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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...