I’m Saved . . . Right?

black and white sketch of hosea ballou

Delivered Sunday, July 31, 2016 by Worship Associate Jay Kiskel

Poor Jack. That’s not his real name, but names don’t really matter in this instance. I only invite you to join me in the sense of despair I felt for Jack back in the 1960’s.

I met Jack in the ninth grade after eight years at St. Philomena’s Catholic School. Jack and I had a great friendship throughout high school. At our 40th high school class reunion, we sat and shared our comings and goings over the past decades.

However, back in the 1960’s, there was a dark yet never spoken reality. Jack had not a snowball’s chance in heck of getting into heaven. He never attended St. Philomena’s School. Why would he? He was a Protestant. Lutheran or maybe Presbyterian. It didn’t matter. The key point was that he was not a Catholic.

If I had learned anything in my eight years in Catholic school it was that Catholicism was the true religion of Jesus Christ.

Consider the scriptures. Mathew chapter 16 verse 18:

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

Remember that Peter was a disciple of Jesus. . . a real insider.   And if building on Peter the Rock was not enough to impress the pants off an impressible grade-schooler, the next verse in that chapter sealed the deal when Jesus announced to Peter,

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”

I am sure you get it now. Drenched in a Catholic catechism taught by Dominican nuns, the keys given to Peter by Jesus himself, in my mind, perfectly fit the locks on the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica.

And I was with those guys.

I had a shot at everlasting life in heaven.

My other non-Catholic friends were staring at the same hopelessness facing Jack.

Steve, with whom I traveled on a parent-free trip to the 1969 World’s Fair, was more doomed. He was a Jew.

And Laurie – what were her chances of salvation? She was the most doomed of all. She was a Unitarian.

I share these once closely held beliefs as a way for me to express the empathy I felt for Hosea Ballou, a champion of our Universalist faith tradition, as I learned of his conversion from the strict dogma of Calvinist gloom to the energizing holiness and happiness of Universalism.

Hosea Ballou was born in 1771 in a small town that was not much more than a bit of cleared wilderness in the southern part of New Hampshire. Hosea was the 11th and final child of Maturin and Lydia Ballou.

His father was a pious Calvinist with an authentic desire to discharge his duties to God. At the time of Hosea’s birth, he was a Baptist clergyman shaped by that Calvinist dogma.

A Calvinist dogma that included an underlying belief in the sinful nature of all men and the predestination by God to extend everlasting salvation to a small elect while condemning all others to damnation.

You can imagine, then, the fear of a father regarding the potential fate of his children.

In a biography written by a contemporary of Hosea Ballou, Thomas Whittmore, the author wrote of Hosea’s father’s concern for his children

“He saw them exposed to the wrath and curse of God. He desired some evidence that they were of the elect.”

When I read those sentences, I was instantly reconnected with my own personal sense of election as a young Catholic. I was among the few who would be saved. Jack, Steve and Laurie – well their fates were far more uncertain.

Over time, my beliefs have been transformed. I am now in the school of thought shared by the majority of Unitarian Universalists as Hannah noted in her reading; that everlasting salvation in the afterlife is no longer a relevant spiritual outcome.

In many ways, I believe Hosea Ballou’s search for his spiritual identify was no different from today’s UU commitment to our 4th Principle, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

Please note that Hosea Ballou did not invent Universalism. The belief that a loving God would never sentence anyone to eternity in Hell has been around since the earliest days of Christianity.

The modern acceptance of this notion of universal salvation is frequently traced to Great Britain in the mid-eighteenth century.   Among the early adherents of this notion of universalism was an Irish preacher named John Murray.

John Murray is often considered among the founders of the American Universalist movement. He departed England around the time of Hosea’s birth. Quite accidently Murray landed on the shores of New Jersey. He preached his Universalist message in New Jersey and later moved to New England where the aging Murray and the young Ballou eventually met.

Murray was not alone in preaching universal salvation.

As John Murray was preaching in New Jersey, a congregation of Universalist Baptists in Philadelphia was organized, which had among its members Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

And there were others.

It might be said the idea of universal salvation is a self-evident truth – open to discovery to anyone with an inquiring mind.

Young Hosea had the inquiring mind, but heard only whispers of this Universalist preaching in his small New Hampshire hamlet.

More prevalent at this time in his home was a revivalist spirit called the First Great Awaking that was sweeping the country.   This awakening was characterized by fire-breathing preaching demanding that men accept their sinful nature and seek immediate forgiveness from a God angered by their sins.

So at the age of 19, influenced by family tradition and this revivalist fervor, Hosea Ballou joined his hometown Baptist church, doing so, in his own words, with “the sincerity of my heart.”

Ballou fully embraced the church’s Calvinist belief in the sovereignty of God and God’s right to do with his creations as he wished.

Nonetheless, the Universalist message did find its way to Hosea through travelling ministers who would occasionally visit Hosea’s hometown and discuss the doctrine of Universalism.

Bear in mind, this was not the time when one would say,

“Oh, this afternoon, Brother Caleb will be discussing the Universalist doctrine that completely undermines the tenets of my Calvinist faith. I think I’ll pop over and listen.”

On the contrary, in Hosea’s time the doctrine of Universalism was denounced as the most dangerous heresy ever propagated.

So when these travelling ministers shared their Universalist message, Hosea gave a good defense of his Calvinist beliefs. He parried away the Universalist challenges with fine resolve, but conceded doubts were legitimately raised in the faith he had accepted with the sincerity of his heart.

To establish a grounding, let’s illustrate five points that, with some simplicity, outline Hosea’s beliefs:

  1. God is an infinite and all-knowing being.
  2. God has an unquestioned right to do what he will with his own creations.
  3. God’s creations broke divine law by tasting the forbidden fruit and thus became sinners.
  4. As sinners, men were incapable by themselves of coming into God’s grace; thus God predestined those to be saved and those to be damned.
  5. God sacrificed his son to atone for man’s sin; but this sacrifice was for the elect … and not for all.

Hosea was troubled by two aspects of this belief system.

One, he was troubled by the idea of God’s predestination, that only the elect would be saved. This notion of God putting his finger on the scales of justice . . . saving some . . . condemning others . . . was a key point of departure that the Universalists took regarding Calvinist doctrine.

Ballou pondered that if all men were equally guilty of the violation of divine law, why were some deemed less guilty by God and thus saved while others, guilty to the same degree, were subject to eternal damnation?

He approached this dilemma by examining scripture. He firmly held that all beliefs must be grounded in scripture. And his examination of scripture revealed there was no basis for the eternal damnation. On the contrary, he found that scripture taught Universal salvation.

Secondly, Ballou faced a moral dilemma. Could any man who sought to be god-like close his eyes to the idea of eternal misery? Could God himself be any less merciful?

Since God had the power and right to save some and condemn others, he equally had the power and right to save all.

Thus conflicted, Hosea Ballou, barely 20 years old, travelled with his elder brother to Westfield, a small city in central New York State.

Hosea’s elder brother seeing his younger brother slipping into a Universalist embrace insisted that Hosea speak of his Universalist leanings with Elder Brown, the minister of Westfield.

The young Hosea met with Elder Brown with the earnest hope that the conversation would help him reconcile his emerging Universalist leanings with his traditional Calvinist beliefs.

With Ballou’s insistence that beliefs be grounded in scripture, Elder Brown requested that the young Ballou turn to a scriptural passage that supported Universal salvation.

Ballou opened his Bible and read Romans chapter 5, verse 18:

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

Let me restate this key passage one more time, but quote from a more modern translation that comes from The New Living Tradition:

 Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.

Hosea recalled that having read the verse, Elder Brown rose and began to speak loudly but said nothing to the subject.

When Hosea implored Elder Brown to explain why this scriptural verse did not indeed prove that God desired universal salvation, that Jesus’s sacrifice had re-established a “right relationship” between man and God and a “new life for everyone,” Hosea was taken aback when Elder Brown simply “dictated a discontinuance” of the conversation.

This encounter with a senior Calvinist minister instilled in the young Hosea a greater confidence in his own scriptural interpretations and moral feelings.

Thus, upon his return to his home, Hosea declared that he was a Universalist.   Whereupon, his church expelled him.

Ballou would continue to expand his understanding of Universalism.   He would eventually diverge from other elder statesmen of the Universalist movement, such as John Murray, and reject the idea of the Trinity of God.

In 1802, the annual Convention of Universalists assigned Ballou and other leading Universalist thinkers to a committee to draft a profession of faith. That effort resulted in the development of the Winchester Profession of Faith of 1803.

This profession of faith provided the Universalist movement its first statement of shared values. It is printed in today’s Order of Service.

Two years later, in 1805, Hosea Ballou published his seminal paper entitled A Treatise on Atonement, in which he reinforced the ideas of God’s love and that God’s love will lead to universal holiness and happiness for all people.

Time does not permit a more detailed exploration of Ballou’s 1805 paper. Its impact on the Universalist movement should not be under valued.

I would argue that more than the Winchester Profession of Faith, Ballou’s Treatise on Atonement provided the Universalist movement with a more powerful theological argument for the spread its message.

Ballou spent the last 35 years of his life from 1817 to 1852 as the pastor of the Second Universalist Church of Boston.

And so nearly 2 1/4 centuries years, after Hosea Ballou declared, “I am a Universalist,” we gather here today in this Unitarian Universalist sanctuary.

We have been given a shared inheritance filled with the benefits of Hosea Ballou’s spiritual journey and the spiritual journeys of many others who have come before us.

What has become apparent as I have journeyed, read and pondered the planting of our spiritual roots is that nothing was easy.

Each generation has been asked to continue the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Each generation has been asked to add to our overall body of a spiritual discovery.

Each generation has been asked to uphold our values in our day-to-day actions.

Each generation has been asked to preserve the memories of those who came before us.

I can measure now the distance I have traveled in my own faith journey and embrace the joy that Jack, Steve and, especially Laurie, have has much access to happiness and holiness as I do.

My closing hope is that my sharing of fragments of our Unitarian and Universalist heritage will help us develop an appreciation of our place in our time in the history of our faith movement.

May it be so.