It is a socially progressive and inclusive spiritual community, not covenanted by doctrine and dogma, but by liberal religious principles distilled from the essential values of all world religions, as well as the arts, humanities, and sciences.

On July 11, 1854, a group of people of the Unitarian Christian denomination met in Adelaide, South Australia and resolved to found their own church and seek a suitable minister from England.

In 1858, British immigrant John Monk and his sons set about building a school on a Shady Grove property, near Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills.

Later, this building and the surrounding land, including a cemetery, were gifted to the Unitarian Church of South Australia and converted into a branch chapel.

The Wakefield Street church, one of Adelaide's more impressive religious buildings in its day, became in the 1960s increasingly expensive to maintain so the congregation decided to move to a more suitable premises in the suburbs.

[1] The new Meeting House in suburban Norwood, South Australia, with an adjoining manse for the minister, was designed by architect Eric von Schramek in 1970.