This whole Comity and Unity matter interests me. I’m going through my photostats of 1920s Universalist General Convention official papers and will pull out the reports related to these. I think I found the report that got the ball rolling, or at least an early force. This recasts the “proposed Universalist-Congregationalist” merger more in terms of a pan-Protestant effort, more in line with the 1925 organization of the United Church of Canada (a brief history at their site) referenced in the last report (1927) I typed out. (I’ve discovered I’m nearly a touch typist now.) Indeed, I wonder if the eventual United Church of Christ was its fruits — without the Universalists of course.
From the Report of the Committee on Resolutions (1922)
Resolutions Adopted
III. Christian Unity
Whereas, we have learned that National Convention of Congregationalist Churches at Springfield authorized its Commission on Comity, Federation, and Unity, to confer with other such committees and to formulate such plans as seemed practicable and wise for a unification of liberal religious forces, and
Whereas, other organizations and groups are moving in the same direction, be it
Resolved, that this Convention notes such action with sympathetic approval and instructs its Board of Trustees to appoint a Commission on Comity and Unity which shall be authorize to enter into correspondence and conference with other similar bodies, and which shall report back to this Convention at its next session.
Also, from “the more things change” department. The other resolutions adopted that year — since the issue of current General Assembly resolutions causes so much controversy — were on:
1. Religion and science. (Included “we deplore the movement in certain parts of the country to revert to the method of prohibiting by legislation the teaching of science in schools and universities supported by the state.”)
2. Literature for the young. (Urges use of modern and liberal books in Sunday School; Universalist Publishing House mandated to provide the same.)
4. Child training. (Urges training adolescents in church responsibilities and the revival of confirmation.)
5. Promotion of Peace. (Urges the US Senate “to take steps looking to the entrance of this country into the World Court.”)
6. Law enforcement. (Universalists should help enforce Prohibition.)
7. Universalist Comrades. (Endorses the Order of Universalist Comrades, a new men’s organization that paralleled existing women’s and youth organizations for fund raising, church extension, and sociability. It only lasted a few years.)
8. “The Supreme Task.” (Set Universalism in its place of national and international affairs, so resolved “that this Convention impress once more upon our ministers the supreme duty of gathering the children into the Church School, and the young people into their Christian Union, and of keeping in pastoral touch with the people and interests of the parish, as the surest way of building up our churches and of making a denomination whose voice shall deserve to be heard upon any question whatsoever.”)
9. The Inness Pictures. (Thanks to loan of paintings for the term of the Convention.) (Pictured here.)
10. Hospitality. (Conventional thanks-giving resolution.)
11. Unitarians. (Thanks-giving for greetings brought by the National Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches.)
