Adin Ballou: Practical utopian
by Christopher L. Walton
Adin Ballou (1803–1890) spent a lifetime trying to build a community
modeled in every difficult particular on the Sermon on the Mount. He even
succeeded for a while. In an era marked by radical reform movements and
utopian communal experiments, Ballou’s Hopedale Community stands
out for its longevity and for its distinctive form of Christian socialism,
which Ballou called “practical Christianity.”
Ballou became a minister in Rhode Island in 1821, serving a Christian
Connexion church. His sect, like many at the time, hearkened back to the
“pure” Christianity of the first century. They rejected the
Trinity, making them evangelical Unitarians of a sort; they also believed
that God simply annihilates the souls of the damned. Ballou began debating
with Universalists (including his distant cousin Hosea Ballou), who held
that every soul will be saved—and became a Universalist minister
himself in 1823.
In 1831 he broke with the main body of Universalists, arguing that some
souls would be punished prior to their ultimate “restoration,”
and lost his pulpit. He then served a Unitarian church from 1831 to 1842.
In the late 1830s, Ballou embraced “nonresistance,” believing
Christians must always “turn the other cheek” (see Matthew
5:39). He and several friends decided to base their lives on this idea.
Social progress, they believed, would happen only through the conversion
of individuals to the gospel of nonresistance. In 1839 they pledged themselves
to a “Standard of Practical Christianity”; it was a comprehensive
and demanding ideal (see “Voices from the Past,” right). They
rejected military service, lawsuits, politics, taxes, even voting. Finding
the Standard hard to live in isolation, in 1841 the “practical Christians”
established Hopedale, a utopian village in Milford, Massachusetts.
After ten years the village had 200 inhabitants, thirty-one homes, and
several businesses. Women participated fully in its civic life. But the
experiment came to an end because of too few converts and a fiscal crisis.
In 1860, the society was reestablished as a Practical Christian church.
Nonresistance was unpopular during the Civil War; by 1861 only thirty-eight
members remained.
Hopedale remains a charming New England town. The Hopedale Unitarian
Church is heir to Ballou’s religious society—though membership
today is much less arduous. His spiritual legacy, however, lives on among
contemporary nonresisters. And through the Russian novelist and idealist
Leo Tolstoy, who corresponded with Ballou in 1889 and described Ballou’s
philosophy in The Kingdom of God Is within You, Gandhi and Martin
Luther King Jr. drew inspiration for their active nonviolence campaigns.
Christopher L. Walton is senior editor
of UU World.
Voices from the Past
Practical Christianity
"I believe in the religion of Jesus Christ, as he taught and exemplified
it, according to the Scriptures of the New Testament. I acknowledge
myself a bounden subject of all its moral obligations. Especially do
I hold myself bound by all its holy requirements: Never, under any pretext
whatsoever, to kill, assault, beat, torture, enslave, rob, oppress,
persecute, defraud; corrupt, slander, revile, injure, envy or hate any
human being—even my worst enemy; never, in any manner, to violate
the dictates of pure chastity; never to take or administer an oath;
never to manufacture, buy, sell, deal out, or use any intoxicating liquor
as a beverage; never to serve in the army, navy, or militia of any nation,
state, or chieftain; never to bring an action at law, hold office, vote,
join a legal posse, petition a legislature, or ask governmental interposition,
in any case involving a final authorized resort to physical violence;
never to indulge self-will, bigotry, love of preeminence, covetousness,
deceit, profanity, idleness, or an unruly tongue; never to participate
in lotteries, games of chance, betting, or pernicious amusements; never
to resent reproof, or justify myself in a known wrong; never to aid,
abet, or approve others in any thing sinful; but, through divine assistance,
always to recommend and promote, with my entire influence, the holiness
and happiness of all mankind."
The Standard of Practical Christianity (1841),
the covenant of Adin Ballou’s Hopedale Community.
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