Kenneth Leo Patton (August 25, 1911-December 25, 1994), identifed as one of the major poets and a prophet of contemporary liberal religion, was a voice for a poetic, naturalistic humanism at a time when most humanists were defining a religion of reason.
Edward Turner (July 28, 1776-January 24, 1853) ranked second only to Hosea Ballou among Universalist ministers of his generation. He was a denominational organizer, a celebrated preacher, and the first historian of Universalism. Close friends for over two decades, Turner and Ballou were alienated after 1815 and were opponents in the Restorationist controversy.
Angus Hector MacLean (May 9, 1892-November 11, 1969), Universalist minister, theological school professor and dean, played a major part in reshaping the philosophy and practice of religious education within the Universalist and Unitarian denominations during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
Abigail Adams (November 11, 1744-October 28, 1818) advocated and modeled an expanded role for women in public affairs during the formative days of the United States. Married to John Adams, she was an invaluable partner to him as he developed his political career, culminating in the presidency of the United States.
Born in Gardner, Massachusetts, Abner was the sixth of ten children of Timothy and Moriah Stone Kneeland. His formal education stopped after a year in an academy in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. At the age of 21 Abner moved, with his older brother Asa, to Dummerston, Vermont in order to follow their father’s carpentry trade.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson (February 5, 1900-July 14, 1965), politician and diplomat, was twice the Democratic Party’s candidate for President of the United States. He brought a freshness, a depth, passion, wit and vision to American politics and to international diplomatic discourse, that illumined an era.
Ezra Ripley (May 1, 1751-September 21, 1841) served as minister of the First Parish in Concord, Massachusetts for almost 63 years. Although not himself an intellectual, Ripley possessed extraordinary personal and spiritual authority. He, more than any other, created the religious and moral climate of this small town which nurtured far more than its share of the writers, artists, and political figures—whose names are synonymous with the flowering of the American Renaissance.
Adams Streeter (December 31, 1735-September 2, 1786) was the first minister of the Universalist congregations in Oxford and Milford, Massachusetts, societies at the heart of the indigenous origin of New England Universalism. According to the History of the Town of Oxford, Massachusetts, Streeter was the “chief agent in establishing the denomination.”
Adin Ballou (April 23, 1803-August 5, 1890), founder of the utopian community at Hopedale, Massachusetts and a leading 19th century exponent of pacifism, was during his long career a Universalist, a Restorationist, a Practical Christian, and a Unitarian minister.
Horace Mann (May 4, 1796-August 2, 1859), was an educator and a statesman who greatly advanced the cause of universal, free, non-sectarian public schools. Mann also advocated temperance, abolition, hospitals for the mentally ill, and women’s rights. His preferred cause was education, about which he remarked that while “other reforms are remedial; education is preventative.”
Clinton Lee Scott (September 28, 1887-September 28, 1985), a Universalist minister, played a major role in the revitalization of the Universalist denomination during the 1930s, ’40s and 50’s, and also in the process leading to its merger in 1961 with the American Unitarian Association.
Clarence R. Skinner (March 23, 1881-August 26, 1949), minister, teacher, writer and social activist, is widely regarded as the most influential Universalist of the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in Brooklyn into a thoroughly Universalist family-his parents and brothers were Universalists; a grandfather, great grandfather and great uncle were Universalist ministers.