Samuel Ripley (March 11, 1783-November 24, 1847) and Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (July 31, 1793-July 26, 1867) played significant roles in the Unitarian movement, especially through their close connection with the Emerson family. Although the Ripleys were intimates of Ralph Waldo Emerson and friends of Boston area Unitarian ministers and transcendentalists, notice of them has been largely confined to mention in works of their better known associates.…
Adams Streeter (December 31, 1735-September 2, 1786) was the first minister of the Universalist congregations in Oxford and Milford, Massachusetts, societies at the heart of the indigenous origin of New England Universalism. According to the History of the Town of Oxford, Massachusetts, Streeter was the “chief agent in establishing the denomination.”
Adin Ballou (April 23, 1803-August 5, 1890), founder of the utopian community at Hopedale, Massachusetts and a leading 19th century exponent of pacifism, was during his long career a Universalist, a Restorationist, a Practical Christian, and a Unitarian minister.
Mary Augusta Safford (December 23, 1851-October 25, 1927), a Unitarian minister of remarkable energy, zeal and dedication, did much to plant and promote the growth of Unitarian churches in the middle west during the late 19th century. The central figure in a cadre of women Unitarian ministers known alternately as the “Iowa Sisterhood” or the “Iowa Band,” she led her ministerial colleagues in their common work of founding and serving new Unitarian churches in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota.…
Horace Mann (May 4, 1796-August 2, 1859), was an educator and a statesman who greatly advanced the cause of universal, free, non-sectarian public schools. Mann also advocated temperance, abolition, hospitals for the mentally ill, and women’s rights. His preferred cause was education, about which he remarked that while “other reforms are remedial; education is preventative.”
Horace Mann (May 4, 1796-August 2, 1859), was an educator and a statesman who greatly advanced the cause of universal, free, non-sectarian public schools. Mann also advocated temperance, abolition, hospitals for the mentally ill, and women’s rights. His preferred cause was education, about which he remarked that while “other reforms are remedial; education is preventative.”…
Theodore Clapp (March 29, 1792-May 17, 1866), an early Unitarian preacher in the southern United States who established an outpost of liberal religion in New Orleans and built it into a beacon of religious moderation, was born in Easthampton, Massachusetts. His childhood memories, he wrote, were laced with the pain he felt at the Calvinist preaching he heard about God’s “hatred of man.”…
Thomas Starr King (December 17, 1824-March 4, 1864), a Universalist and a Unitarian minister, was a lecturer and orator whose role in preserving California within the Union during the Civil War is honored by statues in the United States Capitol and in Golden Gate Park in California.…
Clinton Lee Scott (September 28, 1887-September 28, 1985), a Universalist minister, played a major role in the revitalization of the Universalist denomination during the 1930s, ’40s and 50’s, and also in the process leading to its merger in 1961 with the American Unitarian Association.
Clarence R. Skinner (March 23, 1881-August 26, 1949), minister, teacher, writer and social activist, is widely regarded as the most influential Universalist of the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in Brooklyn into a thoroughly Universalist family-his parents and brothers were Universalists; a grandfather, great grandfather and great uncle were Universalist ministers.
James Luther Adams (November 12, 1901-July 26, 1994) was a Unitarian parish minister, social activist, journal editor, distinguished scholar, translator and editor of major German theologians, prolific author, and divinity school professor for more than forty years. Adams decisively shaped the minds of hundreds of students in preparation for the liberal ministry, and other scholarly professions as well.
George Willis Cooke (April 23, 1848-April 30, 1923), born in Comstock, Michigan, was a Unitarian minister, writer, editor, and lecturer best known now for his landmark history of the Unitarian movement in the 19th century and for his work on transcendentalist writers and publications.