Unitarian Universalist

Unitarian Universalist

The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is a church that is actually a combination of two other churches. The Universalists, organized around 1793 and the Unitarians, organized around 1825. The two sects consolidated into the Unitarian Universalist Association in the year of 1961. (UUA.org, 2007)

The Unitarian church began in Europe when a man names Michael Servet. Servet was a doctor, editor and geographer who in the 1500s wrote several books which questioned the ideas surrounding the Trinity and infant baptismal. Servet was later burned at the stake by for heresy by a leader of the Protestant Reformation named John Calvin. This action led to greater dissimenatin of the writings of Servet in areas such as Poland and Transylvania.

“In the 1700s, English churchmen began to be interested by liberal religion, while in America two ministers had been preaching subjects considered heretical at the time, including the unity of God. Englishman Joseph Priestley, head of a group that would later call themselves Unitarians, fled across the Atlantic to America after repeated threats against his life. Many others remained in England in varying levels of secrecy to continue practicing and discussing the tenets of Unitarian faith.” (The History of the Unitarian Church, 2002)

Unitary beliefs grew in the Americas as more and more people rebelled against the strict and intolerant Calvinist style of Christianity. William Ellery Channing became a most vocal proponent for the church when he published a sermon he called “Unitarian Christianity”. This became widely accepted as the statement for the Unitarian position.

“Many of the younger ministers began to argue, however, that Unitarianism was still too bound by doctrine. They contended that the faith had moved past Christianity and should be based more on universal experiences rather than recorded histories.” (The History of the Unitarian Church, 2002) The veiws of the Unitarian Churhc came to be known as “Transcendentalism”. This states that religious exeriences could transcend the experiences of the flesh.

It was in 1863 that the Unitarian Church became the first Christian denomination to ordain a woman as a minister. This liberal and tolerant church continued on until the unification with the Universalist Church in 1961. That unification formed the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The other half of the UUA formed almost entirely in the United States during the eighteenth century.