Albert St. John Chambré

Albert St. John Chambré (1834-1911) was born in London, England, and began his career as a Universalist minister in the United States. He served as a Union army chaplain with the 1st and 8th New Jersey Infantry during the Civil War and was pastor of the First Parish Universalist Church in Stoughton, Massachusetts, from 1864 to 1872; with Thomas J. Sawyer he supplied the notes for the 1872 edition of Hosea Ballou 2d's Ancient History of Universalism. He afterward entered the Episcopal Church, was ordained priest in 1881, and held Massachusetts rectorships including St. Anne's Church in Lowell, where he died on December 1, 1911.

The first serious work of historical scholarship produced by the American Universalist movement. Hosea Ballou 2d — grand-nephew of the theologian and later the first president of Tufts College — traces the doctrine of universal salvation from the apostles through the church fathers to the Fifth General Council of 553, with an appendix carrying the story to the Reformation. Its careful use of patristic sources won respect well beyond the denomination, and it remained the standard treatment for decades.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)