Unitarians

Unitarians are adherents to a noncreedal religious movement, derivative from Christianity yet in disjunction with it, denying the trinitarian character of God and open to insights from various faith traditions and intellectual positions. Although globally present, it is a minority group. It originates from 16th-century reactions to the Calvinist Reformation, stressing human free will, the goodness of humanity, and the use of individual reason. After Michael Servetus (1511–1553) attacked orthodox trinitarianism and was condemned for heresy, Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) augmented this teaching by denying Christ's divinity and preexistence. Unitarianism further developed as a modern liberal religious phenomenon with humanist sympathies, especially in continental Europe, England, and North America.

The first Unitarian church was founded in Poland in the 16th century, shortly followed by an officially recognized congregation in Transylvania at the Diet of Torda in 1568. The movement survives today among ethnic Hungarians in Romania as a theistic, rationalist, and humanist church devoid of the worshiping of Jesus Christ. In England, Unitarianism started to develop in the 1600s but gained legal standing only in the 18th century. It was greatly influenced by James Martineau (1805–1900), whose theology centered on freedom and the intuitions within the individual human consciousness rather than external miraculous revelation or doctrine. The General Assembly of today's British Unitarianism was established in 1928, and it includes both liberal Christians and humanistic-oriented congregations. In America, Unitarians trace their roots to an opposition to the Great Awakening of the 1740s in New England and to Jonathan Edwards's teachings, an opposition inspired by the ideas of James Arminius, who held to the principle of “free will” as opposed to predestination. An early Unitarian identity was forged as the liberal Henry Ware was appointed Professor of Divinity at Harvard in 1805, giving rise to a strong Unitarian tradition at this university. Subsequently, the preaching and writing of William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) defended Unitarianism as Arian Christianity (which asserted that Christ was not truly divine). The movement was, however, challenged from within by transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). A division became evident between the Christian liberals in the Northeast and the proponents of a freer religious inquiry, especially as the latter spread through the Midwest. However, a broadly understood religious humanism brought American Unitarians under the same organizational canopy, the American Unitarian Association (AUA), in 1925, preparing the ground for a merger with Universalists (creating the Unitarian Universalist Association [UUA]) in 1961. The International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (ICUU) followed suit in 1995, currently encompassing about 500,000 members on all continents.

As a global phenomenon, Unitarianism today is a creedless collection of diverse self-governing congregations and religious movements with locally rooted commitments to religious freedom. Unitarians are nonetheless linked together by common themes, which include tolerance for diverse views, liberty of individual conscience with respect to such views, the inherent value of each person, human relations driven by justice and compassion, responsible stewardship of the environment, and the practice of democratic principles.