UNITARIANISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
Perhaps the most highly organized form of liberal Religious Church life in Europe may be found among the Unitarians in England, Scotland and Ireland. But as the prescribed limits of this booklet have already been exceeded and as literature under the various heads of this subject is most efficiently being made available both for the masses and the classes by the British and Foreign Unitarian Association of London, ( Essex Hall, Essex Street, Strand ), and the American Unitarian Association, Boston, it is only possible and necessary to give here a very brief sketch.
“Perhaps nothing more practically fostered the growth of liberal religious thought than the establishment in London of the Strangers’ Church. It was formed in 1550 under a charter from Edward VI allowing Germans and other strangers to worship according to their own customs. This charter was a herald of religious liberty...............Many connected churches were established by bands of foreign religious refugees, not only in London but at Canterbury Colchester, Southampton, Norwich &c. In these churches discussion on heretical subjects came up, and the under-current of dissent from orthodoxy was strengthened. ”After a few martyrs not much known to history, in the reign of James I, John Biddle first foanded a Unitarian Congregation during the Cromwellian period, and had to perish in prison, after the death of Cromwell, on 22nd September 1662. Milton, Locke, Newton and other great men were quieter Unitarians who have left reoords of their final judgment in favour of Unitarianism. Prior to Lindsey founding Essex-Street Chapel, London, in 1774, the Rev. John Cooper of Cheltenham opened a Unitarian meethouse On Sunday, 17th April 1774, Theophilus Lindsey held his first service as a Unitarian Minister in a hall in Essex Street, the site of which is now occupied by the B. & F. Unitarian Association. In 1771, Lindsey petitioned Parliament for relief from subscription by the Clergy to the Thirtynine Articles, and resigned his position on the final refusal of the Parliament in 1773. He died in 1808, having lived to see great changes in the public attitude to his work. Dr. Joseph Pristley, the discoverer, scientist and scholar, to whom English Unitarianism owes much for his theological writings, was among the friends and sympathisers of Lindsey. He suffered much for the cause and died in America in 1804.
In the list of Unitarian Ministers given in the Unitarian Pocket Book for 1912, are 385 names. The three Colleges in which the Ministers are qualified are the Manchester College (founded 1786), the Unitarian Home Missionary College, Manchester, (founded 1854), Presbyterian College, Carmarthen The British and Foreign Unitarian Association constituted in 1825 in London arose out of the three Societies, (1) The Unitarian Society for promoting Christian Knowledge (Estd. 1791), (2) The Unitarian Fund (Estd. 1806), (3) The Association for protecting the civil rights of the Unitarians formed in 1819. The National Triennial Conference was formed in 1881 with a view to bring together Ministers and Laymen of the denomination for common deliberations and has been meeting after every three years.
But with all this the Unitarian body is a very small one, and is often pointed out by its unsympathetic critics as not suited to the masses at large. In this respect, Dr. Brooke Hereford observed in a lecture in America:— “In England, too, Unitarians have laboured under difficulties, unknown here, from the tremendous social prestige and attraction of the great “Established ” Episcopal Church. As the last half century has also seen a great revival of religious earnestness as the Episcopal body it gradually drew away from us many of the great country families which had held by the “Old Dissent” as a sort of tradition and who would never leave it as long as it was under any of the old persecuting disabilities. If they have lost somewhat among the wealthy and cultivated classes, they have gained far more among the people; and now almost everywhere in England one of their strongest element is the thoughtful, intelligent artisan-life which haB gathered to them during the past forty years.” Regarding the “Domestic Missions” which closely correspond to the Depressed (Masses Missione condacted by the Brahmas in India, and which were inaugurated in England by the visit of Dr. Tuckerman from America in 1835, Dr. Hereford says “Dr. Tuckerman's preaching and the story of his own Ministry-at-large in Boston interested our English Churches very deeply. He awoke our people in the large city churches to a new concern for the sad, ignorant perishing masses aronnd them. Within two or three years of his visit similar ministries-at-large—“Domestic Missions" they are called in England, were started in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, and several other places. They were to be pure agencies for helping and doing good, without a thought of any sectarian gain. It was about as noble a kind of sectarian self-abnegation as has ever been. But perhaps on that very aocount its benefit reacted all the more upon the doors. It put into onr strongest city churches a new interest in doing good, and with that came new life, more interest in religion, every way.”
