Unitarianism is a religious movement connected with Christianity that originated in the work of Michael Servetus (c. 1511–1553), a Spanish physician and theologian known for his unorthodox views.

Beliefs and Practices

Unitarians are reluctant to formulate creeds, as they prefer promoting inclusivity in favor of freedom of religious thought rather than requiring agreement with creeds or confessions.

Foundational beliefs include the acceptance and sole worship of God as the Father, that God is one person, a rejection of the orthodox Trinitarian understanding of God, and the rejection of the divinity of Jesus Christ, whom they believe was only human. Unitarians believe that salvation can be obtained through differing religious traditions.

Michael Servetus

Servetus was a physician and an anti-Trinitarian writer whose views shocked his Protestant peers. He produced a manuscript called the Christianismi Restitutio (“Restoration of Christianity“), which was forwarded to the theologian and reformer John Calvin (1509–1644) in hope of meeting with him. Calvin rejected this but held onto the manuscript. In it, Servetus rejected the traditional doctrine of the Trinity and held unorthodox views on the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Through Calvin’s efforts, Servetus was denounced as a heretic, later imprisoned, and his letters incinerated. He escaped to Geneva but was then arrested and, after deliberation, condemned to being burned as a heretic.

John Biddle

By the seventeenth century, there were Unitarian communities in Poland, Hungary, and England.

John Biddle (1615–1562) first preached Unitarianism in England in the 1640s. He was master of the Crypt School at Gloucester, from where he authored Twelve Arguments Against the Deity of the Holy Spirit (1647), which was subsequently ordered to be burned. 

Since anti-Trinatrianism was a crime punishable by death, Biddle managed to avoid such a fate and retired to Staffordshire. There he preached and co-edited an edition of the Septuagint, as well as published two catechisms, which then had him summoned before Parliament (1654) and again imprisoned. 

After his banishment to the Scilly Isles in 1655, Biddle returned to London, where he would later pass away in prison.

John Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey

Several decades later, John Priestley (1733–1804) would also defend Unitarian principles. In his History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782) and History of Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ (1786), Priestley rejected the impeccability and infallibility of Christ, and in 1791 he became one of the founder members of the Unitarian Society.

Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808), a friend of Priestley, also contributed to advocating Unitarian beliefs in his writings and services in London. Lindsey seceded from the Church of England and became the first to form a Unitarian denomination.

Since 1925, Unitarianism has been a distinctive, organized denomination, though its numbers have dwindled in recent times.

The United States

The first Unitarian congregation in the United States was established in 1782. The movement was not fully organized until the sermon of W. E. Channing (1780–1842), a clergyman who exercised a marked influence on American intellectual life, delivered in Baltimore.

Channing wrote on various important topics, such as pacifism, antislavery, temperance, public education, and labor conditions, and by 1819 was known as the “apostle” of Unitarianism and the leading opponent of Calvinism.

By the end of the nineteenth century, American Unitarianism had become a rationalist movement, accepting scientific methods and ideas as well as recognizing the truth of non-Christian religions. In 1961, the American Unitarian Association (founded in 1825) joined with the Universalist Church of America to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.

References

Louth, Andrew. 2022. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4 ed.). Oxford University Press.

Cannon, John., and Crowcroft, Robert. 2015. A Dictionary of British History (3 ed.). Oxford University Press.