Autobiography of Adin Ballou: Annotated Edition

Autobiography of Adin Ballou: Annotated Edition

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 world - A complete bibliography of Ballou’s writings, including a guide to online editions - Two articles by Ballou, written 40 years apart, describing his role in the formation of the Restorationist denomination - The full text of the correspondence between Ballou and Leo Tolstoy, newly compiled from the two published sources Adin Ballou (1803-1890), the founder of the utopian community of Hopedale, Massachusetts, was a leading nineteenth-century pacifist, socialist, and abolitionist. Unlike many other reformers of his time Ballou did not abandon his pacifist principles during the Civil War. His version of pacifism, which he called Christian Non-Resistance, was admired by Leo Tolstoy and, through Tolstoy, influenced the great twentieth-century non-violent activists, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.