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sought to entrap people by deliberately waiting until families were made vulnerable
by sickness or the absence of male members, since females are less acquainted
with theological investigation. He related the story of a Unitarian woman whose
sister had just died and who was informed by a minister that the death was a
chastisement for her own false faith.57
Since ministers now attributed at least as much responsibility to themselves as
to God for rescuing souls from the brink of hell, it was not surprising that they used
such arrogant methods, Universalists concluded. But evangelicals went about their
duties almost blithely, the Universalist preacher and journalist Abel Thomas as-
serted, considering that they thought they could help determine the eternal fate of
millions of people. If they really believed their theory of endless punishment, they
would either preach it with more burning words or go mad or both, he insisted.58
Universalist critics predicted that clerical efforts to assume spiritual authority were
likely to backfire altogether, leading to a rejection of all religious sentiment. Re-
flecting on his confrontation with revivalists in the early 1830s, George Rogers de-
clared that contemporary Protestantism had led to an atmosphere not only of op-
pressiveness but also of demoralization. People did not reject religion because of
any innate antipathy toward it, he instructed his readers, but because of the cor-
ruptions with which it has been mixed up, and the oppressions which have been
practiced under its alleged sanction. 59
Universalist critics were concerned with more than simple doctrinal brainwash-
ing; they worried about the actual social power of ministers over their congregations.
As Donald Scott notes, many nineteenth-century evangelicals thought that the
whole fabric of life outside specific institutions surrounding the church was com-
pletely hostile to the sacred. Unlike colonial churchmen, who saw the sacred and
the profane entwined in all things, some evangelicals commonly saw it as their
duty to encourage a kind of quarantine against the world ; not incidentally, their
own authority was thus enhanced.60 In some cases, evangelical churches reserved
the right to supervise practically all aspects of their members behavior, from polit-
ical activity to the use of leisure time and even to the choice of friends and ac-
quaintances.61 Among Universalists, this effort to protect the godly regenerate from
the ungodly influences of the world smacked of further arrogance. Russell Streeter
claimed that revivalists pressured converts to give up the rose-bud of innocent
amusement for the bramblebush of dread superstition ; females, he believed, were
particularly vulnerable to control through the deformities of sub-Calvinism. 62 Uni-
versalists could abide neither the evangelical clergy s vision of social guardianship
nor its avowed goal to seek the salvation of those still outside its dominion.63
In Universalist eyes, the Bible and Tract societies and the missionary efforts that
were well established by the 1820s and 1830s were ominous evidence of the increas-
ing power of evangelical leaders. Universalists regarded missions, rapidly becoming
the most popular of evangelical causes, as cunning devices . . . designed to fleece
64 The Universalist Movement in America, 1770 1880
the ignorant of their hard earnings. 64 Mission societies, insinuating themselves
into houses, as the fibres of a cancer do into a body, would even plunder a poor
woman for her bed ticking, a Universalist magazine charged.65 Universalist critics
condemned most American missionary work as both a logical by-product of twisted
theological thinking and as the highest form of clerical arrogance. Hosea Ballou
made caustic comments on the theological assumptions behind missions, noting
that money is far better now than it was in the sixteenth century. Then, it had
only released a soul from purgatory, but now a few pennies in the mission box
would save a soul from hell, the dreadful state of the eternally miserable. What a
wonderful discovery this! 66
Universalists did not object to attempts to spread Christianity to foreign lands.
But their perception of the evangelical zeal for missions was somewhat akin to
Lenin s view of capitalism s imperialist lust for expanding markets. Evangelicals,
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