This is mainly for the Demosthenians, or those who care about my reading list.
As I mentioned earlier, I”m reading E. Merton Coulter’s College Life in the Old South. The chapter on the literary societies is required for induction into membership of the Demosthenian Literary Society . . . so I have read this before (several times really) but not recently. Speaking of the antebellum University of Georgia, Coulter writes in 1928,
Although the Franklin College boys never had much sympathy for Catholics, they had no great objection to the new-fangled Universalists — they at least decided that Universalism could stand the test of investigation. And they seem to have had no great horror of the Mormons, for in 1857 they held that Deseret . . . should be admitted into the Union as a state.
OK: that last bit was for Philocrites, too.
Looking back, this may have been — reading this passage in my freshman year (1987) — the first reference to Universalism apart from Unitarian Universalism (and in my youth, uniformly reduced to “Unitarianism”) I ever saw.
If so, I owe a double debt to the DLS, which went futher to shape my education and formation than I can ever justly credit.
Small world reference: I was reading this passage at the bus-stop this morning when who should walk by but Terrance’s (friend, blogger and fellow Demosthenian) partner and their child.
