James Relly › Hymnals

James Relly
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/jamesrelly.html
Short Name: James Relly
Full Name: Relly, James, 1722?-1778
Birth Year (est.): 1722
Death Year: 1778

James Relly was born about 1722 at Jeffreston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and died in 1778. He was converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening ushered in by George Whitefield. He worked under George Whitefield as a Calvinistic Methodist preacher and missionary. However, Whitefield and Relly separated ways over Relly's seemingly universalist teaching that all humanity was elect (i.e. saved) when Christ took the punishment for all sin when he died. He also departed from both the Calvinists and Methodists by taking the doctrine of Justification further, in teaching that believers no longer sin and the Law's sole purpose is to condemn humanity and point them to Christ.

He was the mentor of John Murray, the founder of the Universalist Church of America. Relly along with his brother John wrote Christian Hymns, Poems and Spiritual Songs in 1758, which John Murray had republished in America in 1776.

Dianne Shapiro; from an article by Alexander Gordon in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, vol. 48; Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography; and Disoriented. Reoriented. blog (https://disorientedtheology.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/all-shall-be-well-chapter-6-james-relly/)

Wikipedia Biography

James Relly (1721/1722 – 25 April 1778) was a Welshman, Methodist minister and mentor of John Murray who spread Universalism in the United States.

Data Sources

Suggestions or corrections? Contact us