John Murray (minister)

John Murray ( born December 10, 1741 Alton, United Kingdom, † September 3, 1815 in Boston, United States) is now regarded as the founder of the Universalist denomination in the United States.

Life

Murray was born in 1741 in Alton in southern England. His father was an Anglican and his mother presbyterian ( ≈ reformed ). 1751 the family moved into the area around Cork in southern Ireland. Nine years later, Murray returned to England and here joined the church the preacher George Whitefield on, a co-founder of Methodism. Later, he met with the Welsh preacher James Relly, who had broken with the Methodism and approached a universalist position. 1770 Murray finally emigrated to North America and began to hold first sermons there in the sense of universalism. He lived the first four years with his friend and patron Thomas Potter in the state of New Jersey. In 1774 he moved to Gloucester in Massachusetts, where he founded the first Universalist church in North America in the same. Here he met his future wife Judith Sargent Murray. Although he was suspected to work as a British spy, Murray was at the beginning of the American War of Independence in 1775 to the military chaplains of the American Rhode Iceland brigade of General George Washington. However, other military chaplain demanded his dismissal because he did not believe as a Universalist in the existence of hell. In September 1785 Murray took the first Universalist Convention in Oxford in Massachusetts in part. In 1793 he was a staff minister of the Universalist Society of Boston, where he worked up to a paralysis to October 1809. Murray finally died on September 3, 1815 in Boston.

In his theological thought Murray was completely arrested the universalist thought of the Allaussöhnung. The rejected by the later affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist idea of ​​a Trinity was not doubted by him. Murray also served as composer and author of numerous spiritual songs.