John Hamilton Power

John Hamilton Power (1798-1873) was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church who spent much of his career in Ohio and was a determined opponent of Universalism. He published An Exposition of Universalism (1843), which drew a book-length reply from the Universalist preacher George Rogers, and in 1845, while stationed at Delaware, Ohio, he met the Universalist minister N. Doolittle of Akron in a multi-day oral debate at LaPorte, Lorain County, Ohio, that was afterward issued in print. He also wrote a review answering the pro-slavery lectures of William A. Smith.

A frontier debate from Ohio's Western Reserve: John H. Power, a prominent Methodist itinerant and presiding elder, against the Universalist Nelson Doolittle, at LaPorte in Lorain County. The published record preserves the alternating arguments on universal salvation and endless punishment as they were actually urged before a rural audience — a fine specimen of the debate culture that carried the Universalist controversy into every county seat in the West.

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