Unitarianism in America: A History of its Origin and Development

by George Willis Cooke

[[22]] James Garrard, governor of Kentucky from 1796 to 1802, was a Unitarian. Harry Toulmin, president of Transylvania Seminary and secretary of the state of Kentucky, was also a Unitarian.

VI.
THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION.

The time had come for the liberals to organize in a more distinctive form, in order that they might secure permanently the results they had already attained. The demand for organization, however, came almost wholly from the younger men, those who had grown up under the influence of the freer life of the liberal churches or who had been trained in the independent spirit of the Divinity School at Harvard. The older men, for the most part, were bound by the traditions of "the standing order":[[1]] they could not bring themselves to desire new conditions and new methods.

The spirit of the older and leading laymen and ministers is admirably illustrated in Rev. O.B. Frothingham's account of his father in his book entitled Boston Unitarianism. They were interested in many, public-spirited enterprises, and the social circle in which they moved was cultivated and refined; but they were provincial, and little inclined to look beyond the limits of their own immediate interests. Dr. Nathaniel L. Frothingham, minister of the First Church in Boston, one of the earliest American students of German literature and philosophy, and a man of rational insight and progressive thinking, may be regarded as a representative of the best type of Boston minister in the first half of the nineteenth century. In a sermon preached in 1835, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his settlement, Dr. Frothingham said that he had never before used the word "Unitarian", in his pulpit, though his church had been for thirty years counted as Unitarian. "We have," he said, "made more account of the religious sentiment than of theological opinions." In this attitude he was in harmony with the leading men of his day.[[2]]

Channing, for instance, was opposed to every phase of religious organization that put bonds upon men; and he would accept nothing in the form of a creed. He severely condemned "the guilt of a sectarian spirit," and said that "to bestow our affections on those who are ranged under the same human leader, or who belong to the same church with ourselves, and to withhold it from others who possess equal if not superior virtue, because they bear a different name, is to prefer a party to the church of Christ."[[3]] In 1831 he described Unitarianism as being "characterized by nothing more than by the spirit of freedom and individuality. It has no established creed or symbol," he wrote. "Its friends think each for himself, and differ much from each other."[[4]] Later he wrote to a friend: "I distrust sectarian influence more and more. I am more detached from a denomination, and strive to feel more my connection with the Universal Church, with all good and holy men. I am little of a Unitarian, and stand aloof from all but those who strive and pray for clearer light, who look for a purer and more effectual manifestation of Christian truth."[[5]]

Many of the Unitarians were in fullest sympathy with Channing as to the fundamental law of spiritual freedom and as to the evils of sectarianism. A considerable number of them were in agreement with him as to the course pursued by the Unitarian movement. Having escaped from one sect, they were not ready to commit themselves to the control of another. Therefore they withheld themselves from all definitely organized phases of Unitarianism, and would give no active support to those who sought to bring the liberals together for purposes of protection and forward movement. Under these circumstances it was difficult to secure concert of action or to make successful any definite missionary enterprise, however little of sectarianism it might manifest. Even to the present time Unitarianism has shown this independence on the part of local churches and this freedom on the part of individuals. Because of this attitude, unity of action has been difficult, and denominational loyalty never strong or assured.

However, a different spirit animated the younger men, who persisted in their effort to secure an organization that would represent distinctively the Unitarian thought and sentiment. The movement towards organization had its origin and impulse in a group of young ministers who had been trained at the Harvard Divinity School under Professor Andrews Norton. While Norton was conservative in theology and opposed to sectarian measures, his teaching was radical, progressive, and stimulating. His students accepted his spirit of intellectual progress, and often advanced beyond his more conservative teachings. In the years between 1817 and 1824 James Walker, John G. Palfrey, Jared Sparks, Alexander Young, John Pierpont, Ezra S. Gannett, Samuel Barrett, Thomas R. Sullivan, Samuel J. May, Calvin Lincoln, and Edward B. Hall were students in the Divinity School; and all of these men were leaders in the movement to organize a Unitarian Association. Pierpont gave the name to the new organization, distinctly defining it as Unitarian. Gannett, Palfrey, and Hall served it as presidents; Gannett, Lincoln, and Young, as secretaries. Walker, Palfrey, and Barrett gave it faithful service as directors, and Lincoln as its active missionary agent. A number of young laymen in Boston and elsewhere, mostly graduates of Harvard College, were also interested in the formation of the new organization. Among them were Charles G. Loring, Robert Rantoul, Samuel A. Eliot, Leverett Salstonstall, George B. Emerson, and Alden Bradford. All these young men were afterwards prominent in the affairs of the city or state, and they were faithful to the interests of the Unitarian churches with which they were connected.

Initial Meetings.

The first proposition to form a Unitarian organization for missionary purposes was made in a meeting of the Anonymous Association, a club to which belonged thirty or forty of the leading men of Boston. They were all connected with Unitarian churches, and were actively interested in promoting the growth of a liberal form of Christianity. It appears from the journal of David Reed, for many years the editor and publisher of The Christian Register, that the members of this association were in the habit of meeting at each other's houses during the year 1824 for the purpose of discussing important subjects connected with religion, morals, and politics. At a meeting held at the house of Hon. Josiah Quincy in the autumn of that year, attention was called to certain articles that had been published in The Christian Register, and the importance was suggested of promoting the growth of liberal Christianity through the distribution of the printed word. A resolution was submitted, inquiring if measures could not be taken for uniting the efforts of liberal-minded persons to give greater efficiency to the attempt to extend a knowledge of Unitarian principles by means of the public press; and a committee was appointed to consider and report on the expediency of forming an organization for this purpose. This committee consisted of Rev. Henry Ware, the younger, Alden Bradford, and Richard Sullivan. Henry Ware was the beloved and devoted minister of the Second Church in Boston. His colleagues were older men, both graduates of Harvard College and prominent in the social and business life of Boston. The purpose which these men had in mind was well defined by Dr. Gannett, writing twenty years after the event: "We found ourselves," he said, "under the painful necessity of contributing our assistance to the propagation of tenets which we accounted false or of forming an association through which we might address the great truths of religion to our fellow-men without the adulteration of erroneous dogmas. To take one of these courses, or to do nothing in the way of Christian beneficence, was the only alternative permitted to us. The name which we adopted has a sectarian sound; but it was chosen to avoid equivocation on the one hand and misapprehension on the other."[[6]] The committee, under date of December 29, 1824, sent out a circular inviting a meeting of all interested, "in order to confer together on the expediency of appointing an annual meeting for the purpose of union, sympathy, and co-operation in the cause of Christian truth and Christian charity." In this circular will be found the origin of the clause in the present constitution of the Unitarian Association defining its purposes.