HISTORY OF OUR FAITH

Historically the present denomination is about 40 years old, when two separate denominations, the Unitarians and the Universalists merged.

Unitarians

Arianism as Early Mainstream Christianity

The First Council of Nicaea is believed to have been the first Ecumenical council of the Christian Church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Nicene Creed. [Wikipedia Council of Nicea]

Of all the various disagreements within the Christian Church, the Arian controversy has held the greatest force and power of theological and political conflict, with the possible exception of the Protestant Reformation. The conflict between Arianism and Trinitarian beliefs was the first major doctrinal confrontation in the Church after the legalization of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine I. [from Wikipedia article on Arianism].

The Arian controversy describes several controversies related to Arianism which divided the Christian church from before the Council of Nicaea in 325 to after the Council of Constantinople in 381. The most important of these controversies concerned the relationship between the Creator and Logos, or between God the Father and God the Son. [Wikipedia article - Arian Controversy]

The Council of Nicaea did not end the Arian controversy which it had been called to clarify. By 327, Emperor Constantine I had begun to regret the decisions that had been made at the Nicene Council. He granted amnesty to the Arian leaders and exiled Athanasius because of Eusebius of Nicomedia. Even during numerous exiles, Athanasius continued to be a vigorous defender of Nicene Christianity against Arianism. Athanasius then famously said "Athanasius against the world". The Cappadocian Fathers also took up the torch, their Trinitarian discourse was influential in the council at Constantinople. Up until about 360, theological debates mainly dealt with the Divinity of Jesus, the 2nd person of the Trinity. However, because the Council of Nicaea had not clarified the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of the Trinity, it became a topic of debate. The Macedonians denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. This was also known as Pneumatomachianism. [Wikipedia article - First Council of Constantinople]

While Arianism continued to dominate for several decades even within the family of the Emperor, the Imperial nobility and higher-ranking clergy, in the end it was Trinitarianism which prevailed politically and thus theologically in the Roman Empire at the end of the 4th century. Arianism, which had been taught by the Arian missionary Ulfilas to the Germanic tribes, was dominant for some centuries among several Germanic tribes in western Europe, especially Goths and Lombards (and significantly for the late Empire, the Vandals), but ceased to be the mainstream belief by the 8th century. Trinitarianism remained the dominant doctrine in all major branches of the Eastern and Western Church and later within Protestantism, although there have been several anti-Trinitarian movements, some of which acknowledge various similarities to classical Arianism. [Wikipedia article Arianism]

Early Martyrs

Early Unitarians on the Continent

A group called the Socinians (named after one of their founders Faustus Socinus (1539-1604)) considered this to be unsound. They rejected the dogmatic formulations of the creeds, and expressed their confidence in the ways of conscience and reason. They emphasized the unity of God, and trusted the consequences of the serious study of Scriptures and the scrutiny of rational reflection. In 1574 the Socinians, who referred to themselves as Unitarians, issued a "Catechism of the Unitarians," in which they laid out their views of the nature and perfection of the Godhead, as well as other principles of their group. An English version of this catechism is available here §.

The faith had a large and early following in Transylvania and Poland, and though it was banished from Poland by the Catholics in 1638, it survives to our days in Transylvania. In Eastern Europe, it remained as it was originally, a Protestant Christian denomination.

Early Unitarianism in England

In the 16th century, Henry VIII, because of his impure and illicit desires, separated the Church of England from the Roman Church. In England, this separation was more a consequence of imperial might than of the investigations then occurring in other regions of religious reform, and it was less complete or absolute. But Henry was made the Head of the Church of England and new symbols of faith were imposed. However, there were many of strong spirits who would not allow their opinions to be set aside at the nod of a tyrant, and they embraced a deeper knowledge of sacred literature and the history of the Church. During the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, while the Hierarchy consolidated its strength, many who had turned away from the dogma of the Trinity were martyred, and in our records, there are many names of those who, because they wished to worship God the Father only, paid the ultimate price of being burned to death. Especially significant is the fate of Joan Bocher. She was sentenced to death on the orders of Archbishop Cranmer, who, because of the zeal for the Reformation which he had promoted, himself experienced the cruelty of the Papists during the reign of Queen Mary. But it was the death of Joan which wrenched him away from the amiable young king, Edward VI, who had said to the Archbishop with his eyes full of tears : "In this matter, I accommodate myself entirely to your judgment. But is for you to render to God the reason for this deed." This most excellent woman had embraced the doctrine of the simple Unity of God from her reading of the Scriptures, which had recently been translated into English. This new doctrine was disseminated so rapidly that many long-lasting persecutions were instituted to suppress it. Bartholomew Legate was put to death in 1611 during the reign of James I, despite the unassailable proof of the integrity of his life and morals given to his enemies. This event and the piety and fortitude of others in their final hours, so affected the minds of spectators, that eventually, it was decided that it would be more prudent to deal in another way with those who were proclaiming the Unity of God, and that it would be better of they were left to die in silence, shut up in secret places. No human record remains of their bravery and sufferings, but their memory is consecrated in immortal literature and their names are clearly written in the Book of Life.

After the death of Charles I, there was a brief triumph for the Dissenters from the Church of England, when much religious liberty became more acceptable. But the Unitarians were not allowed to take advantage of this. The life of John Biddle, was put in great danger by reason of the hatred of the Presbyterian Theologians. He was a man most worthy of imitation by all, thanks to his virtues, who had gathered a small body of Unitarian Christians in his home, and after Charles II had regained his ancestral throne, he perished in prison.

The remarkable turn-around in public affairs by which William III was elevated to the English throne (which was known as the REVOLUTION) confirmed the principles of the Protestant religion, and the passing by Parliament of the Toleration Act, which in those days was judged to be liberal, pardoned all Dissenters. But Unitarians were specifically excluded by name, and after a few years they were treated even more harshly. Under a law not repealed until 1813, penalties of beatings, imprisonment and fines were imposed on all who denied in any way that the Person of God was a Trinity.

Around the end of the 17th century, two names in particular shine out among those who affirmed the unique divinity of God the Father. The first was John Locke, a great defender of toleration and civil liberty, who worked with distinction not only on the nature of the human mind and the exploration of its workings, but also on a reconsideration of the legitimate function of reason in the interpretation of the Word of God. His books "The Reasonableness of Christianity" and "Notes on the Epistles of St Paul" contributed much to the accurate exposition of the Scriptures. The second was Thomas Firmin, a wealthy citizen of London and a great benefactor of the poor. Many institutions still flourishing bear witness to his great patronage and support. Even in those days, the Unity of God was vehemently debated, and this distinguished man (Firmin) undertook the task of printing and distributing many erudite expositions and defences which were collected together as Unitarian Tracts, and even after many more recent studies, these are still read today. Thomas Firmin and many other Unitarians at that time, remained within the fold of the Church of England, and though it is not for us to pass judgment on excellent men, we much regret this decision, which greatly diminished the weight of their witness to the Unity of God.

From the beginning to the end of the 18th century, there was a great band of men among the theologians of the Church of England who cherished the hope that a revision of the beliefs of the Established Church would be by no means difficult to achieve. Although they also did not secede from the Church, they felt obliged, for reasons of fashion, to subscribe to official beliefs if they wanted to retain their hold on public office. If they were unwilling to show by repetition their complete assent, this would close for them the route to any amplification of their honours, and some preferred to enjoy their own persuasions without molestation.

At the beginning of the century (1710) William Whiston, a man of great learning and piety, well-known for his integrity, was deprived of the office of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and expelled from his College, because he had defended the doctrine of the Unity of God. Samuel Clarke DD wrote a learned book on the Trinity and converted many to his arguments. It prepared the minds of many within the Church of England for a possible revision of its principles. Clarke attacked the liturgy of the Church, rejecting everything which did not address worship to God the Father only. From that time, some Unitarian Societies in England and in North America began to use the revised liturgy which Clarke had prepared - sometimes after agreeing to less radical changes.

Among the number of Unitarians who flourished at that time, the one who must by no means be excluded is the distinguished philosopher Isaac Newton. He was a sincere and humble Christian and a most earnest student of the Holy Scriptures, who steadfastly proclaimed the Unity of God. In a most useful Dissertation, he also defended the case for believing that the conclusion contained in the First Epistle of John 5, 7. [a specific reference to the Trinity] is a forgery.

In 1771, a group was set up, consisting for the most part of Anglican clergymen, who petitioned Parliament more than once, asking that clergy be freed from the necessity of subscribing to the Church's official Articles of Belief, and to substitute instead a declaration that nothing beyond Scripture was the basis of their faith. When the hope of this proved vain, many Unitarians from that time onward, resigned from the Church of England and the English Universities. [A long footnote is inserted at this point - see below]

Among the most memorable of those who resigned were Wakefield, Jebb, Evanson and Disney. Of these, the first at least [presumably Gilbert Wakefield?] was known throughout Europe for his learning and gifts of genius.

The secession in particular of Theophilus Lindsey, because of his love of Truth, his spurning of the very many honours which he might have hoped to receive, his own sufferings, and the hardships which he had to endure, was the one which had the greatest influence on men's minds. Shortly after rejecting his ecclesiastical benefice, he built a chapel dedicated to God at Essex Street in London, where divine worship was instituted, using a liturgy which was a revision by Lindsey himself, of the revised Prayer Book of Clarke. It is thought that this was the first Chapel in England dedicated to the worship of God the Father, and it was designated as such from its foundation. Right from the start, this church was frequented by men of ability, gifts and position, famous for their eloquence in Parliament or the market place, and this is still the case today. The minister at the present time is the Very Rev Thomas Belsham, formerly the Professor of Theology at a Dissenting Academy dedicated to Calvinist dogmas. In his writings he has defended the truth of the Christian Religion and the Unitarian faith, vehemently condemning the blind pride displayed in the attacks of our brothers. He has also ably criticised, with erudition, perceptiveness and elegance, the urge to undermine the debt of praise which we owe to the dead. Indeed, the integrity of his life and the courtesy of his manners have evoked the goodwill of all.

So far, we have been considering the progress towards the Unitarian faith in the Church of England. Among the Dissenters (who were divided into three sects, known as the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Baptists) progress was impeded from the beginning of the 18th century by the constancy with which almost all of them adhered to the beliefs which they had inherited, and which they also continued to profess after much study and toil - and this was especially the case where the possibility of exclusion from public office was involved. The first of those who were unable to conform to the worship of the Church of England were nearly all Trinitarians. Indeed, among the 2000 ministers who were ejected from their livings during the reign of Charles II under the terms of the Act of Uniformity, only William Manning steadfastly maintained a rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity. It was a friend of his, Thomas Emlyn, a minister in Dublin, who suffered much persecution at the hands of fellow-believers because he also had heretical opinions about the Trinity. But through the books, in which he defended his position, Emlyn converted many souls to the faith in the One True God.

Among the Dissenters, the advocacy of freedom in the pursuit of truth was pioneered by the Presbyterians. They developed a theology of a more learned nature, and they had a more liberal system of church government than the Independents and the Baptists. The synods of the English Presbyterians were never able to achieve much, since synod meetings had long since passed into disuse. The dissemination of new teaching amongst them was not suspected until the 1718. This was the year in which the Very Rev. James Peirce, a minister in Exeter (who had revised and augmented, with great learning, John Locke's Commentary on the Epistles of St Paul) was obliged, because of the intolerance of some of his colleagues in the Western Presbytery, to declare openly and publicly that he no longer accepted the doctrine of the Trinity. Many others followed his example, and in the hope of avoiding discord, a meeting of Dissenting Ministers was held in London. There was an attendance of more than a hundred, but a majority voted against a proposal that subscription to the Trinity (as stipulated in the first and second of the 39 Articles of the Church of England) should no longer be required. However, thanks to this controversy, the opinions of Peirce, who had adopted an Arian position, far from being crushed, were disseminated even more widely. Indeed, it soon became clear that the greater part of the Presbyterian groups in the west of England were unable to find a common home even in Arianism, and they were soon venturing into the realms of Unitarianism. The spread of this doctrine among the Presbyterians generally was much helped by the writings of the Very Rev. Nathaniel Lardner, D.D. whose book on the faith of the Gospels (The Credibility of Gospel History) has left a lasting memorial of learning, industry and clarity, while his Letter on the Logos and his writings on Chapter 2, verse 6 of the Letter to the Philippians have shown the extent to which he was the opponent of both the corrupters and the opponents of Christianity. At the present time, almost all of the Presbyterian Dissenters now profess the Unitarian faith - at least in the sense that they all agree in assigning supreme deity to God the Father only.

As for the English Baptists, almost from the beginning they were divided into two groups - the Particular and the General Baptists, the one following the beliefs of Calvin and the other those of Arminius. The General Baptists provoked a major controversy when they rejected subscription to the Trinity as a sign of common orthodoxy. This led to a new secession, and the majority of the General Baptists now profess the Unitarian faith. Recently, there has arisen among the Particular Baptists, a group who call themselves Unionists and who profess Unitarianism tinged with Sabellianism. Robert Robinson, the most illustrious of the Baptists, who at the end of his life moved on to Unitarianism, had earlier written in support of the divinity of Christ, and he is even now regarded as one of the strongest defenders of that doctrine. But he had his own particular brand of eloquence, which was designed not merely to delight the empty ears of the learned. His whole being, voice, appearance and gesture were filled with a deep emotion, well calculated to kindle, in the minds of all who heard him, the flame of freedom which he himself loved so much.

The Independents had a much more cautious approach towards the concept of progress in religious thought. But thanks to the use of symbolic language, the preaching in their pulpits and societies was carefully safeguarded against any kind of heresy or dangerous opinions, and even infants imbibed the mysteries of the Trinity. Their communities therefore, remained for the most part in an unchanged condition. However, in both their preaching and their formal declarations, through the employment of words not openly in conflict with those of the Holy Scriptures, some controversies did continue. What is more, from time to time, some of their ministers and learned associates did exchange their faith for Unitarianism. For example, in his old age, the distinguished poet and theologian Isaac Watts, whose hymns to this day are held sacred by the Independents as well as other Christian groups, departed very widely from his former beliefs.

[End of the section from the Unitarian Historical Society]

Puritan Reformation and Exodus to America

Congregationalism in 18th Century America

Birth of Modern Unitarianism and the Industrial Revolution

Lunar Society (1765 - 1813)

The members of the Lunar Society were very influential in Britain. Amongst those who attended meetings more or less regularly were Joseph Priestley (Unitarian minister, discoverer of oxygen), Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin(fossil collector and botanist who raised his grandson Charles), Samuel Galton Junior, James Keir, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt (of the steam engine fame), John Whitehurst and William Withering.

More peripheral characters and correspondents included Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Richard Arkwright, John Baskerville, Thomas Beddoes, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Anna Seward, William Small, John Smeaton, William Strutt, Thomas Wedgwood (pottery), John Wilkinson (steel), Joseph Wright, James Wyatt, Samuel Wyatt, and Staffordshire member of parliament and investor John Levett.

Antoine Lavoisier frequently corresponded with various members of the group, as did Benjamin Franklin, who also visited them in Birmingham on several occasions.

Joseph Priestly (1733 - 1804): Unitarian, Scientist and Political Thinker

During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of soda water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). He believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress and eventually bring about the Christian Millennium.[4] Priestley, who strongly believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, advocated toleration and equal rights for religious Dissenters, which also led him to help found Unitarianism in England.

Priestley's major argument in the Institutes was that the only revealed religious truths that could be accepted were those that matched one's experience of the natural world. Because his views of religion were deeply tied to his understanding of nature, the text's theism rested on the argument from design.[44] The Institutes shocked and appalled many readers, primarily because it challenged basic Christian orthodoxies, such as the divinity of Christ and the miracle of the Virgin Birth. Methodists in Leeds penned a hymn asking God to "the Unitarian fiend expel / And chase his doctrine back to Hell." Priestley wanted to return Christianity to its "primitive" or "pure" form by eliminating the "corruptions" which had accumulated over the centuries. The fourth part of the Institutes, An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, became so long that he was forced to issue it separately in 1782. Priestley believed that the Corruptions was "the most valuable" work he ever published.

Priestley fled to America after his home was torched, and became a leading figure in the founding of the church on American soil.[8]

Unitariorum in Anglia

Congregationalism in 19th Century America

Emerson and the Inclusion of Nonwestern Thought

In the nineteenth century, United States, with the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), a Unitarian clergyman, who was an influential literary figure and who was attracted to Vedic spirituality, Unitarianism became more open to non-Christian forms of spirituality. In 1893 the Unitarians contributed to the Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago, to which such spiritual leaders as Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu follower of Sri Ramakrishna, and Abdu'l-Baha, a leader of the Baha'i faith, were welcomed.

Unitarians also became more open to secular and humanist modes of thinking and many came to believe that a religious attitude must be exercised toward temporal and social issues of justice, exploitation, poverty and human rights - not simply as a means for a preferable afterlife, but because the here-and-now is of value, and is the arena in which the fruits of a liberal religious attitude will bring about transformation and betterment.

Universalists

The Universalists differed from their fellow Protestants in rejecting the notion of hell-fire and damnation, seeing these as incompatible with a just, loving and merciful God. Although early Church fathers like Origen already expressed such a view, it was not accepted by the Church, and did not become the characterizing feature of a denomination until the 18th century. Congregation member, Jim Glassford, has developed a summary of the Universalist history §.

Early Canadian Groups

All these eighteenth-century movements had a direct influence in Canada, not so much through the spread of literature as by immigration. Contrary to the experience elsewhere, Unitarian organization here began not by changes in thinking within existing congregations, but by the arrival of individuals who brought their Unitarian views with them. A group of such individuals, after an abortive attempt under very unfavourable circumstances a decade earlier, succeeding in establishing the first congregation in Montreal in 1842. During the following years a few other congregations were founded, but their smallness in numbers and the distances between them did not make a national organization feasible, and each congregation affiliated separately with the British and American associations. From the time of World War II the ties with the British association weakened while those with the American association grew stronger.[paragraph from Rev Phillip.Hewett, History of the Unitarian Movement]

Unification of Unitarians and Universalists

By the middle of the 20th century, the two groups were sufficiently similar that their leadership decided to pool their respective resources, and form a single new denomination, called Unitarian-Universalist. The coordinating body for all congregations became the Unitarian-Universalist Association, whose seat is in Boston, Massachusetts. Although many individual congregations retained an awareness of their roots as either Unitarian or Universalist, the merger was successful.

Unitarians and Universalists have been in the forefront in ordaining women, in accepting and welcoming gays and lesbians, even as ministers, and in recognizing same sex unions. They were actively leading the civil rights movement for the rights of African Americans, supported the protest against the Vietnam War, and now continue to promote peace and justice for the oppressed and the victims.

Canadian Unitarian Council

More recently (1961) a Canadian administrative body, the Canadian Unitarian Council, has taken over all administrative responsibilities for Canadian congregations.