Unitarianism

This article is about the Christian theological tradition. For the doctrinal position, see Nontrinitarianism. For the liberal religious movement, see Unitarian Universalism. For its British counterpart, see General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. For other uses, see Unitarian.
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Unitarianism (from Latin unitas 'unity, oneness') is a nontrinitarian branch of Christianity.[1] Unitarian Christians affirm the unitary nature of God as the singular and unique creator of the universe,[1] believe that Jesus Christ was inspired by God in his moral teachings and that he is the savior of humankind,[1][2][3] but he is not equal to God himself. Accordingly, Unitarians reject the Ecumenical Councils and ecumenical creeds, and sit outside traditional, main-stream Christianity.[1][2][4]

Unitarianism was established in order to restore "primitive Christianity before later corruptions set in".[5] Likewise, Unitarian Christians generally reject the doctrine of original sin.[6][7] The churchmanship of Unitarianism may include liberal denominations or Unitarian Christian denominations that are more conservative, with the latter being known as biblical Unitarians.[8][9]

The birth of the Unitarian faith is proximate to the Radical Reformation, beginning almost simultaneously among the Protestant[10] Polish Brethren in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the Principality of Transylvania in the mid-16th century;[11] the first Unitarian Christian denomination known to have emerged during that time was the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, founded by the Unitarian preacher and theologian Ferenc Dávid (c. 1520–1579).[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.[11][12][13][14] In the 17th century, significant repression in Poland led many Unitarians to flee or be killed for their faith.[12] From the 16th to 18th centuries, Unitarians in Britain often faced significant political persecution, including John Biddle, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Theophilus Lindsey. In England, the first Unitarian Church was established in 1774 on Essex Street, London,[15] where today's British Unitarian headquarters is still located.[16]

As is typical of dissenters and nonconformists, Unitarianism does not constitute one single Christian denomination; rather, it refers to a collection of both existing and extinct Christian groups (whether historically related to each other or not) that share a common theological concept of the unitary nature of God. Unitarian Christian communities and churches have developed in Central Europe (mostly Romania and Hungary), Ireland, India, Jamaica, Japan, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In British America, different schools of Unitarian theology first spread in the New England Colonies and subsequently in the Mid-Atlantic States. The first official acceptance of the Unitarian faith on the part of a congregation in North America was by King's Chapel in Boston, from where James Freeman began teaching Unitarian doctrine in 1784 and was appointed rector. Later in 1785, he created a revised Unitarian Book of Common Prayer based on Lindsey's work.[17]

  1. ^ a b c d Bremer, Thomas S. (2015). "Transcendentalism". Formed From This Soil: An Introduction to the Diverse History of Religion in America. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 235. doi:10.1002/9781394260959. ISBN 978-1-4051-8927-9. LCCN 2014030507. S2CID 127980793. Archived from the original on 2023-01-13. Retrieved 2023-01-13. Unitarian theology, which developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, included a critique of the traditional Christian theology of the Trinity, which regarded God as three distinct but unified beings—transcendent Creator God, human Savior God (i.e., Jesus Christ), and immanent Spiritual God (i.e., the Holy Spirit). Unitarians viewed this understanding of God as a later theological corruption, and they embraced a view of God as a singular, unified entity; in most Unitarian theological interpretations, Jesus Christ retains highest respect as a spiritual and moral teacher of unparalleled insight and sensitivity, but he is not regarded as divine, or at least his divine nature is not on the same level as the singular and unique Creator God.
  2. ^ a b Miano, David (2003), An Explanation of Unitarian Christianity, AUC, p. 15, archived from the original on 2019-05-21, retrieved 2012-10-01.
  3. ^ Drzymala, Daren. 2002. Biblical Christianity. Xulon press. p. 122: "Classically, Unitarian Universalist Christians [and Unitarian Christians] have understood Jesus as a Savior because he was a God-filled human being, not a supernatural being."
  4. ^ "Jesus Christ: Incarnated or Created? – Was he actually born?". BiblicalUnitarian.com. Archived from the original on 19 May 2022. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  5. ^ Joseph Priestley, one of the founders of the Unitarian movement, defined Unitarianism as the belief of primitive Christianity before later corruptions set in. Among these corruptions, he included not only the doctrine of the Trinity, but also various other orthodox doctrines and usages (Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, Harvard University Press 1952, pp. 302–303).
  6. ^ From The Catechism of the Hungarian Unitarian Church in Transylvanian Romania: "Unitarians do not teach original sin. We do not believe that through the sin of the first human couple we all became corrupted. It would contradict the love and justice of God to attribute to us the sin of others, because sin is one's own personal action" (Ferencz Jozsef, 20th ed., 1991. Translated from Hungarian by Gyorgy Andrasi, published in The Unitarian Universalist Christian, Fall/Winter, 1994, Volume 49, Nos. 3–4; VII:107).
  7. ^ In his history of the Unitarians, David Robinson writes: "At their inception, both Unitarians and Universalists shared a common theological enemy: Calvinism." He explains that they "consistently attacked Calvinism on the related issues of original sin and election to salvation, doctrines that in their view undermined human moral exertion." (D. Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists, Greenwood Press, 1985, pp. 3, 17).
  8. ^ Larsen, Timothy (27 January 2011). A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians. Oxford University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-19-161433-0. Biblical Unitarians are standardly portrayed as denouncing liberal Unitarians
  9. ^ Mandelbrote, Scott; Ledger-Lomas, Michael (October 2013). Dissent and the Bible in Britain, C.1650–1950. Oxford University Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-19-960841-6. Although a biblical Unitarian, Mary Carpenter was lifelong friends with James Martineau, the pioneer of English liberal Unitarianism.
  10. ^ Lerski, Jerzy Jan; Lerski, George J.; Lerski, Halina T. (1996). Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966–1945. Greenwood Publishing. ISBN 978-0313260070. Archived from the original on 2023-09-28. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  11. ^ a b c Williams, George Huntston (1995). "Chapter 28: The Rise of Unitarianism in the Magyar Reformed Synod in Transylvania". The Radical Reformation (3rd ed.). University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. pp. 1099–1133. ISBN 978-0-943549-83-5. Archived from the original on 2023-01-13. Retrieved 2023-01-13.
  12. ^ a b Luszczynska, Magdalena (2018). "Introduction". Politics of Polemics: Marcin Czechowic on the Jews. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 1–26. doi:10.1515/9783110586565-001. ISBN 9783110586565. S2CID 158456664. Archived from the original on 2023-02-10. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
  13. ^ James Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics: Algonquins-Art p. 785 – 2001 "The first Unitarians were Italians, and the majority took refuge in Poland, where the laxity of the laws and the independence of the nobility secured for them a toleration which would have been denied to their views in other countries."
  14. ^ The encyclopedia of Protestantism 137 Hans Joachim Hillerbrand – 2004 "The so-called Golden Age of Unitarianism in Transylvania (1540–1571) resulted in a rich production of works both in Hungarian and Latin".
  15. ^ Schofield, Robert E. (2010). The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804. Penn State Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-271-04624-2. Archived from the original on 2023-09-28. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  16. ^ Erwin Fahlbusch The encyclopedia of Christianity 5 603 2008 "Lindsey attempted but failed to gain legal relief for Anglican Unitarians, so in 1774 he opened his own distinctly Unitarian church on Essex Street, London, where today's British Unitarian headquarters are still located."
  17. ^ American Unitarianism: or, A Brief history of "The progress and State of the Unitarian Churches in America, third edition, 1815 "So early as the year 1786, Dr. Freeman had persuaded his church to adopt a liturgy, which the Rev. ... Thus much for the history of Unitarianism at the Stone Chapel."