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A Brief History of Unitarian Universalism
Unlike many Protestant faiths, we do
not trace our roots to a single founder. Ideas about the "unity of God"
(Unitarian) and "salvation for all" (Universalist) have been around since
the earliest days of Christianity.
Perhaps the greatest scholar among the early fathers of the
Christian Church was Origen, who lived from 185 to 245 CE. He has been
called "the first Universalist," for he rejected the concept of Hell,
believed in the benevolence of God who would offer salvation to all
humankind, and emphasized the humanity of Jesus. He had wide influence in
his day, though by the seventh century he was declared a heretic.
The first consolidation of Christianity into an orthodox
religion came under Constantine the Great, who had chosen Christianity as
the official religion of the Roman Empire in the hopes of unifying it.
Unfortunately, at that time, Christianity was not a unified faith, but a
loose conglomeration of churches ruled by local bishops -- there were
competing gospels, different versions of the nature of Christ, and
different understandings of the messianic hope. Constantine called all the
bishops of the church together at a council in Nicaea in 325 CE to resolve
these problems, but found there was a central division between those who
followed the Bishop Arius, who believed Jesus was a created being, and
therefore not God; and the followers of the presbyter Athanasius, who
defended the idea that Jesus was of the same substance as God. To achieve
his ends, Constantine forced the council to accept the Athanasian
position. These issues continued to be debated in the churches for years,
however, and it took a second Council, at Constantinople in 381 CE to
affirm the position adopted at Nicaea, add the doctrine of the divinity of
the Holy Spirit, thus giving birth to the doctrine of the Trinity.
It was a young doctor named Michael Servetus who planted the
Reformation roots of Unitarianism in the 16th century, with his treatise,
"On the Errors of the Trinity." For his efforts and published works, he
was burned at the stake by John Calvin in 1555. Sebastian Castellio
condemned this act, and urged tolerance for varying religious views. The
ideas of Servetus and Castellio took root in Poland and Transylvania.
Faustus Socinus denied the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity
of Jesus, the personality of the devil, the total depravity of humanity,
and eternal punishment. He fled from Italy and Switzerland, settling in
Poland where his work resulted in the establishment of hundreds of
churches in the 16th century.
Francis David carried on the work of Socinus in Transylvania
and Hungary, and was responsible for the enactment of the first edict of
religious toleration in the history of Europe under the Unitarian King
John Sigismund in 1568. Transylvania has had a Unitarian presence
continuously for more than 400 years.
A separate Unitarian movement grew up in England in the 17th
century with the help of John Robinson, John Biddle, Theophilus Lindsey
and Joseph Priestley, and moved to the shores of America. Joseph Priestley
helped found the first Unitarian church in Philadelphia in 1796 -- King's
Chapel, in Boston, had become Unitarian in 1785. Some of the early leaders
of Unitarianism on this continent were Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery
Channing, and Theodore Parker.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Universalism made its first
appearance in England. It proclaimed the simple doctrine that to preach a
God of Love requires that you also preach universal salvation, that no one
would be sentenced to eternal damnation. In 1759 James Relly published
"Union," which furthered these ideas. A follower of Relly, John Murray,
occupied the pulpit of the Independent Christian Church of Gloucester,
Massachusetts, which became the first organized Universalist church in
America. Twenty-six years later, Hosea Ballou articulated and expanded
Universalist doctrine in his work, "A Treatise on Atonement," which sought
to prove that the doctrine of the trinity was unscriptural, argued against
miracles (in which Christians were required to believe at the time) and
denounced the view that women and men were depraved creatures who would
burn in hell. Murray and Ballou helped build Universalism into one of the
strongest influences on American religious life in the 19th century.
The American Unitarian Association was organized in
1825; the General Convention of Universalists was formed in 1866. Both of
these groups saw rapid growth and development after the Civil War; both
were involved in the dramatic social reform and rebuilding of our nation
during that time.
The late 1800s brought the ordination of women to the
professional ministry of both faiths, as well as expansion all along the
Western frontier. The first Unitarian church in Canada was founded in
Montreal in 1842. The Unitarians and Universalists began to talk about
merging together as one religious body in 1899, however, there were
differences in social, economic and educational backgrounds that made this
difficult.
Finally, in 1961, the Unitarians and the Universalists
consolidated into the Unitarian Universalist Association. This union made
explicit the close similarities between the two movements: devotion to
religious freedom -- in thought and practice; the use of reason as a
fundamental tool in religious discernment, the absence of assent to a
creed as a requirement for membership, a loving concern for the wider
world, and the conviction that our understanding of the truth is
ever-widening.
We are today a movement of more than 150,000 adults and
50,000 children gathered in more than a thousand congregations across the
North American continent and scattered around the world. Our faith's
headquarters are at 25 Beacon Street, in Boston, Massachusetts. Our
regional organization is the Pacific Northwest District of the Unitarian
Universalist Association, which serves Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho,
Oregon, Washington, and the Yukon -- one of two international districts of
the UUA.
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98310
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