Building a Unique and Historical Movement

I found this while I was just googling about and I thought it was interesting. It seems, in some ways, Christian Universalism reared it's lovely head twice in world history, and twice it helped usher in something beautiful:

Something similar has happened two times before in the history of Christianity. The first time was in the first three centuries of the Christian Era, when Messianic Jews and Greek philosophers came together to develop and articulate a new spiritual vision combining some of the best insights from the Hebraic and the Hellenistic traditions. The result was Alexandrian Christianity, a boldly Universalist Gospel that was taught by early saints and church fathers such as Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina the Younger. This view of the Christian message was in fact the greatest, most widely accepted and respected form of Christianity in the ancient world, until the takeover of the church by Rome under the influence of Augustine's theology. The teachings of this school of thought centered on two basic principles: apokatastasis (universal salvation and restoration of all things) and theosis (divinization of human souls in the image of Christ). This was a serious, deeply spiritual and intellectually progressive Christian Universalism, articulated many centuries ago.

The second time something like this happened was in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Universalist Church of America was formed and grew to become the seventh largest denomination in the United States at its peak. This new church developed out of a diverse mixture of people who fled religious persecution in Europe, such as Anabaptists, Quakers, Moravians, and other Pietists including some Anglicans and Methodists -- many of whom rejected the traditional doctrine of eternal hell which had been taught for many centuries by the Roman Catholic Church and by most Protestant churches. Progressive ministers and evangelists from these varied groups eventually coalesced around their radical belief in the salvation of all, creating a new religious movement. Some of the more noteworthy Universalist ministers of this era include George de Benneville, John Murray, and Elhanan Winchester. Many early American leaders were believers or had sympathies with this spiritual philosophy, including more than one of the founding fathers of the United States as well as President Abraham Lincoln.

Of course, we Christian Universalists and Inclusivists are working to bring about a new reformation today, with mixed success. Let us pray that if we do, we help to create something as beautiful as either the early Church, or the American Republic.

Source: The Christian Universalist Association