Practical Christian Socialism (1854) was Adin Ballou's most comprehensive exposition of his fundamental principles and their application to personal and community life, ranging from theology and political theory to marriage, child-rearing, and a surprisingly frank discussion of sexuality.  In Practical Christianity, Ballou's 655-page treatise has been edited to eliminate the cumbersome dialogue form in which it was originally written. All of the language is Ballou's own, and nothing is omitted except a final section in which he compared Practical Christian Socialism to competing varieties of utopian socialism popular at the time.

Practical Christianity: An Epitome of Practical Christian Socialism

Religion & Spirituality

Ballou, Adin

Hughes, Lynn Gordon

Christian Books & Bibles

Blackstone Editions

Christian Non-resistance

Christian Non-Resistance (1846) is the major philosophical statement by the nineteenth-century theorist of nonviolence, Adin Ballou. Ballou argued that the Biblical injunction "resist not evil" should be understood as "resist not personal injury with personal injury." While prohibiting the injury of any person under any provocation whatsoever, Ballou taught that Christians have a duty to resist, oppose, or prevent evil by all uninjurious means, including the use of "uninjurious benevolent force." He believed that this would allow a community to adopt non-resistant principles while still maintaining public safety and order. Once dismissed as a relic of the naïve and sentimental optimism of pre-Civil War America, Christian Non-Resistance is now recognized as an important contribution to the theory of nonviolent resistance. Ballou's combination of the utmost moral resistance to evil with the uninjurious physical restraint of evildoers provides a conceptually simple, flexible approach to the problem of resisting evil without becoming evil oneself. This edition contains the essay "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases" (1860), in which Ballou takes up a type of challenge often put to pacifists: "Suppose a robber attacks you in some lonely place on the highway? Suppose you and your family are attacked by a gang who design to commit rape, robbery and murder? How can the downtrodden peoples of the earth ever gain their liberty without fighting to the death against their tyrants?"

Christian Non-Resistance

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

In the utopian community of Hopedale, Massachusetts in 1855, eight-year-old mail carrier Susie makes her rounds and shows the reader what makes her town so special. 
This full-color picture book introduces young readers to the history and ideals of the Hopedale Community, whose members all pledged never to hurt, kill, or hate another human being, even their worst enemy.

To Live a Truer Life: A Story of the Hopedale Community

Children's Books

History

Michael Servetus, a Spaniard executed for heresy in John Calvin’s Geneva, is remembered as an important Reformation-era theologian and as a physician credited with the discovery of the circulation of the blood through the lungs. His first book, On the Errors of the Trinity, so shocked both Catholics and Protestants that he was compelled to live under an assumed name. All but a few copies of his magnum opus, Christianity Restored, were destroyed shortly after publication. However, the case of Servetus, which has been taken up by Voltaire, Gibbon, and many others, marks the beginning of the idea of religious toleration.

Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511-1553

BAINTON, Roland H.

One of the essential works of American Unitarian history, Freedom Moves West tells the story of the growth and development of a distinctive Western variety of American Unitarianism. As religiously liberal pioneers moved from the long-established East to the newly settled territories of the West, they embraced ever more challenging theological positions, constantly expanding the definition of what it means to be Unitarian.

Freedom Moves West: A History of the Western Unitarian Conference, 1852-1952 by Charles H. Lyttle (2006-06-15)

Charles H. Lyttle

Religious Studies

This short history of Unitarianism concisely explores the origins and progress of a worldwide liberal religious tradition committed to principles of freedom, reason, and tolerance.Unitarians have exercised an influence out of proportion to their minority status. Through their agency, Poland and Transylvania enjoyed periods of religious toleration. In Great Britain, as pioneers of early modern higher education in Dissenting Academies, they applied Enlightenment reasoning to the study of religion, science, and the humanities. In the United States, they led the Transcendentalist movement, the first major flowering of American intellectual culture.This book traces the history of the separate but related Unitarian (and Unitarian Universalist) denominations in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, and touches on the new groups that have arisen, or are in the process of emerging, elsewhere in the world.

The Unitarians: A Short History

Smith, Leonard

Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts

In 1553 Michael Servetus, author of several notorious heretical works, escaped from the Inquisition in France only to fall into the hands of the Protestant authorities in Geneva. There he was tried, found guilty of heresy, and burned at the stake.Four hundred years later, in 1953, a mysterious manuscript entitled "Declarationis Jesu Christi Filii Dei Authore Michaele Serveto" (A Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, by Michael Servetus) was discovered in an archive in Stuttgart, Germany. Could this be a lost work by Servetus?In this book, Peter Hughes and Peter Zerner explain how, in the course of translating Declaratio, they discovered that it is the work of Matteo Gribaldi, a well-known Italian law professor, antitrinitarian, and admirer of Servetus.The book contains complete Latin and English texts of Declaratio and five shorter works by Gribaldi, including Apologia, his powerful and moving protest against the execution of Servetus.

Declaratio: Michael Servetus's Revelation of Jesus Christ the Son of God

Gribaldi, Matteo

In a religious tradition with no creed and no hierarchy, it is sometimes hard to see what it is that binds Unitarians together. In The Unitarian Way, Phillip Hewett sets out to discover the common elements that characterize Unitarianism, from its historical roots in the Renaissance to its varied expressions in the world today. In twelve wide-ranging chapters he explores the characteristic Unitarian blend of faith and doubt, reason and intuition, commitment and openmindedness, individuality and community. He concludes that Unitarians, “like a family, or the crew of a ship, or a geological survey team,” are united by participation in a common enterprise rather than by a set of shared beliefs. 
Originally published in 1985, The Unitarian Way has been newly revised by the author and reissued to guide a new generation of readers through the intricacies of “the Unitarian dance.”

The Unitarian Way

Hewett, Phillip

The Hopedale Community was one of the most important and successful of the many utopian communities started in the mid-nineteenth century United States. It outlasted its famous contemporary, Brook Farm, by nearly a decade. Though it did not succeed in ushering in "a new civilization radically higher than the old," Hopedale did provide its members with security, companionship, meaningful work, and the chance to make a difference in the world around them.
In History of the Hopedale Community, Hopedale's principal founder and theoretician, Adin Ballou, provides a detailed record of the successes, failures, hopes, and disappointments of a small group of people attempting to live together harmoniously, balancing fairness and compassion, and giving practical expression to "their ideal of what human life and human society upon the earth ought to be."
This new edition features:
<ul>
<li> a newly restored map of Hopedale</li>
<li> over 300 many explanatory notes</li>
<li> a table of members, drawn from the membership records of the community</li>
</ul>

History of the Hopedale Community: Annotated Edition

Reference

Adin Ballou was a man of peace — the leader of the pacifist Hopedale Community, and a major theorist of nonviolent resistance to evil. Yet he was not of a naturally peaceful disposition. As a young minister he engaged in theological controversy so heated that his own party urged him to moderate his language. Though he never engaged in physical violence, Ballou knew what it was like to become caught up in an exchange of hostilities, to identify with one side and demonize the other, to feel injured and to wish to injure others in return. In his autobiography, Ballou tells the story of his transformation from a proud and touchy man, zealous for his own honor and the honor of the causes he espoused, to a champion of peace, loved and respected in his own Hopedale Community and around the world. This edition includes:  Over 100 pages of annotations — more than 800 notes to illuminate the people, places, relationships, literary allusions, religious movements, and popular culture that made up Ballou’s world A complete bibliography of Ballou’s writings, including a guide to online editions Two articles by Ballou, written 40 years apart, describing his role in the formation of the Restorationist denomination The full text of the correspondence between Ballou and Leo Tolstoy, newly compiled from the two published sources

Autobiography of Adin Ballou: Annotated Edition

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

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