Unitarian Universalist Origins   Our Historic Faith
                               Mark W. Harris

 Unitarians and Universalists have always been heretics. We are heretics
because we want to choose our faith, not because we desire to be
rebellious.

 "Heresy" in Greek means "choice." During the first three centuries of the
Christian church, believers could choose from a variety of tenets about
Jesus. Among these was a belief that Jesus was an entity sent by God on a
divine mission. Thus the word "Unitarian" developed, meaning the oneness of
God. Another religious choice in the first three centuries of the Common
Era (CE) was universal salvation. This was the belief that no person would
be condemned by God to eternal damnation in a fiery pit. Thus a
Universalist believed that all people will be saved. Christianity lost its
element of choice in 325 CE when the Nicene Creed established the Trinity
as dogma. For centuries thereafter, people who professed Unitarian or
Universalist beliefs were persecuted.

 This was true until the sixteenth century when the Protestant Reformation
took hold in the remote mountains of Transylvania in eastern Europe. Here
the first edict of religious  toleration in history was declared in 1568
during the reign of the first and only Unitarian king, John Sigismund.
Sigismund' s court preacher, Frances David, had successively converted from
Catholicism to Lutheranism to Calvinism and finally to Unitarianism because
he could find no biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity.
     Arguing that people should be allowed to choose among these faiths, he
said, "We need not think alike to love alike."

In sixteenth-century Transylvania, Unitarian congregations were established
for the first time in history. These churches continue to preach the
Unitarian message in present-day Romania. Like their heretic forebears from
ancient times. these liberals could not see how the deification of a human
being or the simple recitation of creeds could help them to live better
lives. They said that we must follow Jesus, not worship him.

     During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Unitarianism appeared
briefly in  scattered locations. A Unitarian community in Rakow, Poland,
flourished for a time, and a book called On the Errors of the Trinity by a
Spaniard, Michael Servetus, was circulated throughout Europe. But
persecution frequently followed these believers. The Polish Unitarians were
completely suppressed, and Michael Servetus was burned at the stake.

     Even where the harassment was not so extreme, people still opposed the
idea of choice in matters of religious faith. In 1791, scientist and
Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley had his laboratory burned and was
hounded out of England. He fled to America where he established American
Unitarian churches in the Philadelphia area.

     Despite these European connections, Unitarianism as we know it in
North America is not a foreign import. In fact, the origins of our faith
began with some of the most  historic congregations in Puritan New England
where each town was required to establish a congregationally independent
church that followed Calvinist doctrines.
     Initially these congregational churches offered no religious choice
for their parishioners, but over time the strict doctrines of original sin
and predestination began to mellow.

     By the mid-1700s a group of evangelicals were calling for the revival
of Puritan  orthodoxy. They asserted their belief in humanity's eternal
bondage to sin. People who opposed the revival, believing in free human
will and the loving benevolence of God, eventually became Unitarian. During
the first four decades of the nineteenth century,  hundreds of these
original congregational churches fought over ideas about sin and
salvation, and especially over the doctrine of the Trinity. Most of the
churches split over these issues. In 1819, Unitarian minister William
Ellery Channing delivered a  sermon called "Unitarian Christianity" and
helped to give the Unitarians a strong platform. Six years later the
American Unitarian Association was organized in Boston, Massachusetts.

     Universalism developed in America in at least three distinct
geographical locations. The earliest preachers of the gospel of universal
salvation appeared in what were later  the Middle Atlantic and Southern
states. By 1781, Elhanan Winchester had organized a Philadelphia
congregation of Universal Baptists. among its members was Benjamin
Rush, the famous physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

     At about the same time, in the rural, interior sections of New
England, a small number of itinerant preachers, among then Caleb Rich,
began to disbelieve the strict Calvinist doctrines of eternal punishment.
They discovered from their biblical studies the new revelation of God's
loving redemption of all. John Murray, an English preacher who
immigrated in 1770, helped lead the first Universalist church in
Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the battle to separate church and state.

     From its beginnings, Universalism challenged its members to reach out
and embrace people whom society often marginalized. The Gloucester church
included a freed slave among its charter members, and the Universalists
became the first denomination to ordain women to the ministry, beginning in
1863 with Olympia Brown.

     Universalism was a more evangelical faith than Unitarianism. After
officially organizing  in 1793, the Universalists spread their faith across
the eastern United States and Canada. Hosea Ballou became the
denomination's greatest leader during the nineteenth century, and he and
his followers, including Nathaniel Stacy, led the way in  spreading their
faith.

     Other preachers followed the advice of Universalist publisher Horace
Greeley and  went West. One such person was Thomas Starr King, who is
credited with defining the difference between Unitarians and Universalists:
"Universalists believe that God is too good to damn people, and the
Unitarians believe that people are too good to be damned by God." The
Universalists believed in a God who em-braced everyone, and  this
eventually became central to their belief that lasting truth is found in
all religions, and that dignity and worth is innate to all people
regardless of sex, color, race, or class.

     Growing out of this inclusive theology was a lasting impetus in both
denominations to  create a more just society. Both Unitarians and
Universalists became active participants in many social justice movements
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
     Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker was a prominent abolitionist,
defending fugitive slaves and offering support to American abolitionist
John Brown.

     Other reformers included Universalists such as Charles Spear who
called for prison reform, and Clara Barton who went from Civil War "angel
of the battlefield" to become the founder of the American Red Cross.
Unitarians such as Dorothea Dix fought to "break the chains" of people
incarcerated in mental hospitals, and Samuel Gridley Howe started schools
for the blind. For the last two centuries, Unitarians and  Universalists
have been at the forefront of movements working to free people from
whatever bonds may oppress them.

     Two thousand years ago liberals were persecuted for seeking the
freedom to make religious choices, but such freedom has become central to
both Unitarianism and Universalism. As early as the 1830s, both groups were
studying and promulgating texts from world religions other than
Christianity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, humanists within
both traditions advocated that people could be religious without believing
in God. No one person, no one religion, can embrace all religious
truths.

     By the middle of the twentieth century it became clear that Unitarians
and Universalists could have a stronger liberal religious voice if they
merged their efforts, and they did so in 1961, forming the Unitarian
Universalist Association. Many Unitarian Universalists  became active in
the civil rights movement. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist
minister, was murdered in Selma, Alabama, after he and twenty percent of
the denomination's ministers responded to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call to
march for  justice.

     Today we are determined to continue to work for greater racial and
cultural diversity.  In 1977, a women and religion resolution was passed by
the Association, and since  then the denomination has responded to the
feminist challenge to change sexist  structures and language, especially
with the publication of an inclusive hymnal. The denomination has affirmed
the rights of bisexuals, gays, lesbians, and transgendered  persons,
including ordaining and settling gay and lesbian clergy in our
congregations, and in 1996, affirmed same-sex marriage.

     All these efforts reflect a modern under-standing of universal
salvation. Unitarian Universalism welcomes all to an expanding circle of
understanding and choice in religious faith.

     Our history has carried us from liberal Christian views about Jesus
and human nature to a rich pluralism that includes theist and atheist,
agnostic and humanist, pagan, Christian, Jew, and Buddhist. As our history
continues to evolve and unfold, we invite you to join us by choosing our
free faith.
http://www.uua.org/info/origins.html

http://www.jjnet.com/famousuus/history.htm
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"Within the ample eighteenth-century sources at hand, two pairs of
theological views on religious liberty were critical to constitutional
formation: those of congregational Puritans and those of Free Church
Evangelicals. Two pairs of contemporaneous political views were EQUALLY
influential: Those of Enlightenment thinkers and those of Civic
Republicans. . . James Madison's early writings on religious liberty had
the strong flavor of Witherspoon, his teacher at princeton; his political
speeches often pulsed with republican sentiments; his later writings,
particularly after his presidency, were increasingly firm Enlightenment
stock.
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Religion and the American Constitutional
Experiment, Essential Rights and Liberties.  John Witte Jr. Westview Press,
(2000)  pp 24)

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"Mr. Jefferson and Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in
Christianity, took their parts in the duties of vestrymen. . . . "(19)

"Of James Madison, Bishop Meade wrote:
His religious feeling . . . seems to have been short lived. His political
associations with those of infidel principles, of whom there were many in
his day, if they did not actually change his creed, yet subjected him to
general suspcion."(20)

Of the many who had infidel principles were Edmund Randolph(21) and Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney" (22)

FOOTNOTES:
(19) Meade, William, Old churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia.
(Philadelphia, 1857) pp191;
(20) Meade, pp 100
(21) Moncure Daniel Conway, Omitted Chapters of History Disclosed in the
Life and papers of Edmund Randolph (1888), pp 156
(22) Herbert M. Morals, Deism in America EB, XXI, 617
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Thomas Jefferson versus Religious oppression, by
Frank Swancara, University Books, N Y (1969) pp 130
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        When we turn from religions liberty to the repudiation of: special
state aid, we enter a more. complicated area. That section of Puritanism
which championed religious liberty in the seventeenth century had divided
into, a right and left wing as regards the relation. of the church to the
state, a division which was important; in Witherspoon's day and also in
ours.
        The left wing held for a rigid separation of church and state,
based on a theological compartmentalization of the spheres of creation (or
nature) and of redemption (or grace) The state belonged to the sphere of
nature and was to be shaped solely by natural law with no regard for
Scripture or church. There could he no such thing as a "Christian state."
There should be no religious tests for the franchise and no ecclesiastical
intervention in political matters. The state, on  the other hand, most
respect the sphere of the church and redemption as outside its
jurisdiction. Such was the sscheme of Roger Williams in Rhode Island, and
of John Lilburne and John Goodwin in Old England. This became the main
stream of Baptist thought in England and the colonies and has remained so
ever since.
        A different but equally important pattern of thought had emerged at
the Westminister Assembly, especially m the manifesto of the Congregational
minority there. It was actually put into effect  in the 1650's by Cromwell,
but was  then of course rejected at the Restoration of the Stuarts and the
old episcopal establishment. Like the separationists, this scheme fervently
supported religious liberty. Cromwell's regime gave greater scope to
religious liberty than any other major European state previously had done.
But this tradition  refused to give up the notion of the bearing  of
Christian revelation on political life. Cromwell conceived his government
to be  generically Christian, but without giving state aid to any
ecclesiastic constitution preferentially. As he administered the pariah
system, benefices  were held by ministers of Congregational, Presbyterian,
Baptist  and Episcopal persuasions indifferently. To this extent it was
multiple establishments, based on the novel conception of a number  of
equal and independent denominations cooperating to shape Christian nation.
The state represented all collectively and equally  on the basis of what
was called "the common light of Christianity,
        The state constitutions of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New
Hampshire sad Maryland represented substantially this position in the
1780's. Public provision conld be made for school teachers and  religious
ministrations or whatever denomination the several towns  might wish and in
some eases at least, dissenting minorities were exempt from taxation.
Nearly half of the states of the new republic  maintained multiple
establishments of this general type and the Congress provided something of
the sane sort for the Northwest  Territory of of which Five mid-Western
states have since been  erected

**[NOTE]**      
In Virginia, on the other hand where the Anglican establishment
Had been less generous to dissenters than the Congregationalists of  New
England, it was rather the radical separationist view which triumphed under
the leadership of Madison and Jefferson. And this  Virginia struggle was
the immediate background of the drafting  of the First Amendment.
** [NOTE]**

        Where do the American Presbyterians fit into this picture? Although
they rejected state support or church ministrations their general outlook
seems still to have been that of the Cromwellian "common light of
Christianity." If we are to take Witherspoon's lectures on moral philosophy
as a commentary on his preface to the Form of Government, the repudiation
of special state aid does not imply a strict separationism of the Roger
Williams or Baptist type. Whereas it is one of the most important duties of
the civil magistrate to protect the rights of conscience, he is also, m
Witherspoon's view duty bound to punish  profanity and impiety. He should
encourage piety by his own example, attending to public and private
worship, avoiding swearing and blasphemy.(5) In Witherspoon's mind, the
state was still called to give aid to Christianity in general in these
ways. It was not expected to be neutral as between the religious and the
irreligious. And, in. his discussions of the system of state aidfor public
worship suiting the great body of citizens with full liberty for
dissenters, Witherspoon observes mildly, "there is much reason for this"
Clearly Witherspoon's devotion to the mechanism of separation is vastly
less intense than air commitment to religious liberty. The main point is to
secure freedom and non-preferential treatment for all religious bodies and
views. Separation was valued, not as an end in itself, but, as a means to
the end of religions liberty.
Footnote:              
(5) Lectures on Moral Philosophy (ed. Collins), pp. 111-13.
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: John Witherspoon on Church and State, by James
Hastings Nichols. JOURNAL OF PRESBYTERIAN HISTORY, 42, (1964)
pp 171-73)

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         In 1787, prudence dictated that the Virginian be more reticent
than Hume, Smith, and Voltaire. By that time, Madison had already himself
become an encourager "of free inquiry" and an enemy to what the majority of
his contemporaries would have considered "serious religion." Political
action required discretion. The divines influential in the various states
would not have looked kindly on the proposed constitution had they
recognized that it embodied a strategy for reducing the various sects to a
"pure and rational religion" of the sort favored by "wise men"-even in
wholly pagan times. His reticence notwithstanding, Madison's purpose and
that evidenced by Hume, Smith, and Voltaire were one and the same. As he
conceded some three decades later in a letter to a prominent American lew,
the Virginian had not only long been inclined to consider "the freedom of
religious opinions & worship as equally belonging to every sect." He had
"ever regarded . . . the secure enjoyment of" that freedom "as the best
human provision for bringing all either into the same way of thinking, or
into that mutual charity which is the only substitute."(95) For Madison and
for Jefferson, freedom of conscience was as much a matter of policy as a
matter of principle. Like the author of the Declaration of Independence,
the father of the American Constitution was a Deist who looked for moral
and political guidance, not to the Holy Scriptures, but to the "law of
nature and of nature's God."(96) If his stratagem was successful, his
fellow citizens would someday be unable to distinguish the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob from the God of the philosophers; and when that day came,
the danger posed by parties of principle would disappear altoeether.(97)
        Madison could take it for granted that religious factions were
entirely artificial because in antiquity there had been no parties of
abstract, speculative principle apart from the completely powerless
philosophical sects. Had it not been for the peculiar character of
Christianity, circumstances in modern times would have been much the same.
And even then, where good fortune and good policy combined to disarm
superstition, civil strife was most likely to arise in a fashion perfectly
familiar to the ancients.
         In Madison's view, factions should normally spring into existence
because men (and the rich and the poor in particular) have conflicting
material interests. It was with this in mind that he developed the most
controversial and original aspect of his argument for the extended
republic. Alexander Hamilton had remarked on the scope given to "commercial
enterprise" in America by "the diversity in the productions of different
States."(98) Madison's sanguine experience with religious diversity in
Virginia enabled him to see that the economic diversity noted by Hamilton
could be politically advantageous as well.(99)

FOOTNOTES:
(95)· WrJM VIII 411--13: Letter to Mordecai M. Noah on 15 May 1818.
(96). It can hardly be fortuitous that, in critical documents, both resort
to the language of Deism. Cf. PTI 1 413-33 (esp. 423, 429): The
Declaration of independence with Madison, The Federalist 43 (297) See also
WrJM IX 573-607 (esp. 590, 599): Notes on Nullification, 1835-36-where "the
law of nature & of nature's God" turns out to be an extrapolation from
Thomas Hobbes's "natural right of self-preservation." For another
circumstance in which Madison appealed to "nature and nature's God," see
WrJM V1 332-40 (at 340): Address of the General Assembly to the People of
the Commonwealth of Virginia, 23 January 1799. At Princeton. if Madison
perused all of the books that Dr. Witherspoon assigned, he will have
encountered The Being and Attributes of God by Newton's Dr. Clarke. His own
testimony suggests that he was swayed from religious orthodoxy at about the
time of the Revolution by renewed study of the work. Fitty years later, he
would still endorse "reasoning from the effect to the cause, `from Nature
to Nature's God,' " and he evidently hoped that the students at the
University of Virginia would learn to do the same. Note the inclusion of
Clarke's work on the list that Madison drew up in 1824 Of theological works
appropriate for use at the university (WrJM IX 203-7n) and see WrJM IX
229--71: Letter to Frederick Beasley on 20 November 1825 Though Madison was
outwardly observant, he never joined any church, and his heterodoxy was
widely suspected at the time. For further discussion, see Brant, James
Madison I 68-71, 85· 1"-22, 127-31, 1II 268-73, and Ralph Ketcham, "James
Madison and Religion--A New Hypothesis," Journal of the Presbyterian
Historical Society 38, no. 2 (June 1960): 65-90, and James Madison: A
Biography (New York 1971) 55-58, 61, 66, 162-68. Ketcham demonstrates
Madison's inierest in metaphysical guestions but provides no evidence to
support his assertion that the mature Madison should be considered a more
or less orthodox Christian. In fact, given the political circumstances, the
absence of substantive evidence suggests the opposite opinion, for it is
far easier to explain the reticence of a statesman who holds unorthodox
opinions than to account for the silence of a politician whose views accord
well with those of his compatriots. In any case. as Madison's private
correspondence indicates, his motive for entering the fray on behalf of
freedom of conscience and against the establishment of religion was
from the outset political and not religious. Note that, from at least one
political perspective, Deism is the functional equivalent of atheism: see
Hobbes, De cive IIl.xv. 14, and consider 1I Prologue, note 46, above.
 (97)· See J. G. A. Pocock, "Religious Freedom and the Desacralization of
Politics: From the English Civil Wars to the Virginia Statute," in The
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom 43-73
 (98). The Federalist 11 (71)·
 (99). On this point, see Lance Banning, "James Madison, the Statute for
Religious Freedom, and the Crisis of Republican Convictions," in The
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom 109-38.
SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Republics Ancient and Modern, Inventions of
Prudence: Constituting the American Regime, By Paul A. Rahe, Volume III,
The University of north carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London (1994) pp
53-54
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