Hosea Ballou

Hosea Ballou ( born April 30, 1771 in Richmond, New Hampshire, † June 7, 1852 in Boston ) was an American theologian and author. Ballou is regarded as one of the most influential figures in early North American universalism.

Life and work

Ballou was born in 1771 as the eleventh child of Maturin and Lydia Ballou in Richmond, New Hampshire. His family had Huguenot -Norman roots. His father was a preacher in a Calvinist Baptist church dominated. His mother Lydia died when he was only two years old. In his youth years, Ballou as his father also understood as a Baptist. This changed, however, as Ballou sermons of universalist preacher Caleb Rich attended. 1789 Ballou eventually convert to universalism and was 1801-1817 worked in various places of the Mid-Atlantic States as a preacher, so among other things, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire ( 1807-1815 ) and in Salem, Massachusetts ( 1815-1817 ). In 1817 he became pastor of the second Universalist congregation to Boston ( Second Universalist Church ), where he worked until his death in 1852.

Ballou was next to his theological work also worked as a journalist. He founded and edited, among others, The Universalist Magazine ( 1819 ) and The Universalist Expositor ( 1831, later of The Universalist Quarterly Review renamed). He wrote over 10,000 sermons and wrote a number of hymns, essays and polemic theological writings. His book A Treatise on Atonement ( German: A treatise on the atonement ), in which he represented anti-Trinitarian positions, exercised even years later greatly affect the Universalist movement. Ballou is often referred to together with John Murray as co-founder of American Universalism. Unlike Murray Ballou was anti - Calvinist -oriented and refused both legalistic and Trinitarian ideas, which earned him the rewriting as an Ultra - Universalist. Ballou was married to Ruth Washburn, one of his children ( Maturin Murray Ballou ) later worked as a known newspaper publisher.