The Birth of the Universalist Church

It was on this day in 1793 that “ministers, elders and messengers” from Universalist churches & societies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and New York who had joined together in Oxford, Massachusetts at a convention moderated by the Reverend John Murray, voted to create the first General Convention of the Universalist Societies in the United States.

The Universalist Church of America consolidated with the American Unitarian Association in 1961 forming the Unitarian Universalist Association.

In honor of the occasion here’s an old hymn, composed by an Anglican priest (he later crossed the Tiber, but that’s another story) and performed here by an Episcopalian boy’s choir, a perennial favorite within old Universalist Christian churches…