John Murray

John Murray (1741-1815) is commonly regarded as the founder of organized Universalism in America. Born at Alton in Hampshire, England, and raised under strict Calvinist influences, he embraced universalist views before emigrating to America, where he preached his first American sermon in New Jersey in September 1770. He settled at Gloucester, Massachusetts, where his followers organized one of the first Universalist churches in the country, and from 1793 he was pastor of the Universalist society in Boston until a stroke in 1809 ended his active ministry. His Letters, and Sketches of Sermons (1812) and his much-reprinted autobiography made him the most widely known voice of early American Universalism.

The nearest thing to a body of divinity John Murray left. Assembled near the end of his life in three volumes, the set gathers his correspondence with inquirers and converts alongside outline sketches of his sermons — all steeped in the Rellyan theology of union with Christ that he preached, essentially unchanged, from his landing in 1770 onward. This first volume shows the father of American Universalism as pastor, counselor, and controversialist in his own words.

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The second volume of Murray's three-volume legacy set continues his correspondence with inquirers, doubters, and young preachers, interleaved with further outline sketches of his sermons. The letters show the pastoral side of the Rellyan gospel — how the doctrine of union with Christ was applied to grief, guilt, and the fear of death in the lives of ordinary correspondents scattered from Maine to the Carolinas.

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The concluding volume of the set Murray prepared at the end of his life, completing the fullest record of his thought in his own words. With his autobiography (also in this collection), these three volumes are essentially the whole literary estate of the father of American Universalism — a preacher who, by his own confession, was always readier to speak than to write.

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The autobiography of the 'Father of American Universalism,' completed after his death by his wife, the essayist Judith Sargent Murray. It tells one of the founding stories of American religion: Murray, a bereaved London preacher who had abandoned the ministry, lands by accident on the New Jersey shore in 1770 and meets Thomas Potter, a farmer who had built a chapel and was waiting for God to send him a preacher of universal salvation. Murray went on to found the Gloucester church, defend its legal rights, and lead the movement's first generation.

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