Unitarianism

by W. G. Tarrant

With the rise of the new liberalism in the American colonies no name is more conspicuous than that of Jonathan Mayhew (1721-66), whose eloquence was of a more modern type than most of his day. He is credited with having deeply moved many who became leaders in turn, whether as ministers or laymen. After the interruption of normal development inevitable during the War of Independence, things moved more rapidly. The French Revolution evoked the warmest sympathy in the United States, and its effect on religion there was largely to increase a sense of the worth of man. 'Universalism,' the final restoration of all, became a conspicuous doctrine with some. The need for practical measures to uplift the general life here was a theme more to the mind of others. The distinctly 'Unitarian' trend was from the first associated with this eager attention to the higher culture. Harvard College, in the very heart of New England, rapidly developed into a fruitful source of the newer ideas, which were embodied in the lives of 'statesmen, merchants, physicians, lawyers, and teachers'; and thus the community, in all its more vigorous members, became charged with a fresh conception of life and religion.

In the first decade of the nineteenth century we begin to trace publications more or less distinctly Unitarian. One of these was the Monthly Anthology, the pioneer among American literary magazines. One of its two editors was the Rev. William Emerson, father of Ralph Waldo Emerson. As the divergence of ideas grew more distinct debate began to be fierce. The new magazine took a bold line, while many liberals were still hesitating. In 1808 the trouble came to the surface. Harvard was denounced by the orthodox party, in consequence of the appointment of a liberal minister, Henry Ware, to a professorship involving pastoral care of the students. An orthodox rival school was set up at Andover. A few years later a pamphlet appeared giving letters alleged to have been sent to England by Boston ministers reporting that a certain number were Unitarians. The name was unwelcome at the time, especially because it was associated with the 'humanitarianism' then becoming widely taught in England. The implicated ministers, being charged with cowardly evasion, replied with warmth; they were, in fact, mostly Arians, and thus their views really were different from the English type. Moreover, again in contrast with the English, they expressed strong dislike of controversy; all they asked was to be left alone to proclaim the 'Simple Christianity' in which they believed.

The upshot showed, however, that controversy was not to be avoided, and during twenty years from 1815 onwards it raged more or less severely. An epoch in this long and regrettable warfare was marked by a sermon preached at Baltimore in 1819. The preacher was one of the most famous men on the Unitarian roll, William Ellery Channing (1780-1842). Already eminent, he continued to hold a position unique in the religious life of New England; his saintly character and his noble if simple eloquence made him a leader in spite of himself. For a long time he had maintained a mediating position—all through his life he resolutely disclaimed sectarianism; but in 1819, after years of discussion, it was obvious that, for good or evil, the old dogma and the new spirit lay far apart. From that date liberals and conservatives in the old Congregational system of New England were divided, and 'Unitarian Christianity,' which was the subject of Channing's discourse, was a recognized type in the land. In 1825 the American Unitarian Association was founded. It was but a struggling society at first, not for lack of sympathy with its principle, but because many Unitarians, like Channing, so strongly disliked the notion of forming a new sect that they took little interest in methods of propagandism common to most religious bodies.

ENGLISH UNITARIANISM RECOGNIZED BY LAW

By a mere coincidence the British and Foreign Unitarian Association was founded almost on the same day in 1825 as the American Unitarian Association. This step evidently implies a great change in Unitarian affairs since the times of that early Dissent towards which attention has been previously directed. We must now endeavour to trace the change in detail.

It will be remembered that tendencies to Anti-trinitarian thought—using that term to cover all the varieties of heretical opinion on the subject—were manifested both within the established Church and without. As regards the latter phase, the evidence is clear that, whatever the doctrinal 'subscription' was worth which Dissenting preachers had to make, there was a decided lapse from the orthodox standard on the part of a considerable number. This lapse, however, was for the most part left obscure while the pulpits resounded with 'plain, moral discourses.' Now and again, one bolder than the rest ventured to discuss controverted points of doctrine. Such a man was Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), whose career is interesting as an illustration of the growth of opinion, and especially important in regard to the denominational advance of Unitarianism. He began life as a Calvinistic Independent, and became Arminian, Arian, and Humanitarian in turn. His devotion to science is well known, and he ranks with Lavoisier as an original discoverer of oxygen. He was an indefatigable student, a voluminous writer, a ready controversialist; and though his speaking was marred by imperfect utterance he attained to considerable influence in public address. No Unitarian leader hitherto has displayed more activity, and few, if any, have possessed greater controversial ability than he. His opinions, indeed, were in some respects peculiar to himself; he called himself a Socinian, but it was with a difference, and no Unitarian to-day would endorse some of his main positions. But his work for the cause was invaluable, and his personal character is held in the highest esteem. Originally he would have preferred that the Unitarians should remain as a 'liberal leaven' in the churches; eventually he became the chief organizer of Unitarian worship and propaganda.

The first 'Unitarian Church,' however, was due to a clergyman, Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808). After long and arduous efforts to secure relaxation from the doctrinal subscription imposed on the clergy, Lindsey resigned his living at Catterick, in 1773, facing poverty and hardship with a courage that elicited warm commendations, though few were found to imitate the example. In spite of the terrors of the law, now becoming a dead letter, he opened a Unitarian chapel in Essex Street, London, in 1774. The service was on the episcopal model, but with a liturgy adapted to 'the worship of the Father only.' This feature has been claimed to be the distinctive characteristic of modern Unitarianism. It will be remembered that Socinus inculcated a sort of subordinate worship of Christ, and the Arians of course held to the same practice, Humanitarianism, the view that Jesus Christ was truly a man and in no sense a deity, obviously made it impossible to offer him the adoration due to God alone. This view had been slowly spreading since the days of Lardner; Priestley, Lindsey, and the active men of the party generally shared it. There were exceptions still, however. Dr. Richard Price (1723-91), a London Presbyterian divine of great eminence, remembered as one of the founders of actuarial science, held by his Arianism to the last; this did not prevent him from lending a hand in the organization of the Unitarian forces, but there was for a time some difficulty on the subject. The more ardent professors of the new doctrine of 'the sole worship of the Father' were for excluding the Arians from fellowship, and one of the societies then formed actually adhered to a rather offensive formula on the subject till about 1830.

A considerable number of liberal Churchmen of the laity, including some of rank, supported Lindsey's movement. An indication of changing moods is given in the fact that in 1770 an Act was passed permitting the Dissenting ministers to preach provided that they made a declaration of belief in the Scriptures as containing the revealed will of God. This was considered by many a welcome relief from the requirement of the Toleration Act that the minister must subscribe to the doctrinal articles of the established Church, and it was certainly a much less definite test. Priestley, for his part, however, regretted the change; the old subscription was in reality ceasing to be enforced, and he was afraid lest persecuting vigilance would set in again. As a matter of fact, the Act of 1779, long obsolete, has never been repealed, but very few people are aware of its existence. Priestley's many controversies tended to excite a good deal of interest, some of it more than unfriendly, in the new movement. In 1791, when a party of Unitarians dined at Birmingham in celebration of the French Revolution, serious riots broke out, and Priestley, who was then minister of the New Meeting there, was made a principal victim though he was not one of the diners. His house and library were burned, and he barely escaped the violence of the mob. Other residences were also destroyed, and the Old and New Meetings were burnt down. Ultimately, in 1794, Priestley sought asylum in America from the ill-will that pursued him even in London. Bishop Horsley, one of his sturdiest opponents in controversy, said, 'the patriarch of the sect is fled.'

It was earlier in the same year that the first organized Unitarian propaganda took shape in a Unitarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. District unions were soon formed, and in 1806 a Unitarian Fund was raised by means of which the first itinerant missionary of the body, Richard Wright (1764-1836), was sent literally from end to end of Great Britain. In 1813, Unitarians were set free from legal penalties by the repeal, so far as they were concerned, of the exceptive clauses of the Toleration Act, this relief coming twenty years after Charles James Fox had tried to secure it for them. The member who was successful was Mr. William Smith, who sat for Norwich, and whose granddaughter was Florence Nightingale. In 1819 an Association was founded to protect and extend the Civil Rights of Unitarians. It was by combining the three societies—the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Fund, and Civil Rights Society, that the British and Foreign Unitarian Association was formed, as has been said, in 1825.

In order to understand fairly the scope and spirit of that earlier Unitarian period, thus at last organized in full legal recognition, though still suffering from the prejudice inevitably created by more than a century of legal condemnation, a few salient points should be kept in view. First, the heterogeneous elements in the 'body,' if it could be called such, were a source of weakness in regard to united action. Instead of belonging, as their American brethren did, to one ecclesiastical group, and that the dominant one, the English Unitarians included Dissenters of different tendencies and traditions, with a few recruits from the State Church. The 'Presbyterian' congregations, as they were not very strictly called, were the backbone of the 'body'; many of these, however, were very weak, and in the course of a few decades some were destined to follow those which had died out in the eighteenth century. Converts not infrequently lent new force in the pulpit, but at the risk of substituting an eager missionary spirit for the usual staid decorum of the old families. In these the ideals of breadth, simplicity, and moral excellence were stronger than the desire, natural in a convert, to win the world to one's opinion.