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As part of the New York State Convention of Universalists 200th anniversary celebration held on October 25, 2025, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York, Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, Unitarian Universalist Association President, and Rev. Dr. Adam Robersmith, Senior minister of the Universalist Church of West Hartford, Connecticut, jointly delivered the following keynote sermon.
Rev. Dr. Adam Robersmith
You just need to remember two things: 1. God is love and 2. God doesn’t throw anyone away, and neither do we.
This is what my parents told me when I was a child, even though we attended a very conservative Lutheran church. I grew up as a Lutheran Universalist. Perhaps that seems contradictory or counter-intuitive to you…? At the time, I didn’t have trouble with it. I now serve the Universalist Church of West Hartford, Connecticut, with my childhood love of liturgy, music, and community from the Lutheran church still present, but it is the Universalism that really stuck.
Universalism as a theological stance is countercultural. It has been for a long, long time…these ideas have pushed back on theologies of control and damnation thousands of years ago, as well as within the last 200. And within those last 200 years, the Universalist message of all-inclusive love and universal salvation changed the theological landscape of American Christianity. It infused the theological air, water, and soil in which we now are embedded and grow. That message was powerful enough to get past German Lutheran language barriers and parochial school education such that my parents found ways to raise their children as Universalists even without knowing that there were Universalist congregations we could have attended.
The simplicity of that message—God is love—was part of the reason, I think, that it was taken up so readily by other faith communities and by people, like my parents, in spite of their faith communities, too. Counter-cultural indeed! That same simplicity, though, combined with the fact that we use that one word—love—to mean so many things in English, is both a help and a hindrance. It appears to mean something that everyone understands, while containing so much room that we might be intending very different things.
Rev. Dr. Adam Robersmith during the October 25, 2025, bicentennial event celebrating the New York State Convention of Universalists and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton in New York.
Over the years, there has been a proliferation of theologies of love, including some grounded in very traditional biblical ideas—for example, from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (13:13) “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Others in theologies that travel further, through feminism—such as that of Carter Heyward, who writes “Love is the active realization of relation. God is love. Love is God. To god is to love.” Still more arising from quantum mechanics and metaphysics, including Henry Nelson Wieman and other process theologians who name interconnection, interchange, and relatedness as central theological concepts.
Many of these theologies—though by no means all of them—are part of the field of Open and Relational theologies, theologies that focus on the relational nature of the Holy and the open, undetermined nature of the future. Within that frame, there are a huge variety of perspectives. Thomas Jay Oord, a Christian theologian who coined the term “Open and Relational” to describe a subgroup of theologians for the American Academy of Religion, is one of the most recent examples I’ve seen of non-UUs, non-Universalists, leaning into a theology of love. In a recent Substack post, he writes:
Most theists, agnostics, and atheists believe God is omnipotent. But believing God is all-powerful, is “in control,” or can control others leads to unsolvable conundrums. We ask, “Why doesn’t an all-powerful and all-loving God prevent genuine evil?”
I offer an alternative view of God’s power I call ‘amipotence.’ [Ami refering to “love” as a Latin-ish prefix.] This view puts love first among the divine attributes, thereby reframing and redefining God’s power and freedom. Amipotence says the Spirit’s love is necessarily uncontrolling.
It portrays deity as strong not weak, interactive rather than inert, and always present and receptive. Amipotence rejects the idea of unlimited divine freedom, because love (and logic) constrains what the Spirit can do.
When it comes to God’s power and freedom, it’s not all or nothing, in the sense of deity having all power or none or divinity as entirely free or entirely bound. The Spirit is neither controlling nor idle, neither completely constrained nor arbitrarily free. It’s the nature of the Spirit to love, but deity freely decides how to love in each moment.
The Spirit is neither omnipotent nor impotent but amipotent.
I have no idea if Oord knows this, but James Vila Blake said something very, very similar in many fewer words while serving as the minister at the Unitarian congregation in Evanston, Illinois, around the turn of the twentieth century:
Love is the spirit of this church,
and service is its law.
This is our great covenant:
To dwell together in peace,
to seek the truth in love,
and to help one another.
The Spirit is amipotent.
Love is the Spirit.
God is Love.
This very Universalist idea comes back again and again and again through time and space. Perhaps because it is so infused through our air, water, and soil…but also because it is logical, powerful, meaningful. What we feel as love—the active realization of relation—is powerful enough to make us question and resist limiting beliefs, limiting doctrines, limiting cultural norms.
Ministers and theologians often ask us to think of love as more than romcom fantasy and bubblegum pop music—I make that same request myself—but it’s not because those things shouldn’t also be included in the English word love, it’s because love is so much bigger, so much more powerful, than these delightful confections imply. Love is an “ultimate concern,” as Paul Tillich named the object of the human search for understanding. Love is something that we seek out, strive to create, find ourselves caught up in and called by, become changed, transformed through as we experience it deeply. Love is a foundational reality in this sort of view. It is what holds the universe together.
The Spirit is amipotent.
Love is the Spirit.
God is Love.
Karen Baker-Fletcher is a professor of systematic theology and a womanist. (If you’re not familiar, womanist refers to a liberative theological frame created by and grounded in the experiences of Black women.) Baker-Fletcher says of Oord’s work in relation to her own:
In womanist theology, God created color and that includes the beauty of skin color. Womanist theology unabashedly addresses the evil of racial hatred against darker human bodies. The notion of omnipotent love that Oord deconstructs has perpetuated harm and violence in its will to control human bodies, including darker colored bodies.
I resonate with Oord’s theology of amipotence because it is informed by the real-lived stories of local and global people who question the notion of an omnipotent God in experiences of evil and suffering.
Finally, I appreciate Oord’s work because he turns to poetics in his creative use of language. He employs a new word, formed from two ancient words, to overcome limitations in the English language. His creative use of language opens embodied minds and hearts to novel ways of seeing, knowing, and understanding God and the world.
She also gives good critique, wondering how Oord might apply his theology to issues of racism and including more “color” in his sense of holy love. Love, after all, has implications. If we hold love as our ultimate concern, understand it as the nature of the Divine, then it must shape how we think, how we live, who we are, what we do.
For all that I’ve spent more than two decades studying, reading, thinking, articulating, rethinking, and rearticulating, I still lean so strongly into what I learned as a child: theology that leads to ethics.
You just need to remember two things: 1. God is love and 2. God doesn’t throw anyone away, and neither do we.
Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt
Love is the Doctrine of this Church,
The quest of truth is its Sacrament,
And service is its Prayer.
To dwell together in Peace,
To seek knowledge in Freedom,
To serve [hu]mankind in Fellowship,
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine,
Thus do we Covenant with each other and with our God.
How many of you have spoken some version of the words of this 1933 covenant attributed to Leo Griswold Williams in UU places of worship? I have to be honest that it delights me that so many of us, inheritors of powerful Universalist teachings on love and members of a decidedly noncreedal tradition, unapologetically recite this covenant of our faith, sometimes weekly. Williams, a Universalist minister known throughout his life for his anti-war efforts, offered us an organizer’s covenant whose foundations in a powerful Love ethic resonate to this day.
As we together contemplate 200 years of Love at the Center of our Faith, I invite you to hold in mind that our Universalist forebears had a theological journey with love, one that precedes our 1825 starting point for this afternoon and continues to the love ethic of today that guides us in our movement and is woven throughout our work for justice. But how did we get here?
First a few disclaimers. The biggest is that I am not an historian by training. I am an ethicist who dabbles in theology. I hope you will offer me some grace with my meanderings through our history. I also do not have the heart to offer quotations from the last two hundred years as if only the theological inclinations of men matter, or worse as if gender itself is a binary rather than a spectrum. Not here in upstate New York where our feminist ancestors did such beautiful work to liberate us from ourselves. Most of the quotations you will hear from me have been edited for gender inclusivity.
According to the good folks at Harvard Square Library, Universalists began by proclaiming the very nature of God as Love. That understanding of God led to an understanding of faithful practice as grounded in both love of God and love of humanity. As the roles of women changed in the early nineteenth century, and middle class women in particular had more time for parenting, new ideas about family structures gained in popularity where love and compassion were understood to be primary responsibilities of parents. A growing understanding of God as a parental figure, gave credence to the idea of a loving God as Father grounded in the values of mercy, compassion and grace. These ideas were often cited in statements refuting accusations that Universalists were infidels rejecting the primary teachings of Christianity. Over time the idea of love living at the center of our faith shifted to teachings about the religious duties of Universalists. We see this in the mid to late nineteenth century and early twentieth century as our writings shift to include a telos where love guides us to justice in the everyday. That shift, grounded in the teachings of collective salvation which align us with the social gospel, provides a highly recognizable foundation for our justice work to this day. The UUA’s Side with Love campaign in 2025 draws its principles from the same originating force of love that we have held since the beginning.
You can find it in this language, “With LOVE at the center, we commit to organizing in ways that nurture integrity, joy, and collective liberation.” More on our collective salvation and Side with Love in a bit.
Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, UUA president, during the October 25, 2025, bicentennial event celebrating the New York State Convention of Universalists and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton in New York.
I want to take us back to the writings of Judith Sargent Murray, a prominent essayist and women’s rights advocate, whose 1782 Catechism is thought to be the first published writing of an American Universalist woman. This document was written in a question and answer format intended to be read by children. In a question building on wonderings about the nature of God, the questioner asks,
Q. How then can I judge of [God’s] power, love, or tenderness?
[The] A[nswer]. If, upon a return from any of your little visiting excursions, you should behold some beautiful addition to your apparel, or some advantageous alteration in the disposition of the furniture of your chamber, you would take it for granted the hand of affection had been employed, though you were not a spectator of its beneficent operations: So, when you behold the effects, of love, manifested in rain, sun-shine, seed time and harvest, you ought to conclude there is a power divine, thought to you invisible; and further, that that power is all good, all gracious, and all mighty.
In this early catechism we see love as central to the nature of God, and the example of nurturing parenting pointing to God’s tenderness. In the essay from Harvard Square Library that I mentioned earlier lies the claim that,
“In essence, the conversion to Universalism was a conversion to love itself. Salvation depended not so much on believing or feeling something specific about God or Jesus as much as it depended on being able to perceive and appreciate love. As the very popular Lucy Barn wrote in the Female Christian in 1809, “When Universalist[s] accept that all [humans] are [siblings] to be loved, they know they have passed from death into life.”’
It is important to note that early in our Universalist history, those who professed Universalist teachings did not necessarily attend a Universalist identified congregation. Universalist thought was originally an approach to Christianity, with many who professed its teachings understanding themselves to be Universalist Christians of a particular faith tradition—so Universalist Baptists, Universalists Methodists and the like. We will come back to this.
Thomas Whitmore, a Universalist minister who dedicated himself to organizing Universalism as a concrete tradition through a range of writings published The Plain Guide to Universalism in 1840. This was an attempt to defend Universalism against the earlier mentioned accusations of infidelity and immorality. His writing describes Universalism’s doctrine of love and mercy as “benign and salutary,” and Universalists as those “who believe in the eventual holiness and happiness of all the human race.” The Plain Guide is positive, celebratory even; it’s foundation will carry us through the social gospel movement to collective salvation, the love of neighbor, and expectations of mutual aid and the work for justice that we are called to today. As Whitmore writes,
“The love of God is a soul-inspiring theme. The heart is softened by this subject. O happy Universalists! Ye are the only people on the earth who believe in a God whose perfection may be safely imitated. You can love, and imitate your God; but others to imitate their God, must hate… Universalists, having so reasonable and benevolent a doctrine, are laid under more sacred obligations to be virtuous than any other class of [people].”
So we are warned not simply to rest in the happy gladness of a Universalist faith but instead to prepare ourselves for the duties that emerge from these teachings.
Another positive note before we get to duty. In 1900 Quillen Shin, circuit riding Universalist preacher and eventual General Missionary of the Universalist General Convention added his “Affirmations of Universalism” to the documentary history. His writing echoes that of Murray’s early catechism when he proclaims “What a joy to live in God’s beautiful world, with its teeming fields and waving forests and fruitful valleys and towering mountains and flowing streams! How thankful must we be for the thronging delights in this lower mansion of our Father’s House. Let us cultivate a love for this world, and try to live here and enjoy it as long as we can… The force behind all forces and all worlds is love.”
Later in the affirmations, Shin insists that, “Universalism affirms a perfect God… [God] is love. [God] is perfect love.” God saves us through God’s influence on our own wills, and through what Shin describes as “the all-conquering agencies of love, to make the unwilling soul willing!” The power of love does not just overcome hate — it overcomes reticence and inertia. Moving from unwilling souls to willing souls is the necessary pre-condition for any courageous strategy for change.
Now at this point in our history, I find myself wondering how we shifted from a God of love who inspires both the love God and love for all humanity, to social responsibility and the call to work for justice. So I turn to the complex figure of Clarence Skinner. In his 1915 Social Implications of Universalism, Skinner works to align the teachings of Universalist thought with the social responsibility called for by the social gospel movement that sought to ground social responsibility in Christian ethics. Skinner begins with the following:
“How to transform this old earth into the Kingdom of Heaven—that’s the primal question. For thousands of years sad-eyed [people] have looked upon this war-wracked and greed-broken world, yearning to gather it into their great healing love…
May the humblest of these seekers after truth set forth the talismanic word which fires [them] with hope and urges [them] to whatever service [they] can render. It is Universalism—the universal faith and hope in the universal love…”
Skinner goes on to lament the challenges of the time, which notably include the failing of Protestant churches and decaying political systems. In both cases, Skinner argues, we must search for a more perfect expression of our instincts and needs.
Skinner insists that “all great problems involve theological conceptions,” and writes of how Universalism, as a liberating force, upholds democracy itself by calling for the destruction of tyranny and the emancipation of all. This is why the Universalist church, while small, lives at the center of work for justice. He celebrates Universalists who work to abolish slavery, who fight for women’s suffrage, and work to humanize the carceral state and agitate for the rights of prisoners. Skinner lauds our work for universal peace, temperance, and the care of children. Such, he proclaimed, “has been the prophetic vision of Universalism.”
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This great, healing love that Skinner describes is recognizable to us in our faithful living today. Just as the context of failing political systems and a dropping participation in congregational life haunt our current context. And in Skinner’s contributions lie a profound warning to us as a faith tradition. This minister, teacher, and dean of a theological school who helped drive the evolution of love at the foundations of Universalist thought to a clarion call to work for justice also advocated for eugenics in four of his books.
It is important for us to remember that when taken to an extreme, a Universalist idea that humanity can be perfected through the imitation of God (the soul-inspiration that Whitmore offers in his Plain Guide) can lead to a chilling repetition of teachings that emphasize human control of reproduction to select for traits imagined to be the correct future and progress of all humanity. Such toxic teachings have been used to justify antisemitic, ableist, and racist violence ever since. May we never forget that teachings on love, when taken out of context and without nuance, can lead back to the very social evils and violations that we work so hard to dismantle.
For a while now I have been equating love living at the center of our faith with teachings on universal salvation. It is worth noting that theological discussions at the time of consolidation of Universalism and Unitarianism in 1961, centered around belief in universal salvation. Let me remind us in the words of the Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison Reed, that ours is “… a religion of radical and overpowering love. Universal Salvation insists that no matter what we do, God so loves us that [God] will not and cannot consign even a single human individual to eternal damnation. Universal salvation—the reality that we share a common destiny—is the inescapable consequence of Universal love.”
To say that salvation is collective is to insist that there can be no single ultimate good, no living up to the great potential of human living, without an embodied commitment to that same good being not only theoretically, but concretely achieved by the community as a whole. Why do we need to be saved in the first place? Because the realities of greed, overwork, and systems of oppression and marginalization mean that we need something to call us back to the ideals of human goodness that we preach and teach about. It is not enough to say that we are inherently good and simply wait, too often in a position of privilege, for that goodness to trickle down to the many while we sit in comfortable judgment of the world as it is. Love of neighbor requires something very different from us, especially in these times.
Albert Ziegler, a theologian and denominational leader in the Universalist Church of America, wrote a series of articles called “Foundations of Faith” for the Universalist Leader in 1959 attempting to define a modern Universalism for the time. Ziegler remarked early in the ten-part series that Universalists are shaped by a gospel of universal salvation. That the good news of our inherited tradition was experienced by early adherents not as a new faith that they had to embrace through conversion, but as “a completion of their own religion.” The religious pluralism that is central to present day Unitarian Universalism existed for early Universalists as a type of hybrid identity, as mentioned earlier. Belief in universal salvation lived at the center of individual Universalists’ expressions of worship and theology. Woven throughout was the quest for fulfillment and wholeness.
Ziegler insisted that a common Universalist gospel teaches that salvation applies to us all, no matter the differences in how we understand the meaning of salvation itself. Since our tradition continues to teach that humanity carries within itself the inherent potential for human goodness, a(nother) modern day reframing of salvation is the very call to wholeness that Universalism claimed. As a denominational official, Ziegler observed that our Universalist congregations at the time were primarily shaped by liberalism, social action, the use of reason, and collective salvation. Importantly, Ziegler insisted that liberalism was central to Universalism but did not define all of Universalism; that the call to social action was a logical outgrowth of Universalism, but not Universalism itself. “Social action is the fruit,” wrote Ziegler, “not the sustaining root.”
He felt similarly about rationalism, or the use of reason. But it was collective salvation, or a collective wholeness, that held these other shaping forces together. That wholeness, which we are impelled toward over the course of a lifetime, was what most excited our Universalist forebears. Whether hyphenated Universalists, or those who chose to sacrifice the traditions they had known to establish congregations built around a saving message for all, this promise of an all-inclusive, all-embracing love, one shaped by liberal ideals and the call to justice making in our living, held the heart of our tradition’s offering to the world.
We see that same foundation of universal salvation as an all embracing love when Richard S. Gilbert, offered a keynote to this convention on Universalist History, Ethics, and Theology 1983. He explores a similar question through comparisons of theological and ethical Universalism that turns on our understanding of salvation. For Gilbert, theological Universalism offers an eschatological universal salvation—essentially the promise that all souls will be saved after death. He quite reasonably insists that this is a fairly easy theological argument to make because it asks little of us as individuals. A loving God will save all of us, though it might be nice if we also pursue goodness in our living. An ethical universalism, by contrast, insists that we labor for the earthly salvation of all. “Universal salvation,” he writes, “come[s] to mean global solidarity. The unit for salvation is no longer the individual; it is the world community.” One has only to explore the social justice statements and actions taken by our faith since Gilbert’s keynote to see love as a constant, driving force for the liberation and salvation of all.
In these times of distressing change in our nation, in the global community, in our congregations, and even in our movement we are called to attend not only to the fruits of our faith, but also to its sustaining roots. What we offer one another in the coming years will strengthen, nourish, and feed our beloved communities for future generations. It is time for us to become good ancestors. It is time to return to a collective wholeness, ground ourselves in the practices of love, and, once again, revitalize the faith.
Rev. Dr. Adam Robersmith
Revitalize the faith! Had I known that’s what I was heading toward when I answered the call to ministry, I might have paused more deeply…and yet, the work of congregational ministry is always about renewing what is vital, what is transformative, what is alive within and beyond the community.
Whether through a freshening of worship and preaching or unleashing the capacity for social action and service, teaching transformative materials or surrounding members in need with loving care, nourishing the community with all the goodness the world has to offer brings us back to life.
In the Universalist spirit of great inclusivity, my congregation has used music from Björk, K-Pop Demon Hunters, Messiaen, Amy Marcy Beach, Madonna, and Scott Joplin, as well as all the usual suspects. We have held Iftars open to the wider community because one of our members is Muslim in political exile from his home country and he missed celebrating with his family and asked if we would celebrate with him. We have a food ministry that includes five different programs that arose because members knew we had neighbors going hungry and couldn’t let that continue without a response.
We incubate a new and growing organization that serves queer youth across the state of Connecticut, giving them office and program space as well as admin support for free until they are ready to head out so that we can do it again with another organization. We share our plate every month with organizations that do work in the world to help create Beloved Community.
This is not to say that we’re perfect or without needs to learn, grow, and strengthen ourselves for this work especially in these challenging times. It is to say, though, that we understand a Universalist congregational practice to require us to open ourselves to possibility, meaning, and generosity. We understand that Love demands no less of us, in part, because of the covenant we affirm at least once every week in worship.
Although I was not deeply familiar with the Griswold covenant, I will admit to cheating a little bit in terms of knowing how the James Vila Blake covenant says much of what Thomas Jay Oord does, because that’s what my congregation says in worship every Sunday as one-half of our congregational covenant. It may not be as old as our congregation is, but it articulates so well how we live our Universalism together.
Love is the spirit of this church,
and service is its law.
This is our great covenant:
To dwell together in peace,
to seek the truth in love,
and to help one another.
Our congregational tagline is “Love is the Spirit”—and some of our members sign off their letters and emails with that, too. It is so prevalent that it really does shape how we are with one another and how we engage with the world. Thomas Whitmore’s comment that we must imitate God in the practice of love as a sacred obligation feels very familiar to me…and his exclamation of O happy Universalists! makes me think fondly and joyfully of my people. It is who we are: concerned, engaged, joyful, loving.
That combination—concerned, engaged, joyful, loving—prompts the way in which we engage in the transformative, collaborative work of social action. It also prompts the way in which we engage with our sibling congregations and the UUA in this work. We, too, engage with the UUA’s Side With Love organizing ministry. In the fall of 2024 we fulfilled our Green Sanctuary work, joining the community of congregations facing the challenges and tasks of climate justice and sustainability. We are a Welcoming Congregation with a clear focus on trans inclusion and trans rights, as well, and we renew both of those commitments each year with action, education, and worship. We have been a part of organizing for strengthening democracy and voting rights—and doing so far more effectively in collaboration with others through Side With Love than we would on our own.
Our Universalism is not exactly the same as the Universalism of 1825. Yet, the core idea still holds. Moving through time from “a loving God would never condemn any of its creation to eternal torment” to “God is Love” to “Love at the Center” to “love means we save us all”—it is an all-inclusive love that runs through everything. We’re not trying to just save ourselves. We’re trying to participate in, partner in collective salvation—because all-inclusive love demands no less.
As a congregation, we are full participants in UUism, supporting the UUA and our sibling congregations, working together…and we never forget that everything we do is deeply rooted in our Universalist heritage, in the practice and experience of love. For us, love is the ultimate concern. It is the foundational reality that holds us together. It is the directive, the aim, that shapes our discussions and debates, our actions and dreams.
Our history is very much present—not limiting us, but grounding us so that we may continue the work of all-inclusive, ever-expanding love and learn what that means in ways appropriate to our world, our challenges. Yes, universal salvation is theologically relevant for us, but in practice, we act moving toward Richard Gilbert’s understanding: Universal salvation come[s] to mean global solidarity. The unit for salvation is no longer the individual; it is the world community.
The other half of our covenant, used as our benediction every week, articulates how we live our Universalism out in the world:
Engage with the world in peace,
Have courage,
Hold on to what is good.
Return to no person evil for evil.
Strengthen the fainthearted,
Support the weak,
Help the suffering,
Honor all beings.
The practice of Universalism in community is the revitalization of our faith. It is also the revitalization, the fulfillment of my faith from childhood on…and perhaps it will be yours, too.
Love is the Spirit of this church and service is its law.
God is love. God doesn’t throw anyone away, and neither do we.
May it be so. May we help make it so.
Originally published in the Universalist Herald, universalist-herald.org, David Damico editor.