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2009 Youth History Prize Now Posted.
Oliver Spooner's essay "Tomorrow: The Tragedy and Healing in Knoxville" has been awarded the first Youth History Prize. Congratulations, Olivia!
Unitarian Universalist Historical Society Brochure & Pamphlet
If you have a brochure rack or literature table where you could display our new membership recruitment brochure, please let us know! We are eager to increase our base of support and the number of people participating in UU history online discussion, events, and programs. Print your own by following the link in the image to the right, or send a request to membership@uuhs.org
Our own Mark Harris has written a pamphlet entitled Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith. Available from the UUA Bookstore.
Martineau Society Conference and Annual General Meeting in Boston July 15–19th, 2009
The next meeting of the Martineau Society, a British historical society celebrating the contributions of Harriet and James Martineau to Unitarianism in Great Britain and in the United States, will be held for the first time in the United States. This is a great opportunity for those interested in UU History in the United States to learn about the relations between British and American Unitarians in the 19th Century. Please see the following documents for more details:
- Martineau Society 2009 Conference Details
- Boston Conference Schedule
- Booking form for the Conference
- Martineau Society Brochure
New Margaret Fuller Letter Discovered
A new Unitariana collection has been acquired by the Massachusetts Historical Society. A finding aid has just become available, and a heretofore unknown Margaret Fuller letter from the collection is featured on the MHS website:
- Here's the finding aid: http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0304
- Here's the Fuller letter: http://www.masshist.org/objects/
GA: Annual UU Historical Society Lecture 2008
“Self and Society in American Transcendentalism,” by Philip F. Gura (Read it)General Assembly, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida — Saturday, June 28 at 5:00 p.m. — Convention Center 316
The American Transcendentalists sought to realize the Founders’ dream of a truly egalitarian society. But they were deeply divided over how this should be accomplished, one wing championing self-culture, and the other, selfless commitment to the common good. In this lecture Gura will explore how the group’s dilemma continues to vex liberals attitudes toward reform.
Biography of Speaker: Dr. Philip F. Gura is one of the most distinguished scholars of Transcendentalism. He is the William S. Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, Department of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was previously Professor of English and American Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, and before that taught at Middlebury College. He has published many books including American Transcendentalism: A History (2007) and Jonathan Edwards: America’s Evangelical (2005) He is also an active Unitarian Universalist.
Gura is an outstanding scholar in the field of American history and literature. He has just finished the first comprehensive history of the American Transcendentalist movement since 1876. Even though there have been countless biographies of leaders of the movement such as Emerson and Thoreau, there has been no modern, complete history of the movement until now. This is important in terms of scholarship, but Gura is also someone who can give UUs a good perspective on what this most fascinating of UU traditions can mean to us spiritually and socially. Gura is an active UU, as well as a scholar, and can help us see how this important historical movement is socially relevant and can still empower us with a philosophy that was a spiritually integrated approach to life with an impulse toward reforming the world, saving the environment, and finding the divine in natural settings. In his lecture Gura will show how the Transcendentalists sought to reform American society by balancing self and society. This debate animated the movement throughout its history, until, in the Gilded Age, for various reasons Transcendentalism became identified primarily with the sanctity of the individual. This historical legacy will help us understand how to deal with this continuing dilemma in our own lives.
GA: Workshop
#5014 “A Faith for the Few? Class and Unitarian Universalism,” Rev. Mark Harris
(Fifth Lecture of the 2008 Minns Lecture) — General Assembly, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida — Sunday, June 29 1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. — Convention Center Grand Floridian H
Is Unitarian Universalism a class-bound religion? Did the Brahmin elite create a faith that only appeals to a narrow, “cultured” minority? In this Minns lecture, we will explore several groups in our history who challenge us to create a more popular message that can attract a broader spectrum of people to our congregations today. Rev. Mark Harris.
GA: Annual UU Historical Society Lecture 2005
“Hosea Ballou's Treatise at 200,” by Rev. Mark Harris (Read it)
What can we learn from the great Universalist Hosea Ballou's Treatise on the Atonement after 200 years?
These lectures were given at the invitation of the Historical Society at UUHS events. They may be works in progress. To comment on them, use the UUHS Chat.
Ernest Cassara:
Affinities and Animosities: Universalists and Unitarians in the Formative Period
Gordon D. Gibson:
Southern Unitarian Universalists in the Civil Rights Era
Laurie Carter Noble (March 2000):
Who Was Afraid of Olympia Brown?
Cynthia Grant Tucker (April 2002):
“The Whole Story Isn’t for Sissies: Writing History From A Woman’s Perspective”
2008 Wright Lecture:
From Consensus to Conflict to Contact, by J.D. Bowers
The Unitarian Universalist Historical Society has helped to fund the republication of Hunted Heretic by Roland Bainton
Book Description
Michael Servetus, a Spaniard executed for heresy in John Calvin’s Geneva, is remembered as an important Reformation-era theologian and as a physician credited with the discovery of the circulation of the blood through the lungs. His first book, On the Errors of the Trinity, so shocked both Catholics and Protestants that he was compelled to live under an assumed name. All but a few copies of his magnum opus, Christianity Restored, were destroyed shortly after publication. However, the case of Servetus, which has been taken up by Voltaire, Gibbon, and many others, marks the beginning of the idea of religous toleration.
From the Publisher
Roland H. Bainton’s classic biography of Servetus remains as useful and as readable today as it was when it was first published in 1953. This new addition includes:
- A new introduction by the leading modern Servetus Scholar, Ángel Alcalá
- Translation into English of text from Alcalá’s Spanish edition of 1973
- Additions to the notes and bibliography incorporating recent scholarship
- Many new annotations in the bibliography
- A short biography of Roland Bainton
- Historia Mortis Serveti: an account of the death of Servetus from 1554
Purchase book through UUA Bookstore
Our sincere thanks to Patricia Frevert of Skinner House, and to our hard-working Publications Task Force for this project: Lynn Gordon Hughes, Rev. Charles Howe, Rev. David A. Johnson, Naomi King, and Rev. Peter Hughes (our UUHS board liaison).
We welcome your suggestions of other works we should consider. Please contact Peter Hughes, peterhughes@mindspring.com.
Landmark Edition of UUHS Journal Now Available
The UUHS is pleased to announce the publication of Vol. XXVIII, Part 1 (2001) of the Journal of Unitarian and Universalist History, which contains a bibliography of American UU historical items published between 1946 and 1995. Compiled by Conrad Wright, this important resource is, in his own words, an omnium gatherum of works that came to his attention. Monographs, dissertations, and pieces published in scholarly journals make up the bulk of the listing, as he explains in his introduction, but included also are fugitive items on aspects of UU history that scholars have ignored or never gotten around to. Many copies of this edition of the Journal are still available (see PUBLICATIONS link on the top right of the site). You can also access the ONLINE VERSION.
Conrad Wright is the leading scholar of American Unitarianism and among those of the liberal Christian tradition. He was lecturer in church history, registrar, and professor of American Church History at Harvard Divinity School from 1954-1989, and he is now Professor Emeritus of American Church History.
His works include:
- The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (1955)
- The Liberal Christians (1970)
- The Unitarian Controversy (1994)
- Walking Together: Polity and Participation in Unitarian Universalist Churches (1989)
- A Stream of Light (1975) editor and co-author
- Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism (1961) editor
The 144-page issue of the Journal includes a listing by year of publication, indexes of names and authors, and ones that are topical and geographical. “The intent,” says Professor Wright, “is to include material that those at work on a particular topic would want to know about.”
The Journal costs $15, and may be ordered by contacting Paul Sprecher, UUHS, 27 Grove St., Scituate MA 02066, or membership@uuhs.org.