By Linda A. Dove
November 13, 2022
Last time, I traced our UU origin story through the long centuries of the Holy Roman Empire with leaders like Athanasius, Arius, Scotus, Wycliff, Servetus, Ference, and the Socinuses. Their efforts planted the seed of UUism’s tree within Christianity. In the 1500s and 1600s, many Protestant sects, fleeing persecution, migrated back and forth between the Netherlands and England. I ended by noting how UUs, among others, fled to America, again largely to avoid persecution by other Protestants as well as Catholics. You’ll find both talks on HUU’S website.
Today, I trace how the UU tree evolved first in England and then North America through the 17th. and 18th.. centuries, a period when the age of faith faded a little and the age of science and reason unfolded. Then, in the first half of the 19th. century, theological disputes weakened both the Unitarians and the Universalists while some entertained secularism. Our Principles and Sources today reflect both the religious and the secular influences.
Last time I covered about 1,500 years. This time I cover only 300 but those years cover a complicated UU story. Again, I hope I don’t mischaracterize it or lose you by summarizing so much in so few minutes.
In the late-1600s, the Dutch William III of Orange took over as the British king and Parliament passed the Toleration Act of 1689. This ended 150 years of persecution from when Henry VIII broke away from Rome and established the Church of England (CofE) into those turbulent Tudor and Stuart decades when successive monarchs, depending on whether they were Catholic or Protestant, brutally persecuted dissidents. UUism evolved in part through its opposition to the rigid domination of the CofE and its sibling in America, Episcopalianism and Anglicanism.
In the mid-1600s, among other dissenters, the Englishman, the Reverend John Biddle and the Irishman, the Reverend Thomas Emlyn stand out notable. Both wrote books that inspired the Unitarian cause. In A Two-fold Catechism, Biddle argued against the CofE catechism, claimed there was only one God, not Three-in-One, and, outrageously, like Calvin and Wycliff before him, urged people to read the scriptures for themselves. Puritan Cromwell banished him to the remote Scilly Isles. Emlyn, ordained as a Presbyterian, wrote A Humble Inquiry, arguing for one God. He was imprisoned for blasphemy.
The Toleration Act saw Unitarians dig deeper roots, especially among the educated and privileged. Within a century, on the cusp of the 1800s, Unitarianism was at last an identifiable denomination in England. The first Unitarian Church had already been founded by an ex-CofE bishop, Theophilus Lindsey. He’d resigned from the CofE, campaigning against its restrictive Trinitarian creed. His church was in Westminster. A century later it moved to Kensington while the older building became the office of the British Unitarian Association.
And there were others like Lindsey. Most notable was the Reverend Joseph Priestley, the famous chemist who discovered oxygen. His influential religious books were The Corruption of Christianity and The History of Unitarian Thought based on ideas of Servetus, Ference and the Socinians. Priestley publicized what he called his standard for Unitarians—God as One, Jesus as human. But this caused yet another split. Remember the very early Christians who saw Jesus as a model human? The British Unitarian Arians agreed God was One but believed Jesus was divine and so they split from Priestley’s Unitarians. A new body, the Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion then tried to codify Unitarianism. But tensions ran high. Anglican mobs destroyed Priestley’s church and home and he fled to remote Newington Green, now in East London. There he established a new church as well as the first co-educational school, the Educational Utopian Dissenters Academy. Then, in 1794, Priestley went to America, attracted by the new constitution and its purported religious freedom.
A little earlier, the writings of Unitarian Mary Wollenstonecraft got notice. Her publications advocated social justice in areas such as government, feminine rights, education, and sexuality. In 1792, she published, Indications of the Rights of Women, which influenced feminists in Britain and America and later she promoted good works in UUism. But people frowned on women who published, and she incurred extra criticism for taking on taboo topics, exposing the abuse by her partner, and for her free, Bohemian life-style—for instance, getting married several times. Sadly, her ideas were a century before their time.
In England, such oppositional winds strengthened the young Unitarian tree in a few British cities. But, in the 1800s, faith started to overtake reason again and Unitarianism faded. Today, few UU congregations exist, though the Newington Green Church does still operate, renamed the Unity Church. In all, the British Unitarians’ main claim to fame was their early promotion of progressive ideas. For instance, they protested against the dominance of the CofE as the established church under the monarch. Instead, they championed freedom of worship as enshrined in our UU Principles today.
Lee Anna will now lead us in a
Responsive Reading 591: I Call That Church Free: James Luther Adams
If it’s hard to follow the complexities of early UUism in England, even more so across the Atlantic. Let’s focus on Unitarians. They came to North America seeking freedom of religious thought, expression, and practice. They planted their American trees in the north-east and Canada. But the movement’s growth was stunted for many years, mainly over the age-old internal quarrel about the status of Jesus. The Socinians saw him as human, prophet and model; the Arians by this time had muddled views—Jesus as divine, Jesus created by God, Jesus the divine son but the lesser God. These disputes persisted partly because many early leaders were clerics steeped in Christianity theology and included Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and other Protestant denominations all with different doctrines.
The Reverend Haslitt and the Reverend Bentley came from England. Haslitt planted Unitarian saplings in Boston and Philadelphia but they failed to take root, in part because of mainstream Puritan, Calvinist and Congregationalist hostility. So, in 1787, Haslitt returned to England in frustation.
In Salem, Massachusetts, Bentley preached from Priestley’s writings and also emphasized good works over doctrine. He was one of the pioneers in this alongside Mary Wollenstonecraft.
James Freeman, a young Episcopalian minister, was influential too. He dropped the Trinitarian creeds in his church, Kings Chapel, in the center of Puritan Boston, so the Episcopalians labelled him a heretic. Then, his congregation ordained him. This was an early example of the grassroots democratic principle in UUism: investing authority in its congregations.The UU HQ is still in Boston today.
Joseph Priestley, arriving in Philadelphia in 1794, quickly gained influence through his book Corruption of Christianity. It was a turning point for UUism among the elite, educated class. Jefferson, Franklin and Adams became his advocates and even Washington was intrigued. Jefferson actually said he was a Unitarian but he also saw himself a Deist. Priestley dedicated to Jefferson his massive book, General History of Unitarianism. Later, he left Philadelphia to found a rural church in Pennsylvania, the first church in America actually named Unitarian. Colleagues urged him to build the church in Philadelphia where it would be influential. But Priestley, weary over the quarrels among Unitarians, lived his last decade in his village, turning again to scientific research. He died in 1804.
Dissenters of all denominations were strong at this time, though Episcopalians and Catholics treated them all with suspicion whether they were “loose, immoral” liberals, rigidly strict Puritans, Calvinists and Baptists, or powerful rivals like the Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians. If you openly espoused Unitarianism, you risked being shunned by high society. So most leaders at this time showed up at “respectable” churches, at least for religious holidays. The Richmond church in Virginia was a good example of this.
From the mid-1700s, many notable UU ministers, both Unitarian and Universalist, founded churches and preached; men like Chauncey, Maycroft and Bancroft. Harvard University became a center for liberalism. Harvard’s first UU leader Henry Dunster migrated from England’s Cambridge University and, later, John Everett, led Harvard as its Unitarian President. But by the 1920s, Harvard had rejected its Unitarian leanings for an theological stand.
By 1800, there were an estimated twenty Unitarian churches in America. And, please note: UUism was still Christian and the Unitarian movement was still spilt between the Socinians who saw Jesus as a model for humans and who advocated toleration and free inquiry and the Arians who saw Jesus as divine and compassionate but the lesser God. Even more confusing, many Unitarians were also in other Protestant sects and many Arians were also Congregationalists. So today’s practice of belonging to more than one denomination is nothing new. Even today, as a very general observation, Universalists tend to be more religious and Christian and Unitarians more rationalist and secular.
In the first half of the 19th.. century, it was the Christian Arians who formed the stronger branch of the growing Unitarian tree. But the most important figure for the growth of the secular branch was the Reverend William Channing. In his early ministry, he championed reason over faith. This alienated conservative denominations. The Congregationalist publicly lumped the Unitarians and Universalists together as anti-Christ and thus, inadvertently, brought them closer together against a common rival.
In the first 50 years of the 1900s, Unitarianism grew rapidly with 125 churches in the East, from New England to South Carolina. Under Channing’s influence, some young ministers founded the American Unitarian Association. In old age, Channing distanced himself from it all, tired of the continual bickering. He even blamed Priestley’s advocacy of toleration and free inquiry as exacerbating the internal strife.
By the mid-19th. century, the arguments over Jesus’ nature had exhausted the Unitarians. But then the Transcendental movement emerged to energize their monotheism. Three figures dominated. Frank Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Theodore Parker. As you know, Emerson became a Harvard minister and lecturer and, later, a writer in Concord, Massachusetts. He founded the Dial magazine and Margaret Fuller became its highly successful editor and disseminator. Tragically, she died young at sea in 1848. (Remember other HUU folk have recently given us a fuller picture of the Transcendental movement).
But what, essentially, did Transcendentalism add to the Unitarian movement? First, that Jesus was human, not God. Second, humans need to be inspirational, learning from spirit, not relying on ritual, miracles, or a corrupt Church. And, last but not least, truth comes, not from external sources, but from a person’s soul—truth as God’s revelation to the individual. The emphasis on the individual so prominent in our UU Principles owes much to this.
Fuller contributed in her 1843 publication, The Grand Lawsuit. She elaborated the idea that truth is what God reveals in a person’s experience. Note how, today, our Principles emphasize individual experience as a source of truth and our individual conscience and responsibility as the sources for our actions
Theodore Parker, too, underlined the importance of relying on personal experience rather than doctrines, creeds or scriptures. In his Boston sermons, influenced by the 17th.. century Pietest movement, he preached that Jesus as a model of living a good life was at the core of Christianity rather than the status of Jesus as divine or human. The Boston Unitarians tried to suppress his voice over this. But a Unitarian minister, Samuel Longfellow, offered him the spacious hall of the 28th..Congregational Society. Parker’s Sunday and weekday sermons there attracted thousands of people and Unitarians and Universalists also began to share ideas there.
Dee will now lead us with a hymn by Samuel Longfellow:
Hymn 345:With Joy we Claim the Growing Light: Samuel Longfellow,
Theodore Parker was also an early proponent of social justice. He wrote A More Just Society, criticizing slavery, wars, capital punishment, and advocating temperance, prison reform and women’s rights. He opened his parsonage to the underground railway for runaway slaves. He died just a year before many of these issues played out in the Civil War.
Let’s now turn to the Universalists. They began to coalesce in the early-1800s around a Christian motivation for compassion, inclusion, and good works. I’ll mention just a few prominent leaders. The Reverend James Reilly, was a Methodist from Wales. As a vigorous Boston preacher he purportedly said in a 1756 sermon, “If all sin is in Adam, all are saved in Christ.” Dr. Georges Benneville, a French nobleman, was expelled from the English Royal Court for preaching all would be saved. Later, he went to Philadelphia, and in 1747 he published, The Sour Bible, in which he bolded all the Universalist-sounding text.
The Reverend John Murray was a leader who first legitimated Universalism. His Methodist church in England excommunicated him for turning Pietist. So he emigrated to America. But the Bostonian Methodists labelled him a heretic and, in 1774, he narrowly escaped assassination. When he moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts, the Congregationalists attacked him. They had a law that any Universalist church in their parish must pay taxes to support the Congregationalist clergy. Murray refused to pay and built his Universalist Independent Church there. The Universalists eventually won their case in the Supreme Court. Then, in 1785, Murray and his activist wife, Judith Stevens, attended the first Independent Universalist Christian convention in Oxford and two years later the Massachusetts State Legislature officially recognized Universalist churches.
Like Murray, who knew the influential John Adams, the Reverend Ethan Winchester knew Benjamin Rush, another signer of the Declaration of Independence. Winchester founded the first Universalist Church of Christ in Philadelphia and championed freedom for slaves and humane treatment of the mentally ill. He and Murray debated whether punishment after death was justice as restitution for sins. And restitution or atonement, in this life or the next, now became the big controversy among Universalists.
In the early 1800s’s after Murray’s death, the Reverend Hosea Ballou took over the lead and became minister at the Boston Second Universalist Society. His main work was, A Treatise on Atonement. He’s notable for combining the salvation-for-all tenet of the Universalists with the Unitarian tenets of one-God and the use of reason to interpret the Bible. But he got caught up in divisive debates among the Universalists about free will versus determinism and universal salvation versus atonement. In later life, he fought for various social issues, notably getting the Universalists to make a public declaration for the abolition of slavery.
By the 1840s, there were Universalist churches in all the thirty US states including several out west. But Ballou died in 1852 and no new leader came forward to steer the Universalists forward.
So! We’ve traced the periodic rise and stagnation of both Unitarianism and Universalism in England and America over nearly three centuries. We’ve seen how the disputes continued those of the earlier Europeans. And we can surmise that the theological disputes of the educated classes helped to hone, even rigidify, opposing religious views. It’s likely too that these heady, intellectual and theological disputes inhibited UUism from widening its appeal among the “lower” classes. Anyway, by the mid-1800s, the leaders were exhausted and the movements were losing their way. It’s also important to recognize the tension between the call for all of us to have confidence in our own individual conscience and experience to guide our actions; and the call for tolerance and willingness to modify strongly held views. And we must also remember that Unitarians and Universalists still saw themselves as separate denominations and did not yet foresee coming together in one combined movement.
In my next talk, you’ll probably be pleased to hear that I’ll cover just a hundred years to show how the two movements survived the turbulent changes of the later 1800s and eventually, in the mid-1900s, after many struggles, emerged as one official UU movement.
Thank you. Namaste.
You can read Our Branching Tree: Part 1: UU Roots?