Featured Articles

HSL is still at work on the redesign of the website, however that work is going on in the background. In the spring of 2013, steps will be taken to release the new site sequentially. We have a backlog of interesting new content ready to share with our readers. Most of this is waiting for the redesign to go live. However, given the approach of the holidays, we are releasing two historic hymnals [link to follow-up page] in high-quality PDF format. For up-to-date news about the progress of the redesign, be sure to sign up for our Newsletter or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
- Emily R. Mace, Director, December 2012

HSL makes available for the first time online two hymnals from the late nineteenth century: Unity Festivals, published by the Western Unitarian Sunday School Society, and Orders of Service for Public Worship.

In 1910, the artist and poet Kahlil Gibran met and drew a picture of Harvard's President Charles W. Eliot. HSL makes available online an article by Paul M. Wright, editor of the University of Massachusetts Press's series on “Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book.” The article is notable for its focus on the Harvard President who transformed the college into a prestigious university, and the poet from Lebanon whose works continue to inspire religious liberals today.

Dr. Emily R. Mace comes to Harvard Square Library with a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University. She is excited to be joining the Cambridge-based staff of the Harvard Square Library in support of a website that has proved helpful for both her research and her teaching.

On August 31, 2011 the Rev. Dr. Herbert Vetter concluded forty-four years of Ministry-at-Large on behalf of the First Parish Church in Harvard Square.

Augusta Jane Chapin was the second woman ordained a Universalist minister (after Olympia Brown) and the first women in America to receive an honorary doctorate of divinity degree awarded by Lombard College in 1893 at the World’s Fair in Chicago.

This evolving series will highlight individuals and events throughout the years. The stories are told both in words and beautiful pictures which help tell each story uniquely. Please check back as we are planning on having a new piece on a monthly basis.

George Huntston Williams American professor of Unitarian theology and historian of the Socinian movement. He was among the original Editorial Advisors of the scholarly journal Dionysius.

A fervent adherent to liberal religion, Throop established a Universalist group in Pasadena in 1886: the church still survives as Throop Memorial Church. He is now best known for founding in 1891 (with a gift of over $100,000) the California Institute of Technology, which is today one of the world's most selective universities.

Here published free online worldwide is the illustrated autobiography of the Universalist minister who was the only prominent woman suffrage movement advocate who lived long enough to vote. Today half of our Unitarian Universalist ministers are women, and almost half of American Protestant denominations now ordain Women.

A profile of American patriot, physician, writer, humanitarian, and articulate Universalist Benjamin Rush. Benjamin Rush’s legacy of service to country, to fellow man, and to the causes of social justice highlight an accomplished life as an important figure in American history.

The Story of Tufts and its First President : from a Light on a Hill to A Global Research Institution

These two extraordinary people first met in 1774, when Judith‘s father, Winthrop Sargent, invited John to preach in Gloucester to a small group of “adherents” to Universalism.

Clara Barton was both famous and honored in her lifetime and has a well-earned place in American history as the angel of Civil War battlefields and founder of the American Red Cross.

Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune, was an advocate of American democratic culture who celebrated in New York the development of the great West.

Barnum was a capitalist showman whose early career was not devoid of either frauds or misfortunes. His life as a whole was a celebration of both nature and world civilization. In contrast to the absurd mainstream religion of hellfire and endless punishment prevalent during his youth, P. T Barnum affirmed Universalism, a life-affirming faith.

What a story! Louise Carnegie, the wife of the richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie, owner of the Carnegie Steel Corporation enthusiastically advised her husband to stop making money and to start giving away his fortune by helping communities in America and beyond to build free public libraries.

Owen D. Young was an American industrialist, businessman, lawyer and diplomat at the Second Reparations Conference in 1929, as a member of the German Reparations International Commission. He is best known for his SRC diplomacy and for founding the Radio Corporation of America. Young founded RCA as a subsidiary of General Electric in 1919; he became its first chairman and continued in that position until 1929.

Founder of the Old South Leaflets of American Classics

Year 2011 marks the sesquicentennial of one of the three primary co-creators of the nation of India: Gandhi — Tagore — Nehru. HSL offers free online The Illustrated Story of Tagore — Poet of India.

Cakes for the Queen of Heaven explores the relationship between women's religious history and the personal issues that arise in women living in this patriarchal society. Women struggle with issues of body image, troubled mother-daughter relationships, sexual freedom and access to power.

An anthology of Unitarian Universalist readings regarding the spring season and the celebration of Easter Holiday. This book was wrrtten by Carl Seaburg and Mark Harris.

The following series provides biographical sketches for well known musical artists who have made contributions to the world of Universal Universalists. The highlighted artists span several decades from the early 1900's to contemporary artists.

Please see our review of this book by Dr. Vetter. This reliable, intimate story of one of the great American citizens of the twentieth century is a joy to read.

The Harvard Square Library presents Standing Before Us, a presentation of 160 years of women’s work. This long-awaited volume contains letters, essays, stories, poems and speeches by Unitarian and Universalist women, and includes a biographical sketch of each women and informative notes on the texts selected.

This controversial book covers the history of the Church from early Christianity to the middle of the twentieth century. Among the topics discussed are: the Catholic system of Church government, the belief that Christianity is the only true religion, and the expansion of Catholicism in the nineteenth century in the United States.

Sales have not ceased after a century for the Harvard Classics. Here are found works on the history of civilization, religion, philosophy, education, science, politics, literature, and the arts. The publisher not only proposed the project to Charles W. Eliot, retiring president of Harvard University, but also sold some 350,000 sets in twenty years.

Here we share 40 more Universalist Biographies by Mark Harris. This project is made possible in part by the Alice and Frank Schulman Fund of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Spinney Mudge Grants Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn, Massachusetts.

The May 2010 volume of the occasional online Harvard Square Library Review contains a new article – Community Ministry and the Meadville Lombard Theological Model

The substance of the following pages was given in the form of an address, at the service of dedication of a tablet in memory of Mr. Crothers, in Unity Church, St. Paul, Minnesota, Sunday, December 8, 1929.

This book brings to life a remarkable man and a remarkable era. Hosea Ballou - rebel preacher, self-taught theologian - was one of the most influential religious figures of nineteenth-century America.

This Transcendentalist manifesto was written to the Boston congregation just before the death of the exhausted and ill Unitarian social reformer.

It is widely appreciated that Alan Paton, the writer who was born in South Africa, was the founder and president of the South African Liberal Party (1953-68) which opposed apartheid and was banned by the racist government.

Author Von Ogden Vogt (1879-1964) was a master liturgist who excelled at celebrating Life in the liberal religious tradition while serving as the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago. Now available free online is Vogt’s book, Art and Religion.

This is a book of songs of life. They are religious without being sectarian: they sing the realities of man’s experience and vitalizing purpose. They express the feeling of at-homeness in the world and the human values of truth, beauty and goodnes

This unique contribution to the Unitarian Universalist history chronicles the remarkable work of lay and ordained UU ministers in areas of social justice, chaplaincy, authorship and the arts, and educational and institutional leadership. This is ministry beyond the churches - it is community ministry.

In 1875 F.O. Vaille and H.A. Clark collected and published The Harvard Book, a two volume series of historical, biographical, and descriptive sketches profusely illustrated with 75 fine heliotype plates and many wood engravings. These huge leather bond, gold embossed two volumes were a gift from the late Edith Maream Stebbins, a member of the First Unitarian Universalist Parish in Milton, Massachusetts. It has an abundance of historic visual art now shared worldwide online.

That is the title of the gathering of three pivotal addresses introduced online by Unitarian historian Conrad Wright: Unitarian Christianity by William Ellery Channing, The Divinity School Address by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and The Transient and Permanent in Christianity by Theodore Parker.

These three addresses are critical for understanding Unitarianism in America. Our harvardsquarelibrary.org publishes free online Dr. Wright's introduction to all three, plus a concise summary of Channing's historic address.

Ralph Waldo Emerson surrendered his prized Boston pastorate and quietly moved to Concord. but his open anti-supernaturalism persisted in the pulpit work of Theodore Parker, whose South Boston ordination sermon in 1841 on The Transient and Permanent in Christianity was just the start of his humanizing of Jesus.

Internationally known as an astronomer-scholar, Harlow Shapley asserts that man is not the center of the universe, nor, in all likelihood, is man alone. Dr. Shapley’s ingenious speculations about the cosmos blend with the imaginative color illustrations of Richard C. Bartlett to produce the “cosmic poetry” of Of Star and Men. Of Stars and Men is now available here online for download by chapter.

When Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School on July 15, 1838, the address was condemned by Professor Andrews Norton as "The Latest form of Infidielity." One hundred years later, this intensely controversial address at the beginning of the Transcendentalist movement in American religion and literature was celebrated by the American Unitarian Association in a Ware Lecture at its annual meeting addressed by Dr. John Haynes Holmes of the Community Church of New York.

The original four volumes of Heralds of a Liberal Faith by Samuel Atkins Eliot, the first President of the American Unitarian Association, were accompanied by an examination of virtually all of the biographical compilations concerning Unitarian ministers since William B. Sprague’s epic Annuals of the Unitarian Pulpit, which interpreted these ministries in America through 1855.

The Emerson that emerges from these pages is a flesh and blood Emerson, a man of strong convictions and wide associations, one who experienced personal losses as well as public acclaim, a deeply spiritual person who was also a prominent citizen, rooted in his community and actively engaged in the issues of his time.

The booklets in this series were originally written as scientific materials for use in religious education. Other educators and many parents, however, will find much of value in their thoughtful and unusual approach designed to interest children in the everyday wonders of nature and science

John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Susan B. Anthony, William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Joseph Priestley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Charles W. Eliot are among the more than 100 Unitarians shown here who contributed to the creative structure of American civilization, government, business, education, literature, human liberation, religion, and science.

Celebrate May Sarton, Frank Lloyd Wright, Adlai Stevenson, Bé,la Bartó,k, Margaret Laurence, Roger Baldwin, Pete Seeger, Linus Pauling, Albert Schweitzer-these figures are among the 150 notable Unitarians shown here who have made significant contributions to life.

In addition to the 1740-1900 Biographies, it is a joy to add the following portraits written by Mark W. Harris, Minister of the historic First Parish in Watertown, Massachusetts. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism (scarecrow press, inc, Lanham, Maryland 20706)

Towards the end of the remarkable era led by President Charles W. Eliot, Unitarian, the Harvard Business School was founded. At its centennial celebration, 1908-2008, President Drew Faust spoke these words concerning the future.

In James Luther Adams one finds the curious, and sometimes contradictory, combination of midieval saint, Renaissance humanist, Marxist critic, Enlightenment encyclopedist, sectarian enthusiast, and bourgeis compulsive. Yet he is, in many ways, a prototypical modern man, attempting to find, confess, and, where necessary, carve out a sense of meaning large enough to preserve us from the perennial idolatries and aimlessness that flesh is heir to.

In 2007 we at Community celebrated the centennial of John Haynes Holmes’ arrival in New York to serve The Church of the Messiah (which was how the 2nd Congregational Unitarian Church had been known since 1839). That year-long series of special worship services, guest speakers, forums, and other events recognized Holmes’ special relationship with Mohandas Gandhi, which was one among many of his contributions as a minister, spiritual leader, and prophetic activist.

The Ware Lecture Series One Ware Lecture was usually given during each annual Unitarian May Meeting. After consolidation with the Universalist Church of America, the Ware Lecture continued since 1961 as a feature of the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It has included such luminaries as Linus Pauling, Kurt Vonnegut and Martin Luther King Jr.

Jack Mendelsohn's liberal ministry of sixty-two years continues to express his passion for Beacon Press Books. As author as well as preacher and prophet, he is esteemed by unitarian Universalists as well as a lively circle of action oriented citizens. Here now he celebrates Beacon Press books, published by the Unitarian Universalist Association’a precious shocase of real religion expressed as art, sex, education, literature, spirituality, and democracy

From Kirkland to Lowell, Harvard University presidents for 123 years, 1810-1933, were Unitarian. An illustrated story.

When the publishing house of an institution of higher education focused on science and technology also grows to excel in publishing highly esteemed books&mdash,in fields such as the visual arts, economics, law, linguistics, foreign affairs, public communication, education, and government&mdash,that is a remarkable achievement made by the MIT Press. One of the early pioneers of this achievement was James Killian (1904-1988), the 10th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also served as the Moderator of the American Association, the first Presidential Advisor on Science and Technology (serving Dwight Eisenhower), as well as Chairman of the Carnegie Commission which established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the United States. MIT Press Books.

During the years 1970 to 1990, when I was the director of the Cambridge Forum of the First Parish in Cambridge, I was privileged to moderate many programs featuring such eminent women and men as those listed here.

More biographies of eminent women and men, all featured on the Cambridge Forum listed here.

The question addressed in this book, Is God Necessary? , is not new but is of perennial importance. What is new is that a great new discovery answers this question decisively in the twenty-first century as Darwin’s theory of evolution did in the nineteenth century.

When the first printing press entered America in 1638, it was the property of Harvard College. We now celebrate online our first series of Harvard University Press books. These are in the field of Politics and Law and also contain, if you click, practical related information from us as an Amazon Affiliate.

America's first poet, Anne Bradstreet, once lived in Cambridge. Here are some brief biographies and selected poems of poets since Bradstreet.

First published in New England Magazine in 1900, Unitarianism in America is an important milestone in Unitarian history. It is reproduced here exactly as it appeared in it's original form