A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM

EARLY ROOTS

Unitarianism and Universalism both trace their history to the formative years of the Christian church before the Council of Nicea codified Catholic orthodoxy. Some early church leaders rejected the Greek notion of the Trinity and believed Jesus was a fully human messenger of God. Others rejected Paul's notion of original sin and argued Jesus's sacrifice redeemed all humans. Both of these tendencies were declared heresies and ruthlessly suppressed by the Church wherever they emerged over the next centuries.

The development of the Reformation unleashed new speculation along those lines. Spaniard Miguel Servantis published a dissertation arguing for the unity of God. He was hunted by the Inquisition and later burned as a heretic by John Calvin in Geneva. Italian Fautus Scoinus brought anti-Trinitarianism to Poland, where it flourished in the 16th Century before being suppressed by the Catholic Church. Francis David took Sconian ideas to Transylvania where they thrived and where history's only Unitarian King promulgated the first European declaration of religious liberty. The Transylvanian church endured through unimaginable persecution and remains today the oldest Unitarian religious body in the world.

Scoinism also spread to Holland and England where leading intellectuals like John Milton and Issac Newton secretly adopted unitarian theology despite laws banning it on pain of death. Illegal churches or chapels sprang up only to be suppressed. In the late 18th Century the great chemist and preacher Joseph Priestly had his lab and church burned by a mob. He relocated to Pennsylvania with the encouragement of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush where he opened the first American church to call itself Unitarian in 1794.

At the same time dissenters emerging from the Baptist and Methodist traditions were preaching the doctrine of Universal Salvation.

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