Unitarianism in America: A History of its Origin and Development

by George Willis Cooke

The convention was a remarkable success in the number who attended its sessions, the character of the men who participated in its deliberations, and the skill with which the unsectarian sect had been organized for effective co-operation and work. Its influence was immediately felt throughout the denomination and upon all its activities. The change in attitude was very great, and the depressed and discouraged tone of many Unitarian utterances for a number of years preceding and following 1860 gave way to one of enthusiasm and courage.[[3]]

New Life in the Unitarian Association.

The annual meeting of the Unitarian Association, that soon followed, felt the new stir of life, and the awakening to a larger consciousness of power. The chief attention was directed to meeting the new opportunities that had been presented, and to preparing for the larger work required. Dr. Rufus P. Stebbins, who had been for three years the president, and who had been actively instrumental in securing the large accession to the contributions of the year, was elected secretary, with the intent that he should devote himself to pushing forward the missionary enterprises of the Association. He refused to serve, and accepted the position only until his successor could be secured. In a few weeks, the executive committee elected Rev. Charles Lowe to this office, and he immediately entered upon its duties. He proved to be eminently fitted for the place by his enthusiastic interest in the work to be accomplished, and by his skill as an organizer. His catholicity of mind enabled him to conciliate, as far as this was possible, the conservative and radical elements in the denomination, and to unite them into an effective working body. Educated at Harvard College and Divinity School, Lowe spent two years as a tutor in the college, and then was settled successively over parishes in New Bedford, Salem, and Somerville. His experience and skill as an army agent of the Association suggested his fitness for the larger sphere of labor into which he was now inducted. For six most difficult and trying years he successfully conducted the affairs of the Association.

For the first time in the history of the Association its income was such as to enable it to plan its work on a large scale, and in some degree commensurate with its opportunities. During the year and a half preceding the first of June, 1866, there was contributed to the Association about $175,000, to Antioch College $103,000, to the Boston Fraternity of Churches $22,920, to the Children's Mission $42,000, to the Freedman's Aid Societies $30,000, to the Sunday School Society $2,500, to The Christian Register $15,000, and to the Western Conference $6,000, making a total of about $400,000 given by the denomination to these religious, educational, and philanthropic purposes; and this financial success was truly indicative of the new interest in its work that had come to the Unitarian body.

The New Theological Position.

Although the New York convention voted that $100,000 ought to be raised in 1866, because the needs of the denomination demanded it, yet only $60,000 were secured. The reaction that followed the close of the war had set in, the financial prosperity of the country had begun to lessen, and the enthusiasm that had made the first great effort of the denomination so eminently successful did not continue. A chief cause for the waning interest in the denomination itself was the agitation, in regard to the theological position of the Unitarian body that began almost immediately after the New York convention.

The older Unitarians held to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus as the great sources of spiritual truth as strongly as did the orthodox, and they differed from them only as to the purport of the message conveyed. This may be seen in a creed offered to the New York convention, by a prominent layman,[[4]] almost immediately after it was opened on the first morning. In this proposed creed it was asserted that Unitarians believe "in one Lord, Jesus Christ; the Son of God and his specially appointed messenger, and representative to our race; gifted with supernatural power, approved of God by miracles and signs and wonders which God did by him, and thus by divine authority commanding the devout and reverential faith of all who claim the Christian name." Although this creed was not adopted by the convention, it expressed the belief of a majority of Unitarians. To the same purport was the word spoken by Dr. Bellows, when he said: "Unitarians of the school to which I belong accept Jesus Christ with all their hearts as the Sent of God, the divinely inspired Son of the Father, who by his miraculously proven office and his sinless life and character was fitted to be, and was made revealer of the universal and permanent religion of the human race."[[5]] These quotations indicate that the more conservative Unitarians had not changed their position since 1853, when they made official statement of their acceptance of Christianity as authenticated by miracles and the supernatural. In fact, they held essentially to the attitude taken when they left the older Congregational body.

On the other hand, the transcendentalists and the radical Unitarians proposed a new theory of the nature of religious truth, and insisted that the spiritual message of Christianity is inward, and not outward, directly to the soul of man, and not through the mediation of a person or a book. Almost from the first Channing had been moving towards this newer conception of the nature and method of religion. He did not wholly abandon the miraculous, but it grew to have less significance for him with each year. The Unitarian conception of religion as natural to man, which was maintained strenuously from the time of Jonathan Mayhew, made it probable, if not certain, that a merely external system of religion would be ultimately outgrown. In his lecture on self-denial Channing stated this position in the clearest terms. "If," he said, "after a deliberate and impartial use of our best faculties, a professed revelation seems to us plainly to disagree with itself or to clash with great principles which we cannot question, we ought not to hesitate to withhold from it our belief. I am surer that my rational nature is from God, than that any book is an expression of his will. This light in my own breast is his primary revelation, and all subsequent ones must accord with it, and are in fact intended to blend with and brighten it."[[6]]