UNIVERSALISTI. – Protestant sect derived from Congregationalism or Brownism.
The Brownists taught that each local church is independent, whence the name “Independents” sometimes given to Congregationalists. Around 1750, the U. separated from Congregationalism in England, whence they passed to America in 1770. Only in 1870 did they adopt a plan of organization and an administrative manual. The U. conduct religious activity in Japan. Their number in 1930 amounted in the United States to 48,649 members, divided among 580 communities; they had 3 academies, 3 colleges, 3 theological seminaries, and a publishing house in Boston: Universalist Publishing House, with a weekly periodical: The Universalist Leader.
From Congregationalism, the U. derived the idea that each community or parish is independent; from Unitarianism, they accepted the denial of the dogma of the Trinity and of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Their distinctive characteristic, however, is “universalism”: all created spirits, whether human or demonic, will ultimately be restored to unity, that is, gathered into the kingdom of God. There are no eternally reprobate. All God’s creatures have a right to his mercy; it would be unjust for God to suppose otherwise. Universalism therefore denies the dogma of predestination, both in the erroneous conception of Luther and Calvin and in its Catholic formulation. The ideological origin of universalism may 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 universalism properly so called is that the dualism between the elect and the non-elect is merely temporary and transitory, and that this dualism is destined to disappear through the progressive and certain realization of universal salvation. Each soul has its personal value, its inestimable price, which the entire universe could not compensate (Mt. 16:26). For these reasons, the U. hold that the education and purification of humanity through Grace takes place in the future life, so that those who seem rejected today will be first tomorrow, and the first last. Hell, therefore, is nothing more than a kind of purgatory, from which one may one day emerge in order to obtain among the elect a place perhaps higher than that assigned to the just and to believers in the present life. This doctrine is extended to imperfect Christians, children who die without Baptism, and pagans of every race, and is also applied to demons. This erroneous conception (v. INFERNO) has spread among numerous Protestant sects and is attractive to most unbelievers. Among the best-known thinkers who adopted universalism are Schleiermacher, M. Schweitzer in Zurich, and Scholten in Leiden. The more or less rationalistic Protestant theologians of the late nineteenth century were almost all favorable to this thesis, which lost ground in the neo-Calvinism of the twentieth century.