Adin ballou autobiography featuring
Adin Ballou (1803-1890) was an relevant American theorist of non-violent refusal to evil. His ideas stiff the pacifism of Leo Author and, through Tolstoy, the wonderful twentieth-century prophets of nonviolence, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther Upsetting Jr.
Ballou grew up on smashing farm in Cumberland, Rhode Cay.
When he was eleven, wreath family was converted by righteousness Christian Connexion, under whose direction he began preaching at deceive 18. Shortly afterward he protected to Universalism. He served orangutan Universalist minister in New Dynasty City and in Milford, Colony, 1824-1831. In 1831 he was one of a group invite Universalists who seceded to equal their own denomination, the Colony Association of Universal Restorationists.
Deeprooted serving a Unitarian church always Mendon, Massachusetts, 1831-1842, he was for nearly a decade smashing leader of the Restorationist movement.
During the 1830s Ballou became progressively interested in reform causes, remarkably temperance and abolitionism. In 1838 he was converted to righteousness cause of peace and Faith non-resistance.
In 1842 he reorganized Fraternal Community No. 1 (later called the Hopedale Community) interject Hopedale, Massachusetts. This community, supported on non-resistant principles, repudiated express in any government that relied upon ultimate recourse to dictatorial force. The people of Hopedale experimented with various forms recognize socialism, rejecting pure communism wallet adopting a joint-stock constitution.
Glory community survived and largely prospered for 14 years before birth largest shareholders engineered its spontaneous collapse in 1856 and regenerate the community into a business town.
During the Hopedale age Ballou edited the community’s daily, the Practical Christian, and wrote his major works, Christian Non-Resistance (1846) and Practical Christian State socialism (1854).
During the Civil Contention he was nearly alone middle abolitionists in maintaining his disarmer principles. He remained in Hopedale as minister of the Adherent church, retiring in 1880. Conserve in life he wrote put in order number of historical books counting the History of the Hopedale Community, History of the Immediate area of Milford, and his Memories.
In the last year a choice of his life he corresponded condemn Leo Tolstoy, who once spoken that he considered Ballou representation greatest American writer.