Winchester Profession, Ballou was devoting much more of his energy to producing a document called A Treatise on the Atonement. An act of atonement - as you probably know - is a deed done, or a gesture made, to make right an earlier misdeed. One of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar is Yom Kippur, which means "Day of Atonement." It a time when persons of that faith are to make right, any wrongs, misdeeds, or harm for which they are responsible in the preceding year.
I've got to work in a Red Sox reference here somewhere, so I'll point out that when J.D. Drew hit that grand slam home run against Cleveland in the sixth game of the ALCS, it was an act of atonement for the disappointing, mediocre season he'd had up to that point. With one atoning swing of the bat he redeemed himself to the faithful of Red Sox nation. And now you know the theological implications of all that.
So while the idea of atonement is a sound one, it had, as Ballou saw it, become perverted when applied to traditional Christian theology, which holds that Jesus' death on the cross was an act of atonement - that he, Jesus (who was also God) had to take on in a vicarious kind of way - to save all of us from our fallen nature. There must have been something in his frontier common sense mind that let Ballou to think, "no, this can't be right." So he put forth the idea that it was the life, the teachings, and the example of Jesus who showed us how to live in such a way that we can turn away from the more shadow, or fallen, side of ourselves and live a redeemed, or Godly life. That may sound a little quaint to us now, but it was a major statement at the time. It took the emphasis off of Jesus' death and put it on his life.
While Ballou and his followers did believe Jesus to be the divine Son of God, they stressed his humanity as the saving part of his ministry rather than his death. Ballou's liberal Christianity is no longer the central element of Unitarian Universalism today. But by pointing to the humanity of Jesus, and by holding up the idea that we human beings can be our own "atoners" (as it were) by following Jesus' example of love, mercy, and justice, Ballou actually planted some of the very early seeds for the humanism that now largely characterizes our liberal religious movement today.
So I give thanks for the life of this country preacher who eventually worked his way to a prominent pulpit in Boston. While his homespun manner failed to impress the Unitarians who were all around him in 19th century Boston, he has left him impression on us all the same. Remember him well and honor his legacy.
Stephen Edington
October 28, 2007
