Books published by Blackstone Editions

Orestes Augustus Brownson - religious and philosophical explorer, political theorist, pioneer of personal journalism, Transcendentalist, and champion of American Catholicism - lived a colorful and varied life. His contemporaries likened him to a weathervane, changing direction with every puff of wind. He preferred to think of himself as a seeker after truth, never contented with yesterday's answers. The roots of his varied career were sent down in his youth. He grew up, largely self-educated, in rural Vermont, encountered social inequality first-hand in the fashionable resort town of Ballston Spa, New York, and came of age as an apprentice journalist in the midst of controversy over the role of money and influence in politics. After a brief stint as a schoolteacher on the outskirts of Detroit - then a frontier settlement populated largely by French-speaking Catholics - he settled in New York as a Universalist minister and editor, only to be driven from his pulpit by fellow Universalists who considered him an "infidel." Becoming Brownson is not only the story of Brownson's formative years, but an essential key to the problem of reconciling the many dimensions of his mature and fruitful life.

Adin Ballou was a man of peace - the leader of the pacifist Hopedale Community, and a major theorist of nonviolent resistance to evil. Yet he was not of a naturally peaceful disposition. As a young minister he engaged in theological controversy so heated that his own party urged him to moderate his language. Though he never engaged in physical violence, Ballou knew what it was like to become caught up in an exchange of hostilities, to identify with one side and demonize the other, to feel injured and to wish to injure others in return. In his autobiography, Ballou tells the story of his transformation from a proud and touchy man, zealous for his own honor and the honor of the causes he espoused, to a champion of peace, loved and respected in his own Hopedale Community and around the world. This edition includes: Over 100 pages of annotations - more than 800 notes to illuminate the people, places, relationships, literary allusions, religious movements, and popular culture that made up Ballou's worldA complete bibliography of Ballou's writings, including a guide to online editionsTwo articles by Ballou, written 40 years apart, describing his role in the formation of the Restorationist denominationThe full text of the correspondence between Ballou and Leo Tolstoy, newly compiled from the two published sources

This little book is devoted to remembering the "good old days" of living in the utopian community of Hopedale, Massachusetts during the 1840s and 1850s. The pleasures and hardships of life in a village devoted to re-creating civilization in a non-violent, cooperative and equitable way are examined, often humorously, through the eyes of its children. To the original Hopedale Reminiscences published in 1910 is added an excerpt from William F. Draper''s 1909 memoir, Recollections of a Varied Career, and materials prepared for from the Hopedale Home School reunion in 1867.

Practical Christian Socialism (1854) was Adin Ballou''s most comprehensive exposition of his fundamental principles and their application to personal and community life, ranging from theology and political theory to marriage, child-rearing, and a surprisingly frank discussion of sexuality.In Practical Christianity, Ballou''s 655-page treatise has been edited to eliminate the cumbersome dialogue form in which it was originally written. All of the language is Ballou''s own, and nothing is omitted except a final section in which he compared Practical Christian Socialism to competing varieties of utopian socialism popular at the time.

Christian Non-Resistance (1846) is the major philosophical statement by the nineteenth-century theorist of nonviolence, Adin Ballou.Ballou argued that the Biblical injunction "resist not evil" should be understood as "resist not personal injury with personal injury." While prohibiting the injury of any person under any provocation whatsoever, Ballou taught that Christians have a duty to resist, oppose, or prevent evil by all uninjurious means, including the use of "uninjurious benevolent force." He believed that this would allow a community to adopt non-resistant principles while still maintaining public safety and order.Once dismissed as a relic of the naïve and sentimental optimism of pre-Civil War America, Christian Non-Resistance is now recognized as an important contribution to the theory of nonviolent resistance. Ballou''s combination of the utmost moral resistance to evil with the uninjurious physical restraint of evildoers provides a conceptually simple, flexible approach to the problem of resisting evil without becoming evil oneself.This edition contains the essay "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases" (1860), in which Ballou takes up a type of challenge often put to pacifists: "Suppose a robber attacks you in some lonely place on the highway? Suppose you and your family are attacked by a gang who design to commit rape, robbery and murder? How can the downtrodden peoples of the earth ever gain their liberty without fighting to the death against their tyrants?"

The Hopedale Community was one of the most important and successful of the many utopian communities started in the mid-nineteenth century United States. It outlasted its famous contemporary, Brook Farm, by nearly a decade. Though it did not succeed in ushering in "a new civilization radically higher than the old," Hopedale did provide its members with security, companionship, meaningful work, and the chance to make a difference in the world around them.In History of the Hopedale Community, Hopedale's principal founder and theoretician, Adin Ballou, provides a detailed record of the successes, failures, hopes, and disappointments of a small group of people attempting to live together harmoniously, balancing fairness and compassion, and giving practical expression to "their ideal of what human life and human society upon the earth ought to be."This new edition features: a newly restored map of Hopedale over 300 many explanatory notes a table of members, drawn from the membership records of the community

In the depths of the Polish countryside lies the little town of Raków (Racovia). Raków today shows few signs of its illustrious history as the chief center for progressive religious thinking in Europe. Founded as a utopian community in 1569, by the early seventeenth century it had become "the Unitarian capital of Europe." Its academy attracted scholars and students from all over the Continent. Hundreds of books poured from its presses, including the famous Racovian Catechism, published four centuries ago and still in print to this day. Though the Racovian experiment eventually fell victim to the forces of religious repression, the ripples arising from this little community have spread in ever-widening circles during the ensuing centuries, and their effects can still be seen today.

A Vision Splendid is the biography of William Jellie (1865-1963), a pioneering Unitarian minister and educator and a key figure in the history of Unitarianism in New Zealand.In a world where religion is increasingly associated with hatred, bigotry, fanaticism, violence and misogyny, Jellie's story provides an alternative - a vision splendid - where values rooted in the liberal religious tradition are the very ones required to promote social justice, protect the powerless and reduce social and economic inequality. It is a story we can turn to for inspiration as we continue to work for fairness in society, equality of opportunity, and the enrichment of the human spirit.Jellie who was born in Ireland and educated at London University and Manchester College, Oxford began his career as minister to a Unitarian chapel and associated mission in an impoverished part of London. After a brief ministry in a quiet provincial town, he was ready for another challenge. Attracted by New Zealand's reputation for progressive social and economic reform, in 1900 he took on the leadership of a fledgling Unitarian movement in Auckland. Apart from a war time ministry in England he remained in New Zealand for the rest of his life, serving congregations in Auckland, Wellington, and Timaru.At nearly sixty years of age, at a time when many people start to think about retirement, Jellie began a new career in adult education. For the next fourteen years he was a tutor for the Workers Educational Association, an organization providing higher education to working-class people and trade union members unable to attend university.Throughout his long life Jellie lived out the Unitarian values of freedom of thought, tolerance, commitment to social justice and the use of reason in religion. This is a fascinating account of how those values were articulated in his own life and the lives of those he came into contact with in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

This short history of Unitarianism concisely explores the origins and progress of a worldwide liberal religious tradition committed to principles of freedom, reason, and tolerance. Unitarians have exercised an influence out of proportion to their minority status. Through their agency, Poland and Transylvania enjoyed periods of religious toleration. In Great Britain, as pioneers of early modern higher education in Dissenting Academies, they applied Enlightenment reasoning to the study of religion, science, and the humanities. In the United States, they led the Transcendentalist movement, the first major flowering of American intellectual culture. This book traces the history of the separate but related Unitarian (and Unitarian Universalist) denominations in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, and touches on the new groups that have arisen, or are in the process of emerging, elsewhere in the world.