Statements of the Universalist faith

History

How the Profession came about, and what became of it.

• 1770John Murray, a convert of James Relly’s in London, lands in New Jersey and begins preaching universal salvation in America.¹
• 1779Murray’s followers at Gloucester, Massachusetts, form the first organised Universalist church in America. Their refusal to pay the parish tax leads to a lawsuit, decided in their favour in 1786, over whether a Universalist society is a church at all.²
• 1790A convention at Philadelphia adopts the first Universalist articles of faith, drafted with the help of Benjamin Rush. They do not travel beyond Pennsylvania.^{1, 3}
• 1793The scattered societies of New England begin to meet in a yearly General Convention. Their opponents call them infidels, and the Convention wants a short statement of what its members hold in common.^{1, 3}
• 1802At Strafford, Vermont, the Convention appoints a committee of five, Hosea Ballou among them, to draft a profession of faith.^{3, 4}
• 1803At Winchester, New Hampshire, on 22 September, the Convention adopts the draft, chiefly the work of the committee’s chairman Walter Ferriss of Charlotte, Vermont, together with a liberty clause: no creed is to be imposed, and a difference of opinion on any point not stated in the three articles is no bar to fellowship. The Profession’s careful generality is deliberate. It has to hold together the Trinitarian followers of Murray and the younger ministers, Ballou among them, who are already moving towards a unitarian view of Christ, and it does so for a century and a half.^{3, 4, 5, 6}
• 1870At Gloucester, marking the centenary of Murray’s landing, the Convention adopts the constitution that makes it the governing body of the denomination, with the Profession as its condition of fellowship; the liberty clause falls away.^{3, 6}
• 1899At Boston the liberty clause is restored, in the words “neither this nor any other precise form of words is required as a condition of fellowship, provided always that the principles above stated be professed”, and the Convention adopts the “Five Principles” as an interpretation: the universal fatherhood of God; the spiritual authority and leadership of his Son Jesus Christ; the trustworthiness of the Bible as containing a revelation from God; the certainty of just retribution for sin; and the final harmony of all souls with God.^{3, 5}
• 1935At Washington the Convention adopts the Washington Avowal of Faith, which avows faith in God as eternal and all‑conquering Love, in the spiritual leadership of Jesus, in the supreme worth of every human personality, in the authority of truth known or to be known, and in the power of people of good will and sacrificial spirit to overcome all evil and progressively establish the kingdom of God.^{5, 6}
• 1961The Universalist Church of America consolidates with the American Unitarian Association to form the Unitarian Universalist Association. The Profession is never repealed; it passes into the record of the new association and remains the common inheritance of Universalist Christians wherever they now worship.⁶

Sources

1. Richard Eddy, Universalism in America, vol. I, 1636–1800 (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1886), on the first societies, the Philadelphia convention of 1790 and its articles. Read in LibHUT.
2. Richard Eddy, Universalism in Gloucester, Massachusetts (Gloucester: Procter Brothers, 1892), on John Murray’s congregation and its case against the parish tax. Read in LibHUT.
3. L. B. Fisher, A Brief History of the Universalist Church for Young People (Boston: Universalist Publishing House), chapters on the professions of faith: the 1790 articles, the committee of five chosen in 1802, Ferriss as presenter and “principal author”, the 1870 constitution and the 1899 principles. Online at Harvard Square Library.
4. “Ballou, Hosea”, Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography: Ballou served on the committee, the Profession was the work of its chairman Walter Ferriss, and its wording leaves room for the unitarianism Ballou was propagating. Read online.
5. Scott Wells, “Statements of faith Universalists have professed” (26 March 2011), giving the texts of the 1790 articles, the 1803 Profession with its liberty clause, the 1899 principles and the 1935 avowal. Read online.
6. Russell E. Miller, The Larger Hope, 2 vols: The First Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1770–1870 (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1979) and The Second Century, 1870–1970 (1985), the standard modern history, for the whole story and for 1870, 1935 and 1961 in particular. Not online; see also Richard Eddy’s second volume, 1801–1886, in LibHUT.