UNIVERSALISTS. - A Protestant sect derived from Congregationalism or Brownism.
The Brownists taught that each local church is independent, whence the name “Independents” given to the Congregationalists. The Universalists around 1750 separated from Congregationalism in England, whence in 1770 they passed into America. Only in 1870 did they adopt a plan of organization and an administrative manual. The Universalists carry on religious activity in Japan. Their number, in 1930, amounted in the United States to 48,649 members, divided into 580 communities; they had 3 academies, 3 colleges, 3 theological seminaries, and a publishing house in Boston: *Universität Publishing House*, with a weekly periodical: *The Universalist Leader*.
The Universalists drew from Congregationalism the idea that each community or parish is independent; from **universalism** they accepted the denial of the dogma of the Trinity and of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Their characteristic, however, is **universalism**: all created spirits, men or demons, will at the end be brought back to unity, that is, reunited in the kingdom of God. There are no reprobates in perpetuity. All of God’s creatures have a right to His mercy; it would be an affront to God to suppose the contrary. Universalism therefore denies the dogma of predestination, both in the erroneous conception of Luther and Calvin and in the Catholic formulation. The ideological origin of universalism can be traced back to Arminianism, which was rejected at the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618. Arminius, however, and after him Amyraut, admitted only a theoretical universalism. What characterizes properly so-called universalism is that the dualism between the elect and the non-elect is only temporary and passing, that this dualism is destined to disappear in the progressive and certain realization of universal salvation. Each soul has its personal value, its inestimable price that the entire universe could not compensate (Mt 16:26). For these reasons, the Universalists believe that the education and purification of humanity through grace takes place in the life to come, so that those who seem today rejected will tomorrow be first and the first last. Therefore, hell is nothing more than a kind of purgatory, from which one day one may emerge to obtain among the elect a place perhaps higher than that assigned to the just and believers of the present life. This doctrine is extended to imperfect Christians, to children who die without baptism, to pagans of every race, and is applied even to demons. This erroneous conception (v. HELL) has spread in numerous Protestant sects and pleases most unbelievers. Among the most notable thinkers who have adopted universalism are Schleiermacher, M. Schweitzer in Zurich, and Scholten in Leiden. The more or less rationalist Protestant theologians of the late 19th century were almost all favorable to this thesis, which has lost ground in neo-Calvinism of the 20th century.