Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Universalists
The 'spiritual universalist' movement had originally
sprung from the United States in 1779 and started
as an amalgam between 'Mysticism', 'Anabaptist'
(baptism in an adult age as preached by the French
'Mennonites' who had to flee the Alsace) and
'Gnosticism' (search of God in philosophy). The
'spiritual Universalists' decided to publish a creed
which is similar to 'Unitarianism' but at the
'Winchester Platform of 1813' decided on
'creedlessness' and came with following principles:
perfectibility of men, ultimate salvation by God, the
humanity of Christ (Christ was sent by God but is
not the Son of God). By the end of the century they
had dropped the idea of salvation and divine
revelation and replaced it with the term humanism.
That lead in 1942 to the Ecumenist Movement as
they welcomed all types of humanisms, Christian or
not. The 'World Council of Churches' where Church
Leaders of all kind would meet was created also at
the same time. For the first time, platforms were
established for all various religions and ideas to
meet and find a dialogue. We can compare these
platforms to a similar venture in politics when the
United Nations were created to create a dialogue
between the various nation states. It is remarkable
that both movements were created at the time, as
the World was immersed in a deep war.
Indeed the Second World War marked the
beginning of a new era. Mankind became aware
that it has the capacity to destruct the world and
that peace should no longer become an interval
between two wars or a status quo but a desirable
state of affairs. Indeed between the years 1945 and
1947, there was much idealism as to re-organise
the world. The Universal Declaration of Human was
a political and social document with a universal
message: those rights were signed by most states
and freedom of religion officially instated as a right.
New co-operations
Conclusions
When asked to look back on his own involvement in
recent History, Vaclav Havel said in 2009: “I made a
lot of mistakes. I believed my experts on economic
reforms even if I didn't agree much. More accent (=
emphasis) on moral should have been put. If there
is no moral in society it can't work. People write
that I am a moralist, but I feel that I wasn't enough
of a moralist”