“We need not think alike to love alike.”
--Francis David, 16th Century Unitarian

Unitarian Universalism is a doctrinally-free, liberal religion with historical roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Both Unitarianism and Universalism grew out of the left wing of the Protestant Reformation. Both religions also originated in part as a protest against the Calvinist doctrines of Total Depravity (Original Sin) and Predestination (the belief that God has determined whether you will go to Heaven even before you were born). Unitarians did not believe that anyone was born in a state of total corruption; rather they believed that human beings were born with the potential for good. Universalists believed in Universal Salvation, meaning that the souls of every human being would be reconciled to a loving God.

The Unitarians and the Universalists recognized commonalities in their faith and beliefs and merged in 1961. Today, Unitarian Universalists believe that personal experience, conscience, and reason should be the final authorities in religion, and that in the end, religious authority lies not in a book, person, or institution, but in ourselves. While we do not ask members to subscribe to a creed, the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted the following set of principles that reflect our common values: We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Because Unitarian Universalism is non-creedal, our religious beliefs and practices are diverse. Sources of faith and inspiration include: liberal Christianity, Judaism, Paganism, Buddhism, Atheism, and Humanism. All of our members are faithful Unitarian Universalists committed to the practice of free religion. Unitarian Universalists affirm life by focusing on this world. Our members believe in the power of social justice to change the world and continue to be active leaders in the struggle for freedom, peace, and equal rights for all people.

History

During the first three centuries of the Common Era, there was a plethora of Christian writings reflecting diversity of beliefs about the church, salvation, the person of Jesus, among other things. One dispute was whether Jesus was God, one with the Father in the Trinity, co-eternal and of the same substance. Those who disagreed with this view may have considered Jesus in some other sense divine or simply as a teacher commissioned by God. Such views were later sometimes called “unitarian” to distinguish them from the official “trinitarian” teaching of the Church. Unitarianism held that God is one person while Trinitarians held that God was one in three mutually indwelling persons. Another early teaching was that a merciful God would not condemn anyone to eternal damnation, a view termed “universalist.” However, when Christianity became the favored religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century under Emperor Constantine, a series of councils attempted to standardize Christian teachings, and trinitarianism was made official. But dissenting views persisted and developed.

In the sixteenth century, unitarian ideas were part of a growing dissent. A book called On the Errors of the Trinity by Spaniard Michael Servetus was circulated throughout Europe, but in Geneva he was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1553. The “liberal wing” of the Protestant Reformation took hold in the remote mountains of Transylvania in Eastern Europe where Unitarian congregations were first established. The first edict of religious toleration in history was declared in 1568 during the reign of Transylvanian John Sigismund, the first and only Unitarian king. Sigismund’s court preacher, Frances David, had argued that individuals should be allowed theological liberty; he said, “We need not think alike to love alike.” In Poland, Laelius Socinus and his nephew Faustus Socinus developed Unitarian views that flourished until they were suppressed in 1638. The idea of individual choice of religious belief threatened both governments and ecclesiastical establishments.

Although unitarian beliefs have their roots in Eastern Europe, these same religious ideas began to emerge in England in the seventeenth century. In 1791, scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley had his laboratory burned and was “hounded” out of England. He subsequently moved to the United States where he established Unitarian churches in the Philadelphia area. But North American Unitarianism emerged largely from within the religious establishment of New England Puritanism. Each town was required to establish a congregationally independent church that followed Calvinist doctrines. Initially, these congregational churches offered no religious choices for their parishioners, but over time the strict doctrines of “original sin” and “predestination” were questioned.

By the mid-1700s, though, a group of evangelicals were calling for the revival of Puritan orthodoxy. They asserted their belief in humanity’s eternal bondage to sin. Those who opposed the revival, believing in free human will and the loving benevolence of God, eventually became Unitarian. During the first four decades of the nineteenth century, hundreds of congregational churches fought over ideas about sin and salvation, and especially over the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1819, Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing’s sermon, “Unitarian Christianity,” gave the Unitarians a strong platform upon which to build. Six years later, the American Unitarian Association was organized in Boston, Massachusetts. Many congregations declared themselves Unitarian. Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1838 Harvard “Divinity School Address” intensified an expansive development of the faith by placing intuition above tradition.

Universalism (distinct from Unitarianism) was a more evangelical faith than Unitarianism. After officially organizing in 1793, the Universalists spread their faith across the eastern United States and Canada. Its initial development in America occurred along the Atlantic seaboard. The earliest preachers of the gospel of universal salvation appeared in what were later called the Middle Atlantic and Southern states. By 1781, Elhanan Winchester had organized a Philadelphia congregation of Universal Baptists. Among its members was Benjamin Rush, the famous physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence. At about the same time in the rural interior sections of New England, a small number of itinerant preachers, among them Caleb Rich, began to disbelieve the strict Calvinist doctrines of eternal punishment and preached universal salvation. They discovered from their biblical studies the new revelation of God’s loving redemption of all. John Murray, an English preacher who immigrated to the American continent in 1770, helped lead the first Universalist church in Gloucester, Massachusetts in the effort to separate church and state.

From its beginnings, Universalism challenged its members to reach out and embrace people whom society often marginalized. The Gloucester church included a freed slave among its charter members, and the Universalists became the first American denomination to ordain women to the ministry, beginning in 1863 with Olympia Brown. Hosea Ballou became the denomination’s greatest leader during the nineteenth century, and he and his followers, including Nathaniel Stacy, led the way in spreading their faith.

Other preachers followed the advice of Universalist publisher Horace Greeley and ventured west. One such person was Unitarian Thomas Starr King (whom Lincoln credited with saving California for the Union) described the difference between Unitarians and Universalists this way: “Universalists believe that God is too good to damn people, and the Unitarians believe that people are too good to be damned by God.” Lincoln also borrowed from Unitarian minister Theodore Parker the phrase, “of all the people, by all the people, for all the people,” which indicates the broad sympathies within both Unitarian and Universalist movements. The Universalists believed in a God who embraced everyone, and this eventually became central to their belief that lasting truth is found in all religions, and that dignity and worth is innate to all people regardless of sex, color, race or class. As early as the 1830s, both groups were studying and promulgating texts from world religions other than Christianity. In 1900, Unitarians were the major force in the creation of what is now the International Association for Religious Freedom, the first international interfaith organization. By the beginning of the twentieth century, humanists within both traditions advocated that people could be religious without believing in God. No one person, no one religion, can embrace all religious truths.

Growing out of an inclusive theology was a lasting impetus in both denominations to create a more just society. Both Unitarians and Universalists became active participants in many social justice movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Parker was a prominent abolitionist, defending fugitive slaves and offering support to American abolitionist John Brown. Other reformers included Universalists such as Charles Spear who called for prison reform, and Clara Barton who went from Civil War “angel of the battlefield” to become the founder of the American Red Cross. Unitarians such as Dorothea Dix fought to “break the chains” of people incarcerated in mental hospitals, and Samuel Gridley Howe started schools for the blind.

As other denominations softened their own theologies, Unitarian and Universalist memberships declined. By the middle of the twentieth century Unitarians and Universalists thought they could have a stronger religious voice if they merged, and they did so in 1961, forming the “Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations,” of which about 1000 exist with perhaps 250,000 actual members. Many Unitarian Universalists became active in the civil rights movement. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister, was murdered in Selma, Alabama, after he and twenty percent of the denomination’s ministers responded to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call to march for justice.

Today, Unitarian Universalists continue to work for greater racial and cultural diversity. In 1977, a women and religion resolution was passed by the Association, and since then, the denomination has responded to the feminist challenge to change sexist structures and language, especially with the publication of an inclusive hymnal. The denomination has affirmed the rights of bisexuals, gays, lesbians, and trans-gendered persons, including ordaining and placing gay and lesbian clergy in its congregations; in 1996 same-sex marriage was affirmed.

All these efforts reflect a modern understanding of universal salvation. The denomination’s history has carried it from liberal Christian views about Jesus and human nature to a rich pluralism that includes theist and atheist, agnostic and humanist, pagan, Christian, Jew and Buddhist, and other perspectives. Grounded in its history and with an eye to the future, Unitarian Universalism continues to evolve and unfold.

Basic Beliefs

• With its historical roots in the Christian tradition, Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion (i.e. a religion that keeps an open mind to the religious questions with which people have struggled in all times and places).
• Unitarian Universalists believe that personal experience, conscience and reason should be the final sources of authority in religion, and that in the end, religious authority lies not in a book or person or institution, but in one’s self, and that the free exchange of ideas in the local congregation can support, assist and refine one’s faith.
• Unitarian Universalists are “non-creedal;” members are not required to subscribe to a creed.
• Unitarian Universalists are governed by “Congregational Polity.” In other words, each congregation is self-governing. Authority and responsibility for the affairs of the congregation are vested in the membership of the congregation, not in the denomination, the clergy, or a synod. Each congregation may assign certain powers to an elected board of trustees. Only local congregations have the power to ordain.
• As within a single congregation, a variety of theological perspectives can be found; so, within the denomination, there exists a wide variety of approaches to worship: from high-church liturgy at King’s Chapel in Boston to informal discussion-group or lecture formats sometimes found in “fellowships” (congregations without clergy) to a typical mainstream white Protestant service.
• While each individual and each congregation may, in the freedom of the spirit, vary from others, common values are reflected in the “Unitarian Universalist Association Principles and Purposes.” However, individuals do not have to subscribe to the contents of this document for church membership. The Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes contains the following:
• We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
• The inherent worth and dignity of every person.
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:
• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces which create and uphold life.
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.
• Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
• Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
• Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.

Basic Practices

Religious practice within Unitarian Universalism is as diverse as its membership. Religious practices will be particular to each person’s theology. Those caring for the patient need to ask the patient what practices are most helpful and meaningful during hospitalization.

• Prayer or meditation: Some Unitarian Universalists are comfortable with the word “prayer.” Others are more comfortable with meditation or simply conversation or shared silence. Chaplains or other caregivers offering prayer should ask the patient what practice is most meaningful. Many Unitarian Universalists have some discomfort with the word “God.” Other acceptable invocations may include: Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love, Spirit of Hope, Healing Spirit, Source of All, Eternal Mystery, Great Mystery of Life and Eternal Spirit of the Universe.
• Service: Many Unitarian Universalists engage in social justice work as religious practice. Some understand social justice as a “religious obligation.” As individuals, congregations, and an association, Unitarian Universalists are committed to a wide variety of social causes: women’s issues, equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons, well-being for children, racial justice, economic equality, education, health care, food production and distribution, human rights, environmental issues, freedom of choice for women, immigration, gun control, homelessness and nonviolent resolution of world conflict.
• Life-long learning: Most Unitarian Universalists are well educated and value learning on many levels. The values of reason, creativity and the development of each individual’s theology are lived out through reading and study from many genres and disciplines, including the sacred texts of the world’s religions. The Rev. Lisa Doege writes, “[O]ur lack of a single authoritative scripture or authoritative law or authoritative ecclesiastical body calls us to do the demanding, often subtle, at times confusing, at times exhilarating work of examining each text or idea as it comes to us. . . . We must have the insight to discern our beliefs, the courage to declare them, and the humility to abandon them, no matter how cherished or long held, if we come to know them as false or harmful.”
• Communing with nature: Many Unitarian Universalists find the Sacred in nature. Connection with nature can be achieved through walks, gardening, vacations, and social justice projects.
• Ritual observance in Unitarian Universalist worship is relatively rare. Many of the rituals Unitarian Universalists practice are drawn from its Judeo-Christian roots. A few congregations practice Holy Communion, gather for a Tenebrae service on Good Friday, offer a Seder meal at Passover, and/or light the Menorah during Hanukkah.
• The following three rituals are specifically Unitarian Universalist. The first involves the symbol of the Unitarian Universalist faith: the flaming chalice ritual, common to most congregations as one of the opening elements of worship. Another is the Flower Communion ritual, developed by Norman Chapek, derived from the faith’s Eastern European roots. A final example is the Water Communion, a gathering ritual often practiced in the early fall. These rituals have endless variations.
• Lighting of the chalice: A typical chalice-lighting might begin with a person early in a worship service igniting a flame in a chalice-like vessel with words about the meaning of the occasion for that person or the congregation. Some congregations may use a regular statement all may say together. Sometimes a song, such as “Rise Up O Flame,” may be sung. The flaming chalice recalls the burning at the stake of Jan Hus in 1415 for, and among other things, taking the then clergy-only communion chalice to the laity.
• Flower communion: At an appropriate Sunday in spring, congregants bring flowers to the gathering and leave with flowers others have brought, symbolizing the importance of our diverse community and the beauty we bring to one another.
• Water Communion: Waters collected from summer travels are brought to a fall Sunday gathering and poured into a common vessel, with each person relating the place, circumstance, and meaning from which the water was derived. This ritual emphasized the importance of coming together as a worshiping community.
• Many Unitarian Universalist congregations have lay pastoral care teams who are responsible for visiting the sick, providing meals, transportation, child care, etc.
• Cultural differences among Unitarian Universalists are not a major issue. Many Unitarian Universalist congregations are taking steps to increase the cultural, ethnic and socio-economic diversity among their members. Currently, most Unitarian Universalist congregations are comprised of middle to upper-middle class, well-educated European Americans. Theological diversity is more typical than cultural diversity.