Samuel Chapman Loveland (August 25, 1787-April 8, 1858) was a Universalist minister, scholar, educator and pioneer religious journalist. Many of the ministers he trained went on to become teachers and editors. His unquestioned loyalty and commitment to the denomination allowed him to take active part in the Restorationist controversy while remaining on good terms with both sides.…
Emily Taft Douglas (April 19, 1899-January 28, 1994) was a congresswoman, civil rights activist, early feminist, actress, author, and Unitarian lay leader. Throughout her life she promoted international cooperation for the preservation of peace and for democratic cultural exchange.
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Charles Hartshorne (pronounced Harts-horne—as in “deer’s horn”) (June 5, 1897-October 9, 2000) was the 20th century’s leading exponent of process theism. In his long career of more than 70 years, he vigorously defended the thesis that God presides over an everlasting universe as its eminent creative power and is supremely open to creaturely influence.
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Paul Dean (March 28, 1783-October 1, 1860) was a prominent Universalist evangelist and minister in the early 19th century, a rival of Hosea Ballou, a leader of the Restorationists, and the only Universalist preacher of his generation to remain a trinitarian.…
Joseph Tuckerman (January 18, 1778-April 20, 1840) was a Unitarian minister widely known in his time for his labor of love with Boston’s poor and for his advocacy of social and political reforms on their behalf. He founded and led the Benevolent Fraternity of Unitarian churches.
Harriot Stanton Blatch (January 20, 1856-November 20, 1940) was a leader in the woman suffrage movement, a writer and an advocate for labor reform. She is credited with modernizing a suffrage movement that, by the opening of the 20th century, was listless and flagging.
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Augusta Jane Chapin (July 16, 1836-June 30, 1905), Universalist minister and educator, was one of the earliest women to be ordained in ministry. She was the first woman to sit on the Council of the General Convention of Universalists.
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May Sarton (May 3, 1912-July 16, 1995) left an impressive legacy of over fifty books, including novels, poetry, memoirs and journals. Her appeal lay in her ability to “sacramentalize the ordinary” by probing everyday subjects such as flowers, gardens, animals, changing sunlight and personal relationships in order to find deeper, universal truths.…
Horace Holley (February 13, 1781-July 31, 1827) was a Unitarian minister, a popular orator and President of the University of Transylvania in Lexington, Kentucky. Mary Phelps Austin Holley (October 30, 1784-August 2, 1846) was an advocate of Texas independence and statehood.…
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Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819-October 17, 1910), little known today except as author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was famous in her lifetime as poet, essayist, lecturer, reformer and biographer. She worked to end slavery, helped to initiate the women’s movement in many states, and organized for international peace—all at a time, she noted, “when to do so was a thankless office, involving public ridicule and private avoidance.”…
William Laurence Sullivan (November 15, 1872-October 5, 1935) was one of the most eloquent Unitarian ministers of his day and a spokesman for liberal Christianity at a time when religious humanism was gaining favor. In early life, as a Roman Catholic priest, he displayed exemplary courage when under pressure by papal authority to renounce the ideal of free inquiry in biblical interpretation.…
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Hannah Adams (October 2, 1755-December 15, 1831), an early American historian and pioneer in the field of comparative religion, was also the first American author to make a living solely from writing. She was the first historian of religions ever to try to represent sects and denominations in terms which adherents themselves used and from their perspective.