Unitarianism
[11] Among its adherents were a significant number of Italians who took refuge in Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, and Transylvania in order to escape from the religious persecution perpetrated against them by the Roman Catholic and Magisterial Protestant churches.
[12] From the 16th to 18th centuries, Unitarians in Britain often faced significant political persecution, including John Biddle, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Theophilus Lindsey.
[17] Unitarianism is a proper noun and follows the same English usage as other Christian theologies that have developed within a religious group or denomination (such as Calvinism, Anabaptism, Adventism, Lutheranism, Wesleyanism, etc.).
[18] The term existed shortly before it became the name of a distinct religious tradition, thus occasionally it is used as a common noun to describe any understanding of Jesus Christ that denies the doctrine of the Trinity or affirms the belief that God is only one person.
[28] Unitarianism, both as a theology and as a denominational family of churches, was defined and developed in Poland, Transylvania, England, Wales, India, Japan, Jamaica, the United States, and beyond in the 16th century through the present.
[31] The Ecclesia minor or Minor Reformed Church of Poland, better known today as the Polish Brethren, was born as the result of a controversy that started on January 22, 1556, when Piotr of Goniądz (Peter Gonesius), a Polish student, spoke out against the doctrine of the Trinity during the general synod of the Reformed (Calvinist) churches of Poland held in the village of Secemin.
Between 1665 and 1668 a grandson of Socinus, Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr., published Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum quos Unitarios vocant (Library of the Polish Brethren who are called Unitarians 4 vols.
[citation needed] The Unitarian Church in Transylvania was first recognized by the Edict of Torda, issued by the Transylvanian Diet under Prince John II Sigismund Zápolya (January 1568),[34] and was first led by Ferenc Dávid (a former Calvinist bishop, who had begun preaching the new doctrine in 1566).
The movement gained popularity in England in the wake of the Enlightenment and began to become a formal denomination in 1774 when Theophilus Lindsey organised meetings with Joseph Priestley, founding the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in the country.
In 1800, Joseph Stevens Buckminster became minister of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, where his brilliant sermons, literary activities, and academic attention to the German "New Criticism" helped shape the subsequent growth of Unitarianism in New England.
Buckminster's close associate William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) was settled over the Federal Street Church in Boston, 1803, and in a few years he became the leader of the Unitarian movement.
[39] The Christology commonly called "Socinian" (after Fausto Sozzini, one of the founders of Unitarian theology) refers to the belief that Jesus Christ began his life when he was born as a human.
Having influenced the Polish Brethren to a formal declaration of this belief in the Racovian Catechism, Fausto Sozzini involuntarily ended up giving his name to this Christological position,[45] which continued with English Unitarians such as John Biddle, Thomas Belsham, Theophilus Lindsey, and James Martineau.
They embraced evolutionary concepts, asserted the "inherent goodness of man", and abandoned the doctrine of biblical infallibility, rejecting most of the miraculous events in the Bible (including the virgin birth).
Notable examples are James Martineau, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederic Henry Hedge.
Famous American Unitarian William Ellery Channing was a believer in the virgin birth until later in his life, after he had begun his association with the Transcendentalists.
[72] Worship within the Unitarian tradition accommodates a wide range of understandings of God, while the focus of the service may be simply the celebration of life itself.
[74] The ICUU has "full member" groups in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, EUU, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland,[75] Romania, South Africa, Spain.
The church in Transylvania still looks to the statement of faith, the Summa Universae Theologiae Christianae secundum Unitarios (1787), though today assent to this is not required.
Just as the UUCF and ICUU maintain formal links with the Unitarian Universalist Association in the US, so the UCA is an affiliate body of the GAUFCC in the UK.
In addition, the Unitarian Universalist Faith Alliance and Ministries follow a Progressive Christian format honoring Sacred Space and Creation Spirituality.
[89] The first Unitarian Church in Australia was built in 1854 in Melbourne and was followed soon afterwards by chapels in Sydney and Adelaide, and later regional centres including Ballarat.
[90][91] The modern church, no longer unitarian Christian, retains properties in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne, and smaller congregations elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand.
He encountered advanced liberal religious thought while completing his studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands for the ministry of the Dutch Reformed Church in Cape Town.
The Society newsletter was named 'Protestantisk Tidende' 1904–1993, and then renamed 'Unitaren', reflecting a gradually changing perception of being part of the Danish Lutheran Church, to one where this was no longer assumed ([94]).
Biblical Unitarianism identifies the Christian belief that the Bible teaches that God the Father is one singular being, and that Jesus Christ is a distinct being, his son, but not divine.
Notable Unitarians include classical composers Edvard Grieg and Béla Bartók; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Yveon Seon and Thomas Lamb Eliot in theology and ministry; Oliver Heaviside, Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley, John Archibald Wheeler, Linus Pauling, Sir Isaac Newton[100] and inventor Sir Francis Ronalds[101][102] in science; George Boole in mathematics; Susan B. Anthony in civil government; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Whitney Young of the National Urban League, and Florence Nightingale in humanitarianism and social justice; John Bowring, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Elizabeth Gaskell in literature; Frank Lloyd Wright in the arts; Josiah Wedgwood, Richard Peacock[103] and Samuel Carter MP[104] in industry; Thomas Starr King in ministry and politics; and Charles William Eliot in education.
[105] Eleven Nobel Prizes have been awarded to Unitarians: Robert Millikan[106] and John Bardeen (twice) in physics; Emily Green Balch, Albert Schweitzer and Linus Pauling for peace; George Wald and David H. Hubel in medicine; Linus Pauling in chemistry; and Herbert A. Simon in economics.
[citation needed] Although a self-styled materialist, Thomas Jefferson was pro-Unitarian to the extent of suggesting that it would become the predominant religion in the United States.
[109] Numerous Unitarian families were highly significant in the social and political life of Britain from Victorian times to the middle of the 20th century.
