James Vila Blake


James Vila Blake was an American Unitarian minister, essayist, playwright, poet, and hymn writer. He was associated with the Western-based radical wing of the Unitarian church.

Biography

Blake was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 21, 1842. He graduated from Harvard College in 1862, and from Harvard Divinity School in 1866.
He served as pastor in several Unitarian churches in Massachusetts and Illinois. Different sources give different, and inconsistent, dates for his pastorates, but the basic chronology is the following:
After the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago in 1886, Blake joined with fellow Unitarian radicals Jenkin Lloyd Jones and William Mackintire Salter in striving to save the lives of the convicted anarchists. Historian Allen Ruff writes, "A meeting at the Third Unitarian to protest the death penalty and insist that the trial had been unjust and unfair 'brought down violent opposition and condemnation upon the head of its pastor', James Vila Blake."
A decade later, Blake was celebrated for heroism. A news report from October 1896 said he exhibited cool presence of mind when a fire broke out during a service. He was the last to leave the church, which by that time was full of smoke. Seconds later, the building burst into flames and was consumed.
Blake produced over 20 volumes of poems, sermons, essays, plays, and hymns. Many of his books were published by the radical Chicago-based firm, Charles H. Kerr & Co. Blake collaborated with Frederick Lucian Hosmer and William Channing Gannett in the compilation and editing of Unity Hymns and Chorals for the Congregation and the Home, a popular hymnbook—which included several of Blake's hymns—that circulated widely and was reprinted multiple times.
James Blake died in Chicago on April 28, 1925.

Legacy

While pastor at Evanston, Blake penned a Covenant that has been adopted by many Unitarian Congregations:
Love is the spirit of this church,
and service is its law.
This is our great covenant:
To dwell together in peace,
to seek the truth in love,
and to help one another.
Some of Blake's poems were set to music by English composer John Ireland.

Publications

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