Henry Warren Rugg

Henry Warren Rugg (1833-1910) was an American Universalist clergyman, born in Framingham, Massachusetts, who spent much of his career in Rhode Island. He wrote on denominational subjects for the Universalist Publishing House, including The Church (1891) and Our Word and Work for Missions (1894), a survey of the denomination's home and foreign mission work. He was also a prominent Freemason, serving as Grand Chaplain in Rhode Island and compiling the substantial History of Freemasonry in Rhode Island (1895).

By the 1890s Universalists faced a pointed question: what does a church that denies endless punishment want with missions? Rugg's papers answer it, setting out the principles and methods of Universalist missionary work at home and abroad — including the young mission to Japan, begun in 1890 — and arguing that a gospel of universal hope has more reason to travel, not less. A window on the denomination's self-questioning as it tried to become a missionary church.

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