Gordon McKeeman. wrote: Universalism is not faith in the inevitability of heaven which supports me as I face death but faith in the reality of love. The old Universalist heresy claimed that God's love knew no limits and would find the sinner no matter how far from holiness she or he strayed. The fundamental nature of reality is love.
Universalism as it is commonly understood is the "everybody is saved no matter what" religion rather than the "God is boundless love" religion.
At the time of the rise of Universalism, the Calvinists and Methodists utilized the threat of hell to scare listeners into accepting Christ, and thus the Universalist emphasis on "no hell" was popular counter to deformed practice. But when Universalism came to be understood as assuring a positive result for our soul's final destination it had less appeal, especially among liberals. Liberals didn't imagine themselves as candidates for hell.
But the power of love, fundamental to reality and surpassing our willfulness is a gospel whose time is always now. To preach the larger hope, and boundless love, Universalism for our time.
It is so easy to shift away from this central message for our gospel, to preach greater understanding, and more inclusive ways of being, to preach justice and fidelity to truth. All these things are good, but they lack transformative power without the renewing the message of boundless love at the heart of the cosmos.
Overcoming colonialism through faith and action.
==Universalism is not faith in the inevitability of heaven which supports me as I face death but faith in the reality of love.==
Well, in its original formulation, I think it was both. And it was not "love" in the abstract, but the love of a sentient, theistic, transcendent Creator-Redeemer-God for his errant creatures. The more abstract description of a Universalism that does not necessarily depend on God as the source of all love is a reinterpretation.
==Universalism as it is commonly understood is the "everybody is saved no matter what religion" rather than the "God is boundless love" religion.==
If that is the common understanding, it's incorrect for another reason as well. In Universalism it's not that your religious beliefs are irrelevant -- they're not -- but that all sins, including religious misapprenhension, will eventually be forgiven by a supremely redemptive God. The early Universalists cherished the truth of their own sectarian doctrines as deeply as any other Christian sect, and believed that accepting their correct religious understanding in this life gave you a big head start on your eventual reconciliation to God in the next one.
==Universalism as it is commonly understood is the "everybody is saved no matter what religion" rather than the "God is boundless love" religion.==
I may have misunderstood you here. Did you mean "everyone is saved regardless of religious belief" or "the religion that teaches that nobody escapes salvation"? I assumed you ment the former, but if you didn't, my previous comment may have been a bit confusing.
Gordon McKeeman was intimate with his Universalist heritage and served Universalist congregations before the merger. I am not sure he was "re-interpreting" original Universalism so much as witnessing his own faith experience as a Universalist.
I served among a historical Universalist church and the gospel of God's love was lived, rather theologized upon...
There are a number of ways of describing a religious movement...lived faith, theologized faith, faith as expressed in liturgy (hymns, and prayers) and faith preached. Looking at dairies, sermons, and prayers gives quite a different picture than looking at statements of faith drawn up by the ecclessiatical politicians who gathered at State Conventions....
I subscribed to a covenant in the first church I joined which was totally in variance with my lived faith....but it was their historic covenant, who was I too argue with the ancestors.
I think Gordon knows Universalism.
Oh, I think you and McKeeman are absolutely right in placing love at the center as a practical matter, and I'm certainly not gainsaying McKeenan's witness to his own faith experience.
Love is indeed at the center of the Universalist experience, although it is not there for its own sake, but because (as McKeeman says) Universalism avows love and forgiveness as the defining trait -- the essential nature -- of God. This subtle distinction is critical; the original Universalists didn't afford love such a central place in their worldview on its own merits. Rather, they did so because God was central to their cosmology, love was central to their apprehension of God, and Jesus' admonition to "love one another as I have loved you" was central to their idea of how to serve God.
The cosmology of early Universalism was a supernatural and theistic cosmology, not a natural and non-theistic one. It featured at its core not only a personal, omnipotent God, but also the eternal survival of every individual soul in an afterlife. In their cosmology, the apprehension of a supremely loving God did indeed give them "faith in the inevitability of heaven", which distinguished them from most other Christians. The very name "Universalism" is a reference to this doctrine of universal salvation, i. e., the inevitability of heaven for all souls, and not to the universal presence of love here and now (which even a casual observer can see remains an unrealized hope).
To try to define Universalism as being focused primarily upon a Platonic ideal of human charity and goodwill toward one another, without affirming as the source of that focus a personal deity who will forgive our own (and everyone else's) human sinfulness in the afterlife, is indeed a reinterpretation of what the original Universalists believed. It may be a useful reinterpretation for our present time and cosmology, but it is a significant revision nevertheless.
I would agree with you and McKeeman to the extent that in Universalist theology our fate in the afterlife is only a secondary logical inference that follows from the foundational premise of the loving nature of God, rather than a foundational premise in its own right. However, I don't think it's quite accurate to say as McKeeman does that "Universalism is NOT faith in the inevitability of heaven". That faith is, or at least originally was, an essential part of the Universalist belief system, and strictly speaking, a belief system that omits it is not the entire Universalist package.
"Well, in its original formulation, I think it was both. And it was not "love" in the abstract, but the love of a sentient, theistic, transcendent Creator-Redeemer-God for his errant creatures. The more abstract description of a Universalism that does not necessarily depend on God as the source of all love is a reinterpretation."
Fausto, the abstraction may've been expressed as you say, but the expression may've still been a metaphor. I'm increasingly fascinated with the notion that beliefs which are called "literal" are often metaphorical, but the people who espouse them don't have the language to clarify that. I see it whenever I meet a great-hearted soul who says things about their belief that just sounds like nonsense to me, and yet these people are kind and sharing and have all the virtues I could want for myself.
Here in the southwest, I meet a lot of Mormons like that. Maybe every faith that survives has people like that, people who use the faith as a way to explain goodness and don't worry about the parts that don't fit. Another fine example are Catholics who love their Chruch and simply ignore the Pope when they disagree, Papal infallibility or no.