Universalist Church of America

The Universalist Church of America was the principal denomination of Universalist Christians in North America, teaching the final salvation of all souls. It grew out of general conventions of Universalists first gathered in New England in the late eighteenth century, operated under the official name Universalist General Convention from 1866, and took the name Universalist Church of America in 1942. At its height in the mid-nineteenth century it ranked among the larger religious bodies in the United States, and it produced the hymnals, prayer books, and liturgies represented in this collection. In 1961 it consolidated with the American Unitarian Association to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The first hymnbook of organized American Universalism, prepared at the request of the General Convention of the New England states by a committee of three: Hosea Ballou, Edward Turner, and Abner Kneeland. The three wrote most of the hymns themselves, and the collection sings the young movement's doctrine in its own words — Ballou's contributions especially carrying his theology into worship a generation before it was systematized in print.

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The Universalist General Convention's official prayer book, compiled by Abel C. Thomas and adopted in 1857: orders of morning and evening service, responsive readings, chants, and offices for baptism, communion, marriage, and burial. It gave the liturgically minded minority of Universalist congregations a common use for half a century, and its successive printings (this collection holds six, from 1857 to 1887) trace the book's life across publishers from Philadelphia to the Universalist Publishing House.

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Universalist worship was mostly free and unliturgical, but a liturgical strand persisted, and this denominational service book is its chief monument: orders of service, prayers for church and family use, selections from the Psalms, and forms for baptism, communion, marriage, and burial. It shows the Universalist Church of America providing for congregations that wanted the dignity of common prayer without the doctrine of the prayer books they had left behind.

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The official record of the great celebration held at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in September 1870 to mark one hundred years since John Murray's landing in America. Thousands attended; the volume preserves the sermons, historical addresses, letters, and festivities, with speeches by the leading Universalists of the day. Beyond its commemorative value it is a portrait of the denomination at its nineteenth-century high-water mark, taking stock of its first century.

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The hymn-and-tune book that succeeded the Gospel Psalmist for Universalist congregational singing: hymns and music printed together 'for the use of congregations,' issued by the Universalist Publishing House. It carried the denomination's worship through the last quarter of the century; this collection holds the 1874 edition, an 1887 printing, and the 1895 revision (Church Harmonies, New and Old).

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An order of evening worship 'especially arranged for Universalist churches' — vespers being the service through which many otherwise plain congregations admitted a touch of liturgy: opening sentences, responses, chants, and prayers for the close of day. Published in New York by James Miller, it belongs with the Gloria Patri books in this collection as evidence of the denomination's quiet liturgical strand in the 1860s and 70s.

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When the World's Columbian Exposition brought the World's Parliament of Religions to Chicago in 1893, the Universalist Church convened its own congress and put its best minds on the platform. These collected papers and addresses — on theology, missions, education, social questions, and the denomination's place among the churches — are Universalism's formal self-presentation to the world at the moment of its greatest institutional confidence.

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The revision of the old Church Harmonies for a new generation: 'a book of spiritual song for Christian worshippers,' edited with the musical assistance of Charles R. Tenney and Leo Rich Lewis. It mixes the denomination's inherited hymnody with the newer gospel-song and Anglican-chant styles of the 1890s, and was the last major hymnal the Universalist Publishing House produced in the nineteenth century.

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