Lecanto, Florida
The Rev.
Lloyd H. Dunham
I’ll bet you haven’t had very many ex-convicts in your pulpit! Well, you’ve got one today! My name is Abner Kneeland. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that great champion of religious freedom, made me pay for my religious freedom – sixty days in jail for what they called blasphemy! But then I see they apparently named a section of a street for me in downtown Boston! I guess they had a guilty conscience.
The point is, of course, that you can never take your religious liberty for granted. There are always those who think differently who stand ready to deny you your freedom. The price of freedom in my day was high. It may not be high right now for you – but in other parts of the world people are dying for religious freedom!
May I tell you my story?
My family was among the earliest settlers in the early 1600’s. I was born on April 7, 1774 in Gardner,
Massachusetts, a small clearing in the wilderness about fifty miles west of
Boston. My parents already had five
older children. My father earned a
living as a farmer and a carpenter. I
went to a little school in Gardner, then to the Academy in Chesterfield, New
Hampshire. While my schooling was
limited I worked hard to learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Thanks to my father I also learned the
skills of a carpenter. By the time I
turned twenty-one I was in charge of the school at Dummerston, Vermont. A couple years later I got married.
While I was teaching school the Baptist Church in nearby
Putney asked me to supply their pulpit and then called me to be their
pastor. That was fine for a while with
me being a Baptist pastor. But then I
got my hands on a book by that great Universalist Elhanan Winchester of
Philadelphia. You ought to invite him
here sometime! Great man! He helped me see important new things which
I started preaching. However those
Baptists were not happy with my new sermons.
I found that I was headed straight for a heresy trial
I quickly got a Universalist license to preach and moved to
the Universalist Church in Langdon, New Hampshire. It was there that I was ordained in 1805. Hosea Ballou preached for that service and
received me into fellowship.
I was in Langdon for six years and gain quite a good
reputation for my preaching and writing.
Believe it or not, I convinced four neighboring orthodox preachers to
come over and join us in the Universalist ministry! During that time I also managed to serve two years in the New
Hampshire legislature.
In 1807 I was elected clerk of the Universalist General Convention and held office for eight years. Hosea Ballou and I were named to a committee to put together a Universalist hymnbook. That book finally had four hundred ten hymns. I wrote one hundred thirty-eight of them, Someone has said mine weren’t very good. I notice you don’t have a single one of them in your hymnal!
I really liked Langdon, New Hampshire. It was a fruitful and pleasant ministry –
and I felt I made a good mark for myself in the denomination. But then I lost my young wife and child and
I just had to get away from those sad memories.
I moved to the new church in Charlestown,
Massachusetts. This church had been
formed by folks who found John Murray a little out of date. They wanted more liberal ideas, like those
of Hosea Ballou. Hosea was there to
preach the sermon at my installation and the dedication of their new building –
in 1811. It was a grand day!
But things were tough in Charlestown. Our young members had small incomes and soon
the church couldn’t pay my salary.
Fortunately I had married a widow who had been left a large store out in
Salem. I was able to add to my income
by helping my wife in the business. I
soon found out I couldn’t be a good pastor and a good businessman at the same
time – so after three years at that church
I resigned.
Later my fellow ministers claimed to hold this against me
but I think they really objected to what they called my heretical ideas. You see I came to believe that the valuable
teachings of the Bible came out of human experience and not divine revelation. Most Universalists didn’t see it that
way. There was that issue of religious
liberty again. How free could I really
be?
I never really intended to give up the ministry. In Charlestown it was a matter of financial
necessity. Finally I took a small
church in New York state for two years before being called to the longest and
most successful pastorate of my career.
This was at the Lombard Street Universalist Church in Philadelphia in
1817.
Lombard Street Universalist Church had had a sad history and
had been without a settled pastor for six years, even though the church dated
back to 1790. All of my predecessors
had been Trinitarians and serious Calvinists.
At the outset I set forth my religious convictions which were both
Universalist and Unitarian. Some
disagreed and left. Most of them stayed
and many others joined the church.
Within two years we had grown so large we needed to organize a second
church which my associate helped me serve.
I stayed at Lombard Street Church for seven years – and
probably should have stayed longer.
However I left to become pastor of Prince Street Universalist
Church in New York City. It turned out to be one of the most
conservative churches in the denomination, thus no place for the likes of me! In Philadelphia I had associated with Joseph
Priestly and others and had become more radical. But Prince Street knew nothing beyond the preaching of John
Murray. Very quickly I was in trouble
and had to resign.
After leaving Prince Street Church I did some writing and
editing for the New York Universalist Book Society and then formed a new
church, the Second Universalist Society.
This group really prospered for a while. Acting like a good twenty-first century UU, I got behind the work
of Frances Wright, a radical philanthropist who was working in Tennessee to
improve the economics and cultural life of Negroes. But this was around 1825 and her work was regarded with suspicion
even in the churches. Thus I was
dismissed! Ah, religious liberty!
A year later I attended the Southern Association of
Universalists in Hartford, Connecticut.
I knew that some of my long-time friends no longer supported me but I
also had continuing friends there. I
presented a clear and dignified statement of my theology and ask to be
continued in ministerial fellowship.
They refused my request. After
twenty-five years service in Universalist churches my fellowship in the
denomination was withdrawn. They
claimed I was too radical and that I was too often an embarrassment. So much for religious liberty!
With my small cadre of followers I formed a Free Thought organization. In a hired hall I lectured regularly on
philosophy and religion and the errors of Christian doctrine as well as the
errors of the clergy. I called myself a
pantheist though some accused me of being an atheist. As you might expect, I was roundly criticized by my fellow
clergy.
In 1831 I left New York and returned to Boston to start a
weekly paper which I called The Boston Investigator. It was the first rationalist journal in
America. My publishing and lectures
brought me a busy speaking schedule in New York and Philadelphia and elsewhere,
where we drew large crowds. There were
exciting people in and around Boston in those days, people you may know or
remember: William Ellery Channing, Theodore Parker, Hosea Ballou, and Ralph
Waldo Emerson. In The Investigator
we stood for important causes: improving labor conditions, ten-hour work day,
abolition of slavery. We supported
public education for children, women’s rights and birth control. We stood to freedom to think, speak and
write with no authority other than reason and conscience.
However we had some hard things to say about accepted
Christian doctrine that raised the hackles on many Boston church people. Even some Unitarians and Universalists
claimed to be embarrassed by my public comments. The Investigator which we published on December 20, 1833
did it! Somebody took my article from
that issue to the Massachusetts Grand Jury.
They had me arrested and indicted for blasphemy. Where was religious liberty?
I had a good lawyer when my case came to trial – but a judge
who was against me from the start. On
his instructions the jury deliberated five minutes and found me guilty. I was immediately sentenced to three months
in jail! Of course I appealed to the
Supreme Court. At that trial four
months later we had a hung jury. At a
third trial I argued my own case. I
could go into some of the detail but I will spare you. Again the jury could not agree. Finally my case went to the full Supreme
Court of Massachusetts. In March of
1838 by one vote this Court supported the original conviction and sentenced me
to sixty days in jail. It took over
three years to get a verdict!!
The editor of the Boston Advocate said my conviction
and imprisonment for blasphemy added another page of shame to the history of
Massachusetts which include the hanging of four Quakers in 1669 and the hanging
of nineteen witches in 1692. No one
ever questioned my character and many felt this was a case of persecution. A number of reputable citizens spoke up on
my behalf – including William Ellery Channing.
From my Boston jail cell I wrote an open letter to my
friends, saying: “Fellow citizens!
Countrymen! And Lovers of
Liberty!!! Sixty-three years ago a
battle was fought on Bunker Hill in plain sight of my window where I now
am. But what was it all for? LIBERTY!
And what am I here for? For the
honest exercise of that very liberty for which our fathers fought and bled.”
When I walked out of that jail I headed west, out of
Massachusetts and I didn’t stop until I arrived in what you now call Iowa. My family and others followed and we
gathered like-minded folk in a new little community we called Salubria. That community did well until my death on
September 25, 1844.
I may have been one of the most controversial among
Universalist ministers but now days no one would give my ideas a hostile
glance.
Religious liberty is a slippery and relative term. Watch it!
Guard it! Or you can loose it
without even noticing! I see serious
challenges – even threats to your religious liberty. You can’t afford to take your freedom lightly – for tomorrow it
may be gone! Your Unitarian
Universalist forebears are counting on you to keep this freedom alive and well!
References;
Primary references for this presentation have been:
Cassara, Ernest (Ed); Universalism in America, Skinner House Press, Boston, 1997
Scott, Clinton Lee; These Live Tomorrow, Skinner
House Books, Boston, 1987