Universalist History

-1350 CE Egyptian Pharoah Akhenaten, the husband of famed Queen Nefertiti and father of King Tutankhamen (King Tut), reined in about 1353 BC. He was the first royal to proclaim that there was only one God.  His tomb was later desecrated because of his beliefs. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten)

-230 CE Origen argues: Our all-good souls were created before our bodies and minds by an all- good God: sin is a product of free will and not our inherent nature; in the end, all souls are reconciled with god

-405 CE Pelagius argues: There is no original sin; human beings are born with a propensity toward good; debates Augustine extensively…loses

-1637 Samuel Gorton driven out of Plymouth Colony for teaching universal salvation

-1759 James Reilly publishes Union in which he argues: if all sinned in Adam, all were saved in Christ

-1770 John Murray ship wrecks off the coast of Lanoka Harbor, New Jersey, comes to preach universal salvation

-1779 First Universalist congregation in the Americas, Gloucester, Massachusetts

-1787 Elhanan Winchester, The Universal Restoration

-1790 Judith Sargent Murray publishes On the Equality of the Sexes

-1793 Universalist Church of America established, making Universalism a denomination

-1805 Hosea Ballou publishes, Treatise on Atonement arguing: human sin is finite not infinite; sin is action that separates us from a loving God; Jesus was not sacrificed by an angry God who needed appeasing, rather Jesus helped people learn how to be closer to a moral, loving God

-1819 Universalist Magazine weekly paper established

-1825 Thirty-seven men and five women organize the First Universalist Society of Utica

-1833 General Convention of Universalists in U.S. founded

-1856 St. Lawrence University and Theological School established in Canton, NY as a Universalist school

-1863 Olympia Brown becomes the first woman ordained to any denomination

-1899, 1925, 1937 Universalists consider merger

-1917 Universalist Declaration of Social Principles drafted by Clarence Skinner

Unitarian

History

-220 CE Sabellius excommunicated for his argument that God is single and indivisible

-325 CE Council of Nicea Arius argues that Jesus was less divine than God; others later took this to further argue Jesus was human and God was one (thus Uni-tarian instead of Trini-tarian)

-1527 Martin Cellarius publishes On the Errors of the Trinity

-1553 Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva for Heresy

-1556 Frances David preaches against the trinity in Transylvania; later states “We need not think alike to love alike.”

-1568 Unitarian King, John Sigismund, publishes the Edict of Torda which declares that the differences in religious belief must not be punished; faith is a gift from God, no human authority can judge heresy

-1805 Henry Ware Sr. appointed as Hollis Professor Divinity at Harvard, grew the divinity school.