The Unitarian Universalists
Religious Liberals Challenge All
Dogmas
from
SEPARATED BRETHREN: A Survey of Protestant, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and
Other Denominations in the United States 3rd Revised Edition by William
J. Whalen (Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 1979)
THOMAS JEFFERSON predicted in 1822:
"I trust that there is not a young man living in the United States who
will not die a Unitarian." Our third President further believed that
"the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion
of the United States."
For all his great qualities Jefferson turned out to be a poor
prophet. By 1977 the Unitarians (bolstered by a 1961 merger with the
Universalists) claimed only 184,552 adult members in this country.
Yet an impressive case can be made for the proposition that
no religious denomination has and does provide a greater number of national
figures than the Unitarian Universalists. The last Unitarian who ran for the
presidency - Adlai Stevenson - lost the election, but five presidents stand in
the Unitarian tradition: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Millard
Fillmore, and William Howard Taft.
With a membership of about one-tenth of 1% of the U.S.
population the Unitarian Universalists generally receive the highest
proportionate political representation of any denomination. For example, in the
95th Congress three Unitarians sat in the Senate while eight others served in
the House. The 24% of the population which is Roman Catholic furnished only 13
senators.
Two Unitarians - Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Ted Sorenson -
held top posts in the Kennedy administration. This tiny denomination has been
the spiritual home of such people as novelist J. P. Marquand, architect Frank
Lloyd Wright, diplomat Chester Bowles, composer Bela Bartok, historian Henry Steele Commager, social
theorist David Riesman.
Unitarian figures in American literature include Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Edward
Everett Hale, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Bret Harte, and Louisa May Alcott. Suffragette Susan B. Anthony, reformer
Dorothea Dix, and Horace Mann are claimed by the
Unitarians. Of 77 Olympians in the Hall of Fame, 17 were Unitarians.
Dr. Ellsworth Huntington of Yale studied the listings of
people in Who’s Who in America and concluded, "The productivity of
the Unitarians in supplying leaders of the first rank has been 150 times
as great as that of the remainder of the population."
Despite the small membership of the denomination, the
influence of Unitarian Universalists must be reckoned as a major force in
contemporary American life. What is more, millions of Americans hold views
similar to Unitarianism but do not belong to a Unitarian Universalist church or
fellowship. Some remain in mainline Protestant denominations.
All religious bodies evolve over a period of decades or
centuries but few have changed as radically as Unitarianism and Universalism.
Originally Unitarians affirmed the unity of God in contrast to the orthodox
Christian doctrine of the Trinity. They revered Jesus as the unique exemplar of
God's revelation, believed in his miracles as well as those of the Old
Testament, relied on the Bible as the Word of God. The Unitarians of the 16th century
held a heterodox but Christian theological position.
Today the majority of American Unitarians stand in the
humanist tradition; almost all Unitarians in the Middle West and West can be
classified as agnostics. Long ago they rejected the orthodox attitudes toward
the Bible and miracles and few today profess belief in a personal God or in
immortality. Jesus is considered one of many religious
teachers and the Christian message takes its place alongside the teachings of
Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc.
The Unitarian scholar and historian Earl Morse Wilbur has
written:
"When the Unitarian movement began, the marks of true
religion were commonly thought to be belief in the creeds, membership in the
church, and participation in its rites and sacraments. To the Unitarian of
today the marks of true religion are spiritual freedom, enlightened reason,
broad and tolerant sympathy, upright character and unselfish service. These
things, which go to the very heart of life, best express the meaning of
Unitarian history."
Universalism began with an orthodox position on the Trinity
but a belief that all souls will eventually be reconciled with God. The early
Universalists simply denied that God would punish any soul for eternity.
A minority of American Unitarians represented by the
Unitarian Christian Fellowship seeks to uphold the Christian witness in the
denomination but the odds seem to be against this holding action. The growth of
the denomination in recent years has been outside of New England which is where
the Christian Unitarians preserve some strength.
Unitarians maintain that primitive Christianity was unitarian and only gradually
changed to belief in the Trinity. At the Council of Nicea
in 325A.D. the Church declared that Jesus was the same essential substance as
God the Father; the doctrine of the Trinity was further elaborated at the
Council of Constantinople.
Early Unitarians might have been classified as Arians who
believed that Jesus was not equal to God but was more than man. Their heroes
were Arian, Origen, and Pelagius in early Church history.
With the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity firmly held by the
Church little more is heard of Unitarian tendencies until the 16th century.
About 14 years after Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door, a
Spaniard, Michael Servetus, challenged the doctrine of the Trinity. In a tract
entitled "On the Errors of the Trinity" he sought to win the
Reformers, especially Luther and Calvin, to his theological view. "Your
Trinity is the product of subtlety and madness. The Gospel knows nothing of
it," wrote the young Spanish rebel.
Far from accepting the anti-Trinitarianism
of Servetus, the Reformers recoiled and condemned him as a blasphemer. He lived
under an assumed name in France but reopened his correspondence with Calvin.
Servetus was eventually arrested as he passed through Geneva, tried, and burned
at the stake. Calvin thought this punishment was more than just.
Servetus attracted no followers and held doctrinal positions
far from later Unitarianism. Unitarianism took root in two other areas:
Transylvania and Poland. Two brothers, Faustus and Lelius
Socinus, led the Unitarian movement in Poland. By 1618 there were 300
congregations of the Minor Reformed Church, the name of the Unitarian church in
Poland. During the Counter-Reformation the Jesuits succeeded in eliminating
Unitarianism in that country.
The kingdom of Transylvania maintained its independence from
1543 to 1691; it is now a part of Rumania. Here the leader was Francis David who
was protected by the only Unitarian king in history, John Sigismund. By 1600
there were 425 Unitarian churches in the kingdom. Sigismund's successors did
not share his religious views and persecuted the Unitarians.
In England the first Unitarian service was held in an auction
room in London in 1774. A former Anglican clergyman, Theophilus
Lindsey, founded English Unitarianism. He was assisted by Joseph Priestley,
best known as the scientist who discovered oxygen.
Although Unitarianism in England was not subjected to the
severe persecution it endured on the Continent, it did antagonize many orthodox
Christians. In 1791 a mob destroyed Priestley's home and laboratory as well as
a Unitarian chapel in Birmingham. The scientist fled to London and a few years
later to America. He founded the first church in America to bear the Unitarian
name in Northumberland, Pa. James Martineau assumed leadership of the English
Unitarians in the early 19th century.
In England the denomination suffered a sharp decline after
1900; attendance at Sunday service fell from 42,000 in that year to 13,500 just
before World War II. Many Unitarian chapels were destroyed by German bombing
during the war.
In America Unitarianism arose as a schism within New England
Congregationalism. Unlike Calvinists the Unitarians affirmed that human nature
was good, not depraved, that man was free rather than predestined, and that
Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. King's Chapel in Boston, the first
Episcopal church in New England, adopted Unitarianism in 1787. All references
to the Trinity were expunged from the ritual. The Church of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth joined the liberal camp in 1800.
The growing controversy between Calvinists and Unitarians was
brought to a head by Jedidiah Morse, an orthodox
Congregationalist and the father of the inventor of the telegraph. He launched
a crusade to smoke out the heretics and found a perfect issue when Harvard
picked Henry Ware, a theologian of Arian views, to fill the chair of divinity
in 1805. In protest the orthodox founded Andover Theological Seminary. For 128
years Harvard saw a succession of Unitarian presidents.
The lines were now drawn. Most of the Congregational churches
in the Boston area became Unitarian. By 1840, an estimated 135 of 544
Congregational churches had gone over to Unitarianism and many of these were
the larger and more affluent parishes.
A group of Boston and New England ministers formed the
American Unitarian Association in 1825. (The British association was founded in
the same year.) Later the Western Unitarian Conference was organized to extend
the free religion movement to the Middle West and West. Its orientation has
always been more humanistic than that of the New England Unitarians. Western
Unitarians were instrumental in the establishment of Washington University in
St. Louis and Antioch College, but neither institution remained under church
control.
Meanwhile the other partner in the 1961 merger - Universalism
- was establishing roots in America. John Murray, a former Methodist, preached
the first Universalist sermon in America in 1770. He taught that ultimately all
souls would be reconciled to God. Although Universalism as a religious system
predated Unitarianism in this country it did not formally organize until 1866.
Originally Universalism was Trinitarian but one influential
preacher Hosea BaIlou, swung the theological
direction of the denomination toward Unitarianism. Ballou
served a Boston church from 1817 to 1852.
The Universalists went on record in 1790 as opposing human
slavery -the first religious body to take this stand. They were also the first
denomination to sponsor women for the ministry. Universalists worked for prison
reform and the parole system and fought capital punishment.
Universalism always found its greatest strength among rural
New Englanders. It has not counted the distinguished roster of communicants
which has been found in Unitarianism. Yet Benjamin Rush, a Universalist layman
and physician, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Clara
Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, belonged to the Universalist Church.
This church founded Tufts, Akron, and St. Lawrence universities.
Today the theological battle between theists and humanists is
almost over and the humanists must be considered the victors. Here and there
you will find individual Unitarians or congregations which still favor the
Christian or theistic position, but they are dwindling.
The denomination published the results of a comprehensive survey
of beliefs of adult Unitarian Universalists in 1967. Only 3 percent think of
God as a supernatural being, although four out of ten think of God as love,
evolution, or some other natural process. About 90 percent repudiate any belief
in personal immortality and 64 percent declared that they seldom or never pray.
Most Unitarian Universalists are converts; 60 percent
belonged to some other religion and 28 percent had no previous religious
affiliation. Approximately 5 percent came from Jewish backgrounds while 20
percent said their parents were Protestant fundamentalists. Unitarian
Universalists are normally wealthier and more active in community affairs than
people of other churches; six out of ten are college graduates. Few are black.
Organized Unitarian Universalist groups can be found in more
that 1,000 U.S. communities. Most of these are churches with ministers but
several hundred are lay-led Fellowships. Every year some Fellowships achieve
full church status. Some 5,000 men and women belong to the Church of the Larger
Fellowship which offers a correspondence type program for people isolated from
a Unitarian congregation.
Ministers usually take training at Meadville affiliated with
the University of Chicago, Harvard Divinity School, or Starr King School for
the Ministry, near the University of California.
Humanitarian activities are carried on throughout the world
by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. This might take the form of
civil rights work in Atlanta, social work training in Korea, community centers
in Rhodesia, medical programs in Haiti, birth control clinics in Nigeria. The
Committee was organized in 1940 to aid refugees from Nazi tyranny. The
Committee conducts its projects on a nonsectarian basis.
The Unitarian Universalist Association belongs to the
International Association for Liberal Christianity and Religious Freedom which
claims to represent some 1,500,000 Europeans. The American denomination also
maintains friendly relations with the Universalist Church of the Philippines,
the Philippine Unitarian Church, the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of
Ireland, and Unitarian churches in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Freedom is the characteristic theme of contemporary
Unitarianism. No one in the Unitarian Universalist church expects any other
member to hold any particular belief or subscribe to any creed. A member who
believes in the unique mission of Jesus and the inspiration of the Bible may
sit beside another Unitarian Universalist who denies the existence of God.
At the same time it is not difficult to predict Unitarian
Universalist positions on given issues. A Unitarian Universalist will usually
support civil rights, easier divorce laws, abortion, euthanasia, a strict
interpretation of separation of church and state, birth control, sex education
programs, prison reform, mental health, the United Nations, cremation or simple
burials, urban renewal. They will oppose capital punishment, censorship, war,
the John Birch society.
Sharing many Unitarian Universalist positions are such other groups
as the Ethical Culture Societies, the American Humanist Association, the Hicksite Quakers, and Reform Jews. The New York Ethical
Culture Society was founded in 1876 by Dr. Felix Adler. The 21 local branches
seek "to assert the supreme importance of the ethical factor in all
relations of life -personal, social, national and international - apart from
any theological or metaphysical considerations." It has about 5,000
members. The Fellowship of Religious Humanists, founded in 1963 and affiliated
with the American Humanist Association, promotes the cause of humanistic
religious living and ethical religion.
Unitarian Universalism faces the future with confidence. The
1961 merger and the rapid growth of the Fellowships have given the denomination
a much larger base than ever before. It has a well-educated ministry, a
distinguished publishing program and an influence out of all proportion to its
numbers.
Millions of Americans hold basic Unitarian Universalist
positions but do not belong to the denomination. The Unitarian Universalists
are making strong efforts to gain converts. It has even launched an advertising
campaign to attract inquiries. But, the question is whether liberal religion
can appeal to the liberal who works in a factory instead of a university, who
reads Time instead of Harper's or The Nation, who holds a
high school diploma instead of a college sheepskin or Ph.D.
Standing outside of the Christian family, the Unitarian
Universalists do not stand outside of the pale of dialogue with Christians.
Cardinal Cushing addressed the UUA's general assembly in 1965 and called for a
continuing dialogue between Catholics and Unitarian Universalists as the
"link between Christianity and secular humanism." He added that
"both secular humanism and Christianity have a thirst for social justice
and the discussion of this fact alone brings us closer to the theological
postulates by which social justice can be demanded." The Boston cardinal
noted that there are Unitarian Universalists "still oriented toward the
insights of the Christian message" and others whose faith "is more
profoundly based on man."
Unitarian Universalism, freed of all but vestigial Christian
traditions, presents itself as a religion which can exert a strong appeal to
secular humanists who do not wish to go it alone. These people can find
fellowship, spiritual inspiration, counseling, organized outlets for
humanitarian work through this denomination. In past years neither the
Unitarians nor Universalists excelled at missionary work or organization. Both
of these problem areas seem to be getting attention and we may expect to see
Unitarian Universalism assume a larger role among American religions.
Further Reading
Mendolsohn, Jack, Why I am a Unitarian Universalist (Boston, Beacon 1964).
Parke, David B., The Epic of Unitarianism (Boston, Starr King Press, 1967).
Wilbur, Morse, A History of Unitarianism, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1947).
Wright, Conrad, The Beginning of Unitarianism in America (Boston,
Beacon, 1955).