Adin Ballou

Adin Ballou (1803-1890) was an American minister and social reformer, born in Cumberland, Rhode Island. A Universalist and later Unitarian pastor who sided with the Restorationist party in the movement's internal debates, he founded the Hopedale Community in Milford, Massachusetts, a utopian venture built on his program of "Practical Christianity." He was a leading advocate of Christian non-resistance, serving as president of the New England Non-Resistance Society and publishing Christian Non-Resistance in 1846, and his writings on nonviolence later influenced Leo Tolstoy. In old age he produced detailed histories of Hopedale, the town of Milford, and the Ballou family.

Ballou's public enlistment in the antislavery cause: a discourse delivered at Mendon in 1837, when abolitionism was still a mobbed and hated minority position among the churches. He argues the absolute sinfulness of slaveholding from the same first principles — the inviolable worth of every human being under God — that grounded his universalism and his nonresistance.

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Ballou's early statement of the nonresistance position, from the years of the Garrisonian New England Non-Resistance Society: how the Christian who renounces violence stands toward the state — obeying its just laws, refusing its wars and its oaths, submitting to its penalties without rendering evil for evil. A careful answer to the charge that nonresistance is anarchy, and the seed of the fuller 1846 treatise.

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An address delivered at the antislavery picnic at Westminster, Massachusetts, on the anniversary of West Indian emancipation — the abolitionist festival day. Brief and direct, it shows Ballou the reform orator at work in the Garrisonian heyday, calling conscience to duty against slavery regardless of party, church, or consequence.

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The most consequential book Adin Ballou wrote, and one of the most consequential any Universalist wrote: a complete doctrine of Christian nonresistance — the refusal of all violence, war, capital punishment, and coercive government service — 'illustrated and defended' with systematic rigor. Half a century later Leo Tolstoy encountered Ballou's writings, corresponded with his circle, and honored him at length in The Kingdom of God Is Within You; through Tolstoy the lineage runs on to Gandhi and King. Nonviolent resistance's American theorist was a Universalist minister from Massachusetts.

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The hymnbook of the Hopedale Community: hymns and songs 'for the use of practical Christians,' compiled by Adin Ballou for his experiment in Christian socialism and printed on the community's own press. Temperance, nonresistance, abolition, and universal restoration all sing together here — the worship book of the most radical household in the Universalist family, whose founder's autobiography is also in this collection.

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When the 'spirit rappings' swept New England, Hopedale was not immune, and Ballou gave the phenomena the same grave scrutiny he gave everything: an examination of the principal facts, causes, and peculiarities of the manifestations, open to the possibility of spirit communion yet alert to fraud, delusion, and spiritual danger. Written in the year his beloved son died, it is both an early document of American spiritualism and a window on the movement's entanglement with liberal religion.

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A grieving father's memorial. Adin Augustus Ballou — the founder's only son, being groomed to carry on the Hopedale ministry — died in 1852 at eighteen. Ballou's memoir gathers his son's letters, school compositions, and last days; its intensity of loss illuminates both the man and the spiritualist turn his thought took that same year (see his Exposition of Views in this collection). A rare, intimate document from inside the Hopedale family.

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The theory of Hopedale, at more than six hundred pages: a 'conversational exposition of the true system of human society,' working through religion, government, property, marriage, education, and industry as they would be ordered under practical Christianity. Cast as dialogues between an expositor and his questioners, it is the fullest blueprint any American communitarian experiment ever published — utopian socialism argued from the Sermon on the Mount rather than from Fourier.

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The first volume of the discourse series Ballou delivered at Hopedale contrasting the religion of Jesus and the apostles with what the churches had made of it. His constant method: set the primitive standard — in doctrine, spirit, and practice — beside the accumulated corruptions, and let the contrast preach. The series, edited by his son-in-law William S. Heywood, is the mature statement of the 'Practical Christianity' on which Hopedale was founded.

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The second volume of the Hopedale discourse series (see Vol. I in this collection for a full account), continuing Ballou's systematic contrast of apostolic Christianity with the doctrines and practices of the churches.

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The concluding volume of the Hopedale discourse series (see Vol. I in this collection for a full account), completing the survey of primitive Christian faith and morals against their historic corruptions.

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In his seventies Ballou turned town historian, producing this monumental history of Milford — the town that had absorbed Hopedale — from first settlement to 1881. Volume I carries the narrative history: settlement, parish and town affairs, industry, war service, and (with unique authority) the Hopedale chapter told by its founder. A model of the great New England town-history genre.

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The second volume of Ballou's town history: the genealogical register of Milford families, compiled with the same exhaustive care as the narrative volume. Together the two volumes remain the foundation of Milford local history.

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The record of the remarkable family that gave American Universalism more leaders than any other: Hosea Ballou the theologian, Hosea Ballou 2d the historian and college president, and Adin himself, among many others, all descend from the Rhode Island Ballous chronicled here. Compiled by Adin in his last decade with characteristic thoroughness — nearly nine hundred pages of family history that double as a cross-section of New England's religious and social life.

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The life of Universalism's great radical, told by himself. Adin Ballou — a kinsman of Hosea — preached universal salvation, then staked everything on living it, founding the Hopedale Community in Massachusetts as an experiment in 'Practical Christian' socialism, temperance, abolition, and absolute nonresistance. His doctrine of nonviolence reached Leo Tolstoy, who corresponded with him and acknowledged the debt. Completed and edited by his son-in-law William S. Heywood.

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The insider's history of America's most principled utopia: Hopedale 'from its inception to its virtual submergence in the Hopedale parish,' written by its founder in old age and edited posthumously by William S. Heywood. Ballou records the community's founding ideals, its years of modest success, and — with painful candor — its collapse in 1856 when the Draper brothers withdrew their capital. The essential primary source for the experiment, told by the man whose life's hope it was.

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