Adin Ballou

Greetings, my name is Adin Ballou.

• Personal Background:
• I was born April 23, 1803 on a farm in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
• I received no formal education, though I was versed in the Bible.
• Religious views: Unitarian= Universal Salvation for all.
• I created the Hopedale Community in 1840, served as president of the New England Non-resistance Society in 1843,and played a part in the foundation of The Universal Peace Union founded in 1866.

• Issue(s):
• Although I tickered in a variety of reformation issues, I possessed a strong stance on the issues of Abolitionism and Utopian Communities.
• I viewed Abolitionism as a right to a horrid moral division in America. in 1843 I urged Americans to honor the foundations of the country by not being selective or hypocritical in their judgment of whom should be free.
• By 1840, I believed that my Christian views would not allow me to live in a government where inequality and force ruled the poulace...a utopian community must be established away from the U.S. government.
• My religion pushed me onward towards creating perfection in society.

• Solution(s):
• I advocated the individual moral reform of Americans in order for the eventual equality that would flourish once bigotry passed. But, alas! For myself and many others the only way to reform ourselves in America was to form a community seperate from this nation's government.
• In 1830, quarrels between Restorationists and Universalists led to my decision to stand by my views as a Restorationist. My "radical views" later cost me my pulpit in Milford,Massachusetts. I also published Christian non-Resistance in 1846 on my beliefs on pacifism that I stood by ,and beseeched others to as well, through the Civil War. Until 1880 I was a pastor in the Hopedale community until retirement.

Relationship To Others: ( Friend of William Garrison)

• Temperance: Individuals must act as a single unit to resolve the issue, and not as scattered individuals.
• Abolition: Americans can agree on the principles of their founding fathers, but do not have to disregard the rights that every man in this country is entitiled to.
• Women's Rights: In regards to the universal salvation of my religion women have that privilege as well.
• Education: If the government can resolve its inequality in the scope of capitalism, education would be equal for all Americans.
• Prison Reform: As I've stated before, all men will recieve equal salvation in the afterlife, and this life if the government and its people can accept that truth.
• Utopian Communities: A necessity for those who do not wish to engage in senseless force, nor degrade themselves with the govenrment's unfair social establishements.
• Transcendentalism: In the 1830's and 1840's several protests and boughts of criticism have been aimed at the Unitarian doctrine. This is merely a small part of the Transcendentalists protest against the state of our culture and society as a whole. While I support this awareness I do not support the attack on the Unitarian doctrine in every view it contains.

Matos