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UNIVERSALIM COMES TO AMERICA

As early as the 1750's Dr. George de Benneville, a physician and lay preacher, was propagating Universal Salvation among the German immigrants of Buck's County, Pennsylvania and latter around Philadelphia and New Jersey. De Benneville continued to preach until his death in 1793.

Meanwhile from the late the 1760's and all through the Revolutionary period Caleb Rich and his extended family abandoned primitive Baptism and preached universal salvation throughout Western Massachusetts and in the frontier territories of Vermont, New Hampshire and later up state New York.

In 1770 a failed disciple of English Universalist John Reily preached his first sermon on the Gospel of Universalism in a Chapel built by a native Universalist who was waiting for a preacher to fill its pulpit. Thus John Murray began his ministry in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. He then spread the message as an itinerant preacher up and down the eastern seaboard with time out to serve as a chaplain in George Washington's army. He found Massachusetts exceptionally fertile territory. On January 1, 1780, the first Universalist Church in America was founded with Murray as its minister in Gloucester.

By 1785 there were enough congregations to form the New England Universalist Conference under the leadership of Murray and the Western Massachusetts preachers. About the same time a Philadelphia convention was established. Other regional and state conventions followed. These conventions would eventually come together as the Universalist General Convention and finally as the Universalist Church in America.

A second generation of Universalist leadership, notably Hosea Ballou, launched a vigorous press and helped the new denomination spread rapidly. Ballou adopted a unitarian vision in addition to his universalism and afterward Trinitarianism virtually disappeared among Universalist congregations. Univeralism spread throughout the Midwest and upper South. By the mid-19th Century Universalism was the sixth largest denomination in the United States and growing rapidly.

Encouraged to model God's love on earth, Universalists became leaders in many social causes including prison reform, mental health, abolition, and women's rights. The church became among the first to ordain women and was the first to charter a national women's organization within its ranks. Clara Barton, battlefield nurse and founder of the American Red Cross, exemplifies the loving spirit of Universalism.

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