Ballou, Hosea, 1771-1852

Universalist minister and principal leader of the Universalist denomination during the first half of the 19th century. Author of Treatise on Atonement, 1805. Minister, Dana, Mass. (1794-1803); Barnard, Vt. (1803-1809); Portsmouth, N.H. (1809-1815); Salem, Mass. (1815-1817); Second Universalist Society, Boston (1817-1852). See sketch in Dictionary of American Biography.

Hosea Ballou (1771-1852) began his career as an itinerant preacher in Vermont and Massachusetts in 1791. He was ordained during the Universalist Convention in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1794, and he served the "Sister Societies" of Barnard, Woodstock, Hartland, Bethel, and Bridgewater, Vermont, from 1803 to 1817. He accepted a call to the Second Universalist Church of Boston in 1817, and became known as the most influential preacher in the second generation of the Universalist movement. His most well-known works, A Treatise on Atonement (1805) and An Examination of the Doctrine of Future Retribution (1834), altered the philosophies of many of his ministerial colleagues and their congregations. Ballou's theology was based on reason, which led him to reject the Trinitarian doctrine, and as early as 1795, he was preaching a unitarian form of Universalism. Ballou founded the Universalist newspaper known as the Universalist Magazine (later the Trumpet and Universalist Magazine) in 1819 to further the ideals of Universalism. He served as pastor of the Second Universalist Church ( Boston ) from 1817 until his death in 1852.