Adin Ballou#The Hopedale Community

{{Infobox person

| name = Adin Ballou

| image = Adin Ballou cph.3b02632.jpg

| alt = Adin Ballou

| caption = Adin Ballou

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1803|04|23}}

| birth_place = Cumberland, Rhode Island, U.S.

| spouse = {{ubl|

}}

| children = Abbie Ballou Heywood

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1890|08|05|1803|04|23}}

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| known_for = {{hlist|Christian nonresistance| Christian anarchism| Christian socialism|Christian abolitionism}}

| notable_works =

}}

Adin Ballou (April 23, 1803 – August 5, 1890) was an American proponent of Christian nonresistance, Christian anarchism, and Christian socialism. He was also an abolitionist and the founder of the Hopedale Community.

Through his long career as a Universalist and Unitarian minister, he tirelessly advocated for the immediate abolition of slavery and the principles of Christian anarcho-socialism, and promoted the nonviolent theory of praxis (or moral suasion) in his prolific writings.

Life and works

Ballou was born on a small farm in Cumberland, Rhode Island.{{Cite web |last=Pawtucket |first=Mailing Address: 67 Roosevelt Ave |last2=Us |first2=RI 02860 Phone: 401-725-8638 Contact |title=adinBallou - Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/blrv/learn/historyculture/adinballou.htm |access-date=2023-10-30 |website=www.nps.gov |language=en}} Ballou's father was a farmer, and while Ballou craved a school and college education, his father lacked the means to send him. At the time of the Christian 'reformation' sweeping through northern Rhode Island, his father became a deacon within the community.{{Cite web |last=Mace |first=Emily |title=Ballou, Adin (1803-1890) {{!}} Harvard Square Library |url=https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/adin-ballou-1803-1890/ |access-date=2023-10-30 |language=en-US}}

In early 1822 Adin Ballou married Abigail Sayles.{{Cite web |last=Master |first=Web |date=2000-12-13 |title=Ballou, Adin |url=https://www.uudb.org/ballou-adin/ |access-date=2023-10-30 |website=Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography |language=en-US}} Abigail Ballou died in early 1829, soon after the birth of a daughter, Abbie Ballou Heywood. Of Ballou's four children, only Abbie Ballou lived to adulthood. After his first wife Abigail had died, Ballou became very unwell. Lucy Hunt nursed him back to health, and after his sickness had passed, Hunt and Ballou married and remained married for the rest of his life.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

Ballou became an advocate of Christian pacifism by 1838. "Standard of Practical Christianity" {{cite web |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Standard of Practical Christianity |url=http://adinballou.org/standard.shtml |website=adinballou.org |access-date=26 May 2025}} was composed in 1839 by Ballou and a few ministerial colleagues and laymen. The signatories announced their withdrawal from "the governments of the world." They believed the dependence on force to maintain order was unjust and vowed to not participate in such government. While they did not acknowledge the earthly rule of man, they also did not rebel or "resist any of their ordinances by physical force." "We cannot employ carnal weapons nor any physical violence whatsoever," they proclaimed, "not even for the preservation of our lives. We cannot render evil for evil... nor do otherwise than 'love our enemies.'"{{cite book|last1=Weinberg|first1=Arthur|title=Instead of violence|last2=Weinberg|first2=Lila Shaffer|publisher=Grossman Publishers|year=1963|location=New York|page=375}}

In 1843, he began to serve as president of the New England Non-Resistance Society. and in 1846 he wrote his primary work on non-resistance, titled "Christian Non-Resistance".

Ballou was a prominent local historian for Milford and wrote one of the earliest complete histories of the town in 1882, "History of the town of Milford, Worcester county, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1881".{{cite book |last=Ballou |first=Adin |date=1882 |title=History of the town of Milford, Worcester county, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1881 |location=Boston |publisher=Rand, Avery, & co. |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924028816184}} (2 vols) Ballou also wrote a 1323-page genealogy on the descendants of his immigrant ancestor Mathurin Ballou of Providence, Island, "An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America".{{cite book |last=Ballou |first=Adin |date=1888 |title=An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America |location=Providence |publisher=Ariel Ballou and Latimer W. Ballou |url=https://archive.org/details/elaboratehistory00ball}}

Hopedale, Massachusetts remains true to what Ballou stood for, in keeping of the street names - “Peace,” “Hope,” “Freedom,” and “Union.” A statue of Ballou is located in Adin Ballou Park in Hopedale, Massachusetts. The park also contains a small weathered front doorstep and a boot-scraper, the only surviving remains of the original farmhouse the first Hopedale Settlers built.{{Cite web |title=Adin Ballou Park |url=https://www.nps.gov/places/adin-ballou-park.htm |access-date=1 March 2024 |website=National Park Service}}{{Cite web |title=Adin Ballou Memorial Historical Marker |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=1618 |access-date=2023-10-30 |website=www.hmdb.org |language=en}}

Bibliography

Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments (1839) {{cite book |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments |date=1839 |publisher=Non-Resistance Society |location=Internet Archive |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t9183dg6m&seq=5}}
Non-Resistant Cathechism (1844) {{cite book |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Non-Resistant Cathechism |date=1846 |publisher=J. Miller M'Kim, 31 N. Fifth Street, Philadelphia |location=Adin Ballou and the Hopedale Community |url=http://www.adinballou.org/catechism.shtml}}
Christian Non-Resistance (1846) {{cite book |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Christian Non-Resistance |date=1846 |publisher=J. Miller M'Kim, 31 N. Fifth Street, Philadelphia |location=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/christian-non-resistance-adin-ballou-1846}}
Practical Christian Socialism (1854) {{cite book |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Practical Christian Socialism |date=1854 |publisher=Hopedale |location=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924030337657/page/n7/mode/2up}}
Primitive Christianity and it's Corruptions (3 Volumes) (1870-1899) {{cite book |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Primitive Christianity and it's Corruptions (Volume I) |date=1870 |publisher=Universalist Publishing House |location=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/primitivechristi01ball/page/n5/mode/2up}}{{cite book |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Primitive Christianity and it's Corruptions (Volume II) |date=1899 |publisher=Thompson & Hill |location=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/primitivechristi02ball/page/n5/mode/2up}}{{cite book |last1=Ballou |first1=Adin |title=Primitive Christianity and it's Corruptions (Volume III) |date=1900 |publisher=Thompson & Hill |location=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/primitivechristi03ball/page/n5/mode/2up}}

Influence

Ballou's writings drew the admiration of Leo Tolstoy,{{cite book|first=Leo |last=Tolstoy |title="The Kingdom of God is Within You": Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life |year=1894 |publisher=Cassell Publishing Company |pages=8–21}} who frequently cited Ballou as a major influence on his theological and political ideology in nonfiction books like The Kingdom of God is Within You,. Tolstoy also sponsored Russian translations of some of Ballou's works.{{citation needed|date=June 2025}}

Ballou's Christian anarchist and nonresistance ideals in texts like [https://books.google.com/books?id=YDpKAAAAMAAJ&q=adin+ballou Practical Christianity] were passed down from Tolstoy to Mahatma Gandhi, contributing not only to the nonviolent resistance movement in the Russian Revolution led by the Tolstoyans but also Gandhi's early thinkings on the nonviolent theory of praxis and the development of his first ashram, the Tolstoy Farm.{{citation needed|date=June 2025}}

In a recent publication, the American philosopher and anarchist Crispin Sartwell wrote that the works by Ballou and his other Christian anarchist contemporaries like William Lloyd Garrison directly influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.{{Cite journal|last=Sartwell|first=Crispin|date=2018-01-01|title=Anarchism and Nineteenth-Century American Political Thought|url=https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004356894/B9789004356894_018.xml|journal=Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy|language=en|pages=454–483|doi=10.1163/9789004356894_018|isbn=9789004356887|url-access=subscription}}

References

External links

{{Sister project links

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{{Internet Archive author |sname=Adin Ballou}}
{{Librivox author |id=5036}}
[http://adinballou.org/worklist.shtml Published Works of Adin Ballou] Adin Ballou and the Hopedale Community
[http://www.adinballou.org Friends of Adin Ballou]
[https://archive.org/details/christian-non-resistance-adin-ballou-1846 Christian Non-Resistance in All Its Important Bearings] (his principal work on pacifism)

Category:1803 births

Category:1890 deaths

Category:19th-century Christian universalists

Category:Activists from Massachusetts

Category:Activists from Rhode Island

Category:Abolitionists from Rhode Island

Category:American anarchists

Category:American Christian pacifists

Category:American Christian socialists

Category:Christian anarchists

Category:Christian radicals

Category:Clergy of the Universalist Church of America