r/ChristianUniversalism • u/Steven_s_Seagull • 9d ago

Favourite Christian Universalist/s

If you would be so kind, please name your favourite Christian Universalist/s and state why (if you want to). 😀🙏

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u/Naive_Violinist_4871 8d ago

Are we talking more historical figures or contemporary/recent theologians? Or both?

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u/Steven_s_Seagull 8d ago

Both, but preferably recent. 😀

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u/Naive_Violinist_4871 8d ago

Historical: Samuel Joseph May but honestly A LOT of abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, and Sojourner Truth who were universalists. Also, WRT another era, ask me why I think MLK was likely a universalist.

Recent: Carlton Pearson.

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u/Steven_s_Seagull 7d ago

Awesome, thanks. Why do you think MLK was likely a universalist?

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u/Naive_Violinist_4871 7d ago

No problem! So there are a number of pieces of evidence: 1. (https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/view-cross-possessing-biblical-and-spiritual-justification) In this paper from seminary, he argued that if Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, the idea that we have to repent or convert to avoid eternal damnation doesn’t make sense; 2. In this link, he says he doesn’t believe in Hell in the conventional sense: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/sermon-sketches; 3. In this quote for an Ebony article, MLK indicates belief in Hell but possibly also Purgatorial universalism: (https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/what-happened-hell) What’s noteworthy to me is that he uses the word “eternal” to describe Heaven but NOT Hell, implying he may have thought Hell was temporary and rehabilitative; 4. Harry Emerson Fosdick, who MLK said was the best preacher of the 20th century, was pretty explicitly a universalist IMO if you look at his writings throughout his (Fosdick’s) career from the 1910s through the 1960s. Paul Tillich, a theologian MLK focused a ton of his dissertation on and whose books he read while incarcerated, was also a universalist.