he Unitarians are a dissenting Protestant group who, as their name indicates, rejected the doctrine of trinity and held that Jesus was not the son of God but human — a position that was illegal until 1813, Gleadle (10). The remark that “[t]he name of a Unitarian is usually confined to those who deny that there is a Trinity” and that “it does not involve any doctrinal system” made by one prominent Unitarian indicates the group’s tolerance and their dislike for dogmatism of any kind (quoted in Gleadle, 9). Yet it is precisely this lack of dogma which makes it difficult to give a precise account of the development of Unitarian thought.
Historians agree on two lines of influence and trace Unitarianism back to Presbyterianism as well as to the Anglican Church itself: In 1712, Samuel Clarke, chaplain of Queen Anne, argued that Jesus was divine, albeit human in his The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. In the following decades, disbelief in the concept of trinity increased; as did discontent among Anglican ministers about the necessity to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles. In Protestant fashion, an increasing number of them chose instead to focus on the Bible. The first Unitarian church was established at Essex Hall in London in 1774. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Unitarians were to remain a comparatively small denomination: By 1851, there were about 50,000 Unitarians in Great Britain (Watts, 274). Their relatively low popularity could be put down to the fact the Unitarian creed was mainly “a religion for intellectuals”, as one Unitarian conceded (quoted in Gleadle, 10). Yet despite their small numbers, the Unitarians exerted great influence on nineteenth-century politics and culture (Gleadle, Holt, Seed, Stange, Stewart). Their political and social commitment was motivated by a fascinating mixture of religious and scientific beliefs that mutually reinforced each other. Most important in this respect was the Unitarian’s adherence to the philosophy of John Locke (1632-1704).
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Bibliography
Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists. Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement, 1831-51. London: MacMillan, 1998.
Holt, Raymond V. The Unitarian Contribution to Social Progress in England. Butler and Tanner, 1983.
Seed, John. “Theologies of Power: Unitarianism and the Social Relations of Religious Discourse, 1800-1850.” In Class, Power, and Social Structure in British Nineteenth Century Towns. Ed. R.J. Morris. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986, pp. 108-156.
Stange, D.C. British Unitarians against Slavery, 1833-1865. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1984.
Stewart, W.A.C. Progressives and Radicals in English Education, 1750-1870. London: Macmillan, 1972.
Watts, Ruth E. “The Unitarian Contribution to the Development of Female Education, 1790-1850,” History of Education 9.4 (1980): 273-86.
Last modified 23 September 2020