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Hosea Ballou was born in Richmond, N.H. on April 30th, 1771. His father was a Baptist minister in the Calvinist tradition, who moved his family to Richmond to act as a minister for Richmond’s Baptist congregation, while also working as a farmer to support his family. Ballou’s family lived in poverty, and Ballou received no formal education as a child. His father taught him to read and write, with the Bible being his main source of reading material. He wanted to join the ministry from an early age, but as he continued to study the Bible, he found that his views diverged from the Calvinistic Baptist worldview in which he was raised. In 1789, he began preaching a doctrine of universal salvation on a Calvinist basis. He continued to examine and question the tenets of Calvinism, and by 1794 he was serving as the pastor of a Universalist congregation in Dana, Massachusetts.
On September 21-22, 1803, a committee of the Churches and Societies of Universalists of the New England states was convened in Winchester, NH. Ballou was one of the committee members in attendance. Led by committee chairman Walter Ferriss, the purpose of the meeting was to officially adopt the first Universalist Confession of Faith, which became known as the Winchester Profession. A historical marker commemorating this event was erected in Winchester at the site which housed the First Universalist Society of Winchester for more than a century, before it was destroyed by fire on September 12, 1909. While Ballou was not a major contributor to the proceedings in Winchester, his contributions throughout his life were so influential on the development of Universalist thought that his image is the frontispiece of the Universalist Publishing House’s 1903 Centennial of the Universalist Profession of Faith, commemorating the Winchester Profession.
He preached at congregations in Barnard, VT; Portsmouth, NH; and Salem MA; before settling at the Second Universalist Church of Boston 1817, where he served as pastor until his death in 1852.
Ballou was a prolific thinker and writer. He founded The Universalist Magazine in 1819, The Universalist Expositor in 1813, and The Gospel Visitant in 1811. He authored approximately 10,000 sermons as well as a number of other theological works. He is best known for Notes on the Parables (1804), A Treatise on Atonement (1805) and Examination of the Doctrine of a Future Retribution (1834), and is considered one of the founders of Universalism. Ballou rejected both the doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of the elect and the damned, and believed people had a God-given right to happiness, which echoes the Declaration of Independence’s famous line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, when Ballou was 5 years old, and the influence of early American ideals can be seen in his personal ideology and throughout his work. He contributed to the shift of Universalism away from a Trinitarian belief system to a Unitarian one, and advocated for the separation of church and state, in a time when some religious groups received support in the form of government funding. Ballou held a radical position on a controversial issue amongst Universalists, writing and preaching that there was no period of punishment after death before salvation was achieved, but rather that all souls were purified by God’s love.
Universalism marks the beginning of a trend in the ideologies of many Protestant groups in the United States away from Calvinist ideas of predestination and “total depravity,” and toward ideas of a more benevolent, forgiving God. By the end of the 19th century, 1 in 8 Americans considered themselves Universalists.
Ballou was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and Watertown, MA, where his grave is marked by a statue executed by the American sculptor Edward A. Brackett. A historical marker commemorating Ballou was erected in Richmond, NH in 1969.