DISKUS Vol.4, No.1 (1996) PP.49-63

The Seat of Authority in Unitarianism

George D Chryssides
University of Wolverhampton
Walsall Campus
Gorway Road
Walsall
WS1 3BD

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ABSTRACT
The paper deals with the influence on the Unitarian movement of the radical ideas of James Martineau, who in 'The Seat of Authority in Religion' (1890) rejected the Church, scripture and the figure of Jesus (except as examplar) as sources of authority, arguing that reason alone is the arbiter of truth. After Martineau the necessity for Biblical exegesis to vindicate Unitarian teachings disappeared, opening Unitarianism to freedom of thought, reason and conscience.
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The juxtaposition of the words 'Unitarianism' and 'authority' might appear to create an oxymoron - like 'military intelligence', or 'Margaret Thatcher's humour'. Anyone who knows anything at all about Unitarianism will know that it is a faith without a creed, and that its three key principles are 'Freedom, Reason and Tolerance'. Unitarianism can therefore seem to be a faith which affords to its members a freedom which is independent of all authority.

The aim of this paper is to show that this is far from the case. My title in fact is a rather obscure pun. The Seat of Authority in Religion is the title of a book by James Martineau (1805-1900) which is generally regarded in Unitarian circles as marking a watershed in the development of Unitarian thought. The fact that Martineau used this title in 1890 indicates that Authority was indeed an issue for Unitarianism. What was in question was not whether there was authority, but where it might be found.

To understand why this is an issue for Martineau it is important to see where Unitarianism comes from as a religious movement. Unitarianism can be viewed as a product of the Protestant Reformation. One of the central concepts of the Reformation was of course the bringing into prominence the authority of scripture, and a demotion of the authority of the Church: sola scriptura - the notion that scripture alone contains all that is necessary to gain salvation - was championed particularly within the Calvinist tradition. However, if I may put it so, there was a second principle which ran alongside sola scriptura. Even for a Calvinist, the bare existence of scripture is insufficient to gain salvation: to be efficacious, scripture must be read, interpreted and believed. The Reformers' aim of making scripture more widely available to every Christian, to be read in the vernacular, was tantamount to placing a vote of confidence in favour of individual Christians to have the ability to read and interpret scripture reasonably competently. (This contrasted with the pre-Reformation notion that the Church was the sole custodian of scripture and of doctrine more widely, and that 'private interpretations' were to be strongly discouraged.)

The idea that human reason had to be coupled with scripture may seem prima facie to be at variance with the teachings of some of the key Reformation figures, not least Martin Luther, who described Reason in highly uncomplimentary terms, calling it the 'devil's whore' and contrasting it with Faith. However, Luther only represented one strand of Reformation thinking; Erasmus (1466-1536), by contrast, was not convinced that either faith or scripture could yield the kinds of certainties that these later Reformers suggested. Erasmus held that disputes about the Trinity, the Incarnation and the sacraments were insoluble and advocated a theological scepticism, together with a tolerance of differing standpoints. Although Erasmus heralded the return to scripture that was fundamental to the Protestant Reformation, he also advocated the study of other works of human intellect, such as Plato, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. One might sum up the difference between Erasmus and Luther by suggesting that, while both scholars agreed with the maxim, 'Study the scriptures', Luther should be construed as emphasizing the word 'scriptures', while Erasmus emphasized the word 'study'. Erasmus believed in the inherent worth of humanity and its reasoning capacities; educating men and women was to be the means of reforming Christendom.

The Unitarians emerged as a number of individuals who wanted to apply human reason to the Bible, and when they did so they were able to question whether some of the traditional credal doctrines were genuinely to be found in scripture - most notably, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the existence of the Holy Spirit as a distinct and a separate person. They also typically questioned, as did the Universalists, whether it could reasonably be held that doctrines such as eternal punishment were compatible with the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God. What was in fact distinctive about the Unitarians is not so much the radical questioning of the doctrine of the Trinity, but rather the fact that the Unitarians were prepared to question the doctrines enshrined in the creeds. Despite their return to scripture as a source of doctrine, the other Reformers had assumed that scripture was compatible with the classical creeds, and indeed that it even formed the basis of their articles, as Calvin, for example, took pains to show.

It is against this historical background that we must see James Martineau. In The Seat of Authority Martineau considers a number of possible sources of authority. The Second 'Book' within the work bears the title 'Authority Artificially Misplaced', and introduces the topic 'The Catholics and the Church'. A further two putative sources of authority are scripture (of course) and Jesus Christ himself.


The Catholics and the Church

Martineau's argument against these various putative sources of authority is extremely detailed and closely argued. In what follows I can do no more than give a rough outline of Martineau's case.

Martineau refers to the traditional teaching that there are four divine marks (or 'notes') by which the true Church can be recognized: unity, sanctity, universality (catholicity) and apostolicity. On matters of unity, Martineau points out that, although the Church purports to have a unified set of teachings, in the course of its history there have been uncertainties and divergencies. Even on seemingly fundamental matters like the person of Christ, the Trinity, the nature of atonement and the sacraments, there have been divergent views within the Church. Martineau cites Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian, for example, who taught a form of subordinationism; he points out that while Pope Zachary (in 742 CE) had insisted on the use of the trinitarian formula in baptism, Pope Nicholas I (858-867 CE) relaxed this requirement in order to convert the Bulgarians. Even the number of sacraments has been generally agreed, John of Damascus (8th c CE) stipulating two, and the Dionysian writing prescribing six, as opposed to the more generally agreed seven.

Martineau now turns to the sanctity of the Church. Although he acknowledges that the Church has been a force for good in many instances, the Church has contained leaders who have gained office through bribes, committed murders, condoned theft and fraud, and burnt men and women at the stake. So much for its purity!

On catholicity, Martineau quotes Henry Edward, a former Archbishop of Westminster, who affirms that the concept entails 'not merely extension, but also identity in all places' (Martineau, 1890, p.161). But uniformity does not imply truth, Martineau insists. In any case, there have been many divergent viewpoints within the Catholic Church, and the very fact that Councils have had to be called implies that 'Catholicity had already been lost'. Heresy, he emphasizes, is a product of the Church itself, coming from within; by its very nature it cannot be a competing set of views from without.

Henry Edward defined apostolicity as 'conformity with its original power, the mission and institution of the apostles' (Martineau, 1890, p.165). Needless to say, Martineau finds difficulty with this idea. He contrasts the apostles' poverty with the Vatican's wealth, the simplicity of early Christian scripture with the complexity of papal bulls, the Upper Room in Jerusalem with the 'pompous offices of the Roman basilicas' (p.166). But, more serious than all this, Martineau believes that Roman Catholicism has substituted 'the re-enthronement of a priesthood over the world' (loc. cit.), a sacerdotal system which purported to serve as a new form of mediatorship between humanity and God, as distinct from the simple prophetic nature of Peter and Paul.


Scripture as authority?

Having concluded his attack on Roman Catholicism, Martineau now turns to the Protestants, for it is within Protestantism that one finds acknowledgment of scripture as the ultimate source of authority. If at least some part of the Christian scriptures could be shown to have been written by eye-witnesses of the events they describe, then this would increase the status of scripture as a faithful record and an authoritative source of sound doctrine. But can this be done?

As is his wont, Martineau gives a very detailed analysis of internal and external evidence relating to the New Testament literature, and his section on 'Protestants and the Scriptures' extends to well over 100 pages. To set Martineau in his context, the 'liberal' quest for the historical Jesus was at that time in full flight. D. F. Strauss had written his Life of Jesus some 55 years previously (1835-36), and Ernst Renan had published La Vie de Jesus in 1863. Johannes Weiss was still writing The Preaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God (1892), and William Wrede's The Messianic Secret (1901) and Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906; English translation 1910) had not yet seen the light of day. Nearly all extant works on the historical Jesus were somewhat imaginative and speculative, the one exception being Bruno Bauer's Criticism of the Gospels - a critical study in which Bauer drew the radical conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. As far as criticism of Biblical sources was concerned, the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis had only been proposed within the previous 25 years, and was highly controversial. Martineau's analysis of the New Testament is therefore well ahead of his time.

Martineau notes that the earliest New Testament source is Paul, but - as he points out - Paul has little to say about Jesus' earthly life. The synoptic writers purport to give more detail about Jesus' ministry, but they show signs, he argues, of having existed in different forms within the early Church, and - perhaps more particularly, they are less than credible as a consequence of their anachronisms and reported miracles, and they cannot be regarded as the writings of eye-witnesses. John's gospel comes even later than the synoptics (Martineau dates it between 140 and 170 CE - somewhat too late, in the light of modern scholarship), and is thus not the work of an eye-witness. Martineau's arguments here are detailed, and extraordinarily modern: he considers the relationship between John the gospel writer, the writer of the Johannine epistles, the writer of the Apocalypse and 'the disciple whom Jesus loved', and concludes that that these were all different people. I cannot reproduce Martineau's arguments here, but suffice it to say that Martineau shows that there are good grounds for questioning the role of scripture as the seat of authority.


Jesus Christ as the 'seat of authority'.

It is a typical Protestant theological manoeuvre to shift the seat of authority from the Bible to Jesus himself. The precise way in which Jesus serves as the central figure in the Christian religion depends upon two factors. First, what can we know of Jesus as a person? Second, what precisely is humankind's situation with which Jesus has to deal?

In answering each of these questions, Martineau identifies three different evaluations of Jesus' status, found in the synoptic writers, Paul and John respectively. The synoptics cast Jesus as the ideal Jew, who fulfils the hopes and aspirations of the Jewish people. According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus is the Son of God, although this is an office which he appears to assume at some stage in his life, rather than an aspect of the nature with which he was born. (He is 'declared' to be God's son.) Other titles such as Son of Man and messiah are more problematic. 'Son of man' can hardly mean the same as 'messiah', Martineau points out; when Peter confesses that Jesus is the messiah, the question which Jesus has posed is, 'Who do men say that I, the son of man, am?' The whole issue of messiahship, as Martineau recognizes, is fraught with problems. Peter's confession at Caesarea Phillippi is the first reference to Jesus' messianic status, yet it comes late in his ministry, almost preceding the Passion. Even after such a recognition, the disciples are sworn to secrecy. The next claim to messiahship does not occur until Jesus' trial, when Jesus volunteers the information, this time from his own mouth, but only after numerous witnesses are called, none of whom confirms that Jesus was a messianic claimant.

After considerable discussion of the two concepts, Martineau is uncertain that there is a satisfactory answer, but suggests that the Christians may have established a messianic usage of the phrase 'son of man'. (Ibid., p.337.) Martineau suggests the somewhat interesting idea of 'postponed messiahship', which he sees evidenced by numerous parables of Jesus. In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, for example, have to wait for the bridegroom to come, but he takes longer than expected. In the parable of vineyard, the owner goes to a far country, and delays his return, sending messengers to monitor its condition. Martineau suggests that Jesus may have originally preached a Jewish apocalyptic message of an imminent end to worldly affairs, which, when it was not immediately realized, became a message of a more distant second coming of himself.

By contrast to the synoptic writers, Paul presents Jesus as the ideal human. He is the 'second Adam' who recapitulates the fallen state of the first Adam, who transgressed against God. For Paul, Jesus is the heavenly Christ, not the historical Jesus, of whom Paul demonstrates no interest, and little knowledge. Jesus is the 'heavenly man', who stands above sarcical humanity, calling them to a newness of life in Christ, 'the inauguration of a heavenly humanity' (ibid., p.381), a life which will be realized when, at the resurrection, the earthly body will be transformed into the heavenly body, of which Christ's resurrection body is the prototype. (1 Corinthians 15.)

According to Martineau, John presents a third view of the nature of Jesus, which is radically different from that of the synoptics, and of Paul. In John, Jesus is the divine ideal. He is the divine Logos, the one who preexisted before the earthly Jesus of Nazareth, and the one who was the co-agent of all creation. Martineau recognizes John's idea of the Logos as an attempt to present Christianity to a Greek world, being an attempt to synthesize the Greek philosophical concept of 'Reason' with the Christian message. This was an enterprise which had already been partially undertaken by Philo, who had endeavoured synthesize Jewish thinking with Greek philosophy by his use of the term 'Logos'.

Each of these positions represents a different way of interpreting the life of Jesus. As Martineau writes:

... the historical life of Jesus of Nazareth fell upon a time and related him to a people charged with preconceptions which threw a variety of false colours upon his figure, and have handed down the image of it in several editions, no one of which can claim photographic truth. To a large extent, the disciples' representation of what he was conformed itself to their previous idea of what he had to do; and that this was all contained in their recognition of him as Messiah, afforded no security against wide divergence; the Messiah being a wholly imaginary personage, whose attributes admitted of variation almost indefinite. Each disciple, looking for what he had been led to expect, and finding what he most needed, interpreted the history in the way congenial with his thought, and helped into existence this or that of the several portraitures which tradition has preserved. (Ibid., p.450.)

Just as the accounts of the person of Jesus Christ reflect the preconceptions of their authors, so too the theories concerning the work of Jesus reflect their authors' preconceptions about humanity's predicament and how it can be remedied. Thus, the portrayal of Jesus as the Jewish ideal - the Son of Man, the Messiah - presupposes a coming apocalypse, against which humanity must be warned, and for which repentance is needed. The concept of Jesus Christ as the second Adam presupposes belief in a first Adam, who implicated the entire human race in original sin and resultant death as a consequence of the Fall. The Johannine soteriology entails a belief in a devil who inhabits not a subterranean realm, but a hypaethral realm, and whose defeat is achieved through the Light of the World who brings truth and purity.

These assumptions of course are unacceptable to Martineau as a Unitarian. He cannot accept that there is a long delayed second coming, that humanity is totally depraved as a consequence of original sin, or that there is a devil who must be defeated. All these assumptions are purely the opinions of those first generation Christians who espoused such ideas, and it is perfectly legitimate, Martineau suggests, to claim that these ideas were wrong. The synoptics, Paul and John are no more immune from criticism than any other theologian who enters the area of religious debate. As Martineau puts it:

"No one takes it amiss if we ascribe a fancy to Barnabas or Apollos, a superstition to Papias, a theory to Justin Martyr, a blunder to Irenaeus. But the moment we stand among the canonical writings, it is thought shocking to say, 'This was Paul's speculation'; 'That was Matthew's mistake;' 'Here the fourth gospel is at variance with the rest;' and 'There the Galatians and Acts cannot both be true:' as if the writers were lifted above opinions and were not allowed to think. Yet ... the New Testament does not differ, in the conditions of its original, from the mass of writings whence it was selected; and its living interest, as best reporter of facts and traditions of the first century from the baptism of Jesus, is lost in a haze of illusory uniformity..." 
(Ibid., p.360.)

Christianity, Martineau concludes, has evolved from 'transient and perishable' elements of its sources. Notions such as a Fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, a resultant original sin ('birth sin') which requires vicarious salvation by a redeemer, a saviour with a double divine-human nature, mediation of divine grace, an imminent second coming and ensuing judgement are all ideas which must be relegated to the category of the 'mythical' (Martineau's term; ibid., p.650). By contrast, what is permanent for Martineau is the notion of Jesus as a teacher and an example - the ethical dimension of the Christian faith. 'Religion', he says, 'is the right attitude of the finite soul to the Infinite, the straining of the vision from within the shadows to the far-off Light, the devotion of goodness still immature and precarious towards the Perfect and Eternal.' (Ibid., p.651.) Martineau notes with regret the singular absence of any mention of this dimension in the traditional creeds, with the possible exception of the four words 'the forgiveness of sins'. What is needed for the soul to achieve right relationship with God is not a mediator, but one 'who, being touched with the feeling of our infirmities, is tempted in all points as we are and yet without sin'. (Hebrews 4.15, quoted in loc. cit.). Even the expression 'without sin' is problematic for Martineau, for how could anyone know that Jesus was sinless? The phrase serves to signify the effect which Jesus' teaching and example have on their hearers; his teaching and example can lift the hearer from sin, towards supreme perfection.


The true 'seat of authority'

Having presented something of Martineau's line of argument, we can see how radically he has called into question the concepts of the Church, scripture and the person and work of Christ as the possible 'seats of authority'. Martineau has suggested that scriptures are inconsistent with one another, that they contain ideas which are the products of their time and place, and which are not true in any permanent sense. None of these writings are immune from criticism, being the products of human minds, any more than non-canonical writings.

If one cannot view the Church, the Bible or even Jesus Christ himself as the 'seat of authority', what is authority's true seat? Martineau does not fudge the issue. It is reason alone which must decide those matters on which the Church teaches aright and what it does not, which parts of scripture are to be believed and which are not, and what Jesus of Nazareth successfully accomplished and what he did not. Unlike his Unitarian predecessors, such as Joseph Priestley, Theophilus Lindsey and Thomas Belsham, who were at pains to demonstrate the congruence between their teachings and those of scripture, Martineau is prepared to conceive that there are matters about which scripture simply cannot be believed. Where there is such conflict between reason and scripture, Martineau is in no doubt on which authority his doctrines should rest. In another work, The Rationale of Religious Enquiry, Martineau makes the following declaration, which has become famous amongst Unitarians.

I am prepared to maintain that if they [the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement and everlasting torments] were in the Bible, they would still be incredible; that the intrinsic evidence against a doctrine may be such, as to baffle all the powers of external proof; and that, in every case, the natural improbability of a tenet is not to be set aside, as a forbidden topic, but to be weighed as an essential part of the evidence which must determine its acceptance or rejection. ... Let the case be put in this form. Suppose the strongest conceivable probability to have been established that a man is inspired; suppose that, with this probability in your mind, you discover in his writings what appears to you to be absurd. The question is this: are you to receive the absurdity, because it is an inspiration; or to discard the inspiration, because it is an absurdity? The question is intricate; but I will endeavour to make it clear, that no apparent inspiration whatever can establish any thing contrary to reason; that reason is the ultimate appeal, the supreme tribunal, to the test of which even scripture must be brought. (Hall, 1950, pp.61-62.)


Discussion

Much of Martineau's analysis of the New Testament is surprisingly modern. It is certainly a great advance on the liberal writers who composed 'Lives of Jesus'. Writers like Ernst Renan, to whom Martineau refers, assumed that it was possible to write what was virtually a biography of Jesus. By expunging the New Testament material of miracles - which were deemed to be incredible in an age of scientific ascendancy - one could discover a solid historical core which could be pieced together as a continuous narrative. Even Albert Schweitzer, who is generally deemed to have demonstrated the bankruptcy of the 'lives of Jesus' approach (and who, incidentally, was also a Unitarian), in the final chapter of his Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910), writes as if it were possible to connect a continuous set of events in Jesus' life. For most writers before Martineau, the compiling of the life took precedence over the more scholarly analysis, with only a few exceptions, such as Bruno Bauer.

Against this background, Martineau can be seen as a scholar who produces much more critical material than many of his predecessors. He does not attempt to write any life of Jesus, and goes further than merely expunging the evangelists' material of miracles. As we have seen, Martineau detects anachronisms and implausible attributions of sayings as additional reasons for discarding available material. Martineau is emphatic that much of the gospel material is 'mythical', although by modern standards of course Martineau would be considered conservative in treating certain events, such as the calling of the twelve apostles, or Peter's confession at Caesarea Phillippi, as historical events rather than the creations of the early Church. By suggesting that Paul and the evangelists might be criticized in the same way as other non-canonical writers, Martineau was in effect implying that no distinction existed between the canonical and the non-canonical.

It should now be obvious why Martineau is regarded as a watershed in Unitarian thought. Until Martineau, the seat of authority lay in scripture. Although the earlier Unitarians were professedly claiming to interpret scripture, and to question whether key mainstream doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation were genuinely to be found within scripture, there were passages which did not rest easily with Unitarianism. For example, the Prologue to John's Gospel seems to suggest that Jesus Christ is the Logos, the divine (or at least semi-divine) co-creator of the Universe. Earlier Unitarian writers such as Joseph Priestley, Theophilus Lindsey and Thomas Belsham struggled hard to interpret the Prologue in such a way as to claim that John was not identifying Jesus with the Logos at all. According to Priestley, the Logos doctrine was a personification of divine attributes: its instrumentality in creation entailed that all things were made by the one God, whose attributes (wisdom and power) were also to be found in Christ (Priestley, 1793, p.31). Lindsey suggested that the Prologue's dissociation of John the Baptist with 'that light' (John 1.8) and not 'the Logos' implies that the evangelist saw Jesus only as the 'true light' (John 1.9), not 'the Word' (Lindsey, 1792 p.34). Belsham's view was that the statement, 'All things were made by him' means that Jesus Christ created the moral order, not the physical order that God alone created (Belsham, 1811, pp.31-33).

On other matters, it often appears that the Unitarians' objections to certain traditional doctrines are not that they are unscriptural, but that they are irrational. Miracles constitutes one such example; even Joseph Priestley, rationalist and scientist that he was, felt constrained to affirm that 'the evidence of Christianity rests upon numberless, well-attested, astonishing and uncontrouled miracles' (Rutt, ed, 1822, p.414). Although the early Universalists had argued for the unscriptural nature of the doctrine of eternal punishment, the Unitarian objection (also voiced in some Universalist circles) was not so much on points of exegesis, but rather that the doctrine was an affront to reason and to one's sense of justice.

The necessity for Biblical exegesis to vindicate Unitarian teachings disappears once the seat of authority shifts from scripture to reason. As one commentator writes, 'The most influential English Unitarian of the nineteenth century was James Martineau (1805-1900)... Martineau displaced the miracle-based Scriptural theology of Lindsey and Priestley with new affirmations based on reason and intuition. In his emphasis on the soul as the source of spiritual experience, Martineau became philosophically a kin of the American Transcendentalists'. (Parke, p.72.)


Implications for other faiths

The notion of Reason as the seat of authority enabled further developments within Unitarianism which Martineau did not envisage. If reason is to be found, to a greater or lesser degree, in every human self, then what is one to say about those whose reason leads them to embrace another tradition than the Christian one, and to espouse scriptures other than those of the Judaeo-Christian tradition? Although Martineau was a contemporary of scholars like Sir James Frazer, Max Muller (1823-1900), William James (1842-1910), Andrew Lang (1844-1912), and Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), their writings appeared rather too late to be used by Martineau, and he expressed little interest in the subject. However, his pupil and (later) colleague, Joseph Estlin Carpenter (1844-1927) - also a Unitarian - was highly instrumental (and also sadly under-rated) as a pioneer of this new science.

Martineau's radical questioning of the privileged status of the Christian scriptures opened the doors in Unitarian circles to the examine of the scriptures and ideas of other faiths, not only in terms of academic scholarship, but at a popular and liturgical level. Many Unitarians today talk about 'continuing scriptures', meaning that contemporary writings of most kinds can be used to instruct, inspire and nurture, and in most services of worship there will be at least one reading which is not taken from the Judaeo-Christian scriptures. This may be a reading from another religious tradition, or it may be a poem or some other secular reading.

The fact that modern Unitarianism in Britain and the USA draws on a variety of religious traditions has led to a questioning, both inside and outside the denomination, of whether Unitarianism should continue to be regarded as a Christian denomination. Many Unitarians would emphatically reject the appellation 'Christian', particularly in the USA, no doubt for different reasons. For some the word 'Christian' conveys 'follower of Christ', which is held to convey a higher status to Jesus of Nazareth than is warranted. For others, the three-fold principle of 'freedom, reason and tolerance' implies a need to consider a wide range of religious traditions and not just one: if reason is a universal human attribute it surely cannot be confined to Christianity and its parent religion Judaism. For other Unitarians there is a concern that Unitarianism might lose track of its Christian roots, and in the USA there exists a UU (Unitarian Universalist) Christian Fellowship, while in Britain a Unitarian Christian Association exists to enable members to recognize and continue to draw on their Christian origins. It is worth mentioning, however, that the Christian Unitarian wing is not opposed to drawing from other traditions: it is simply a matter of ensuring a proper balance. One Unitarian recently suggested that the best designation might be 'post-Christian', on the grounds that Unitarianism has drawn substanitally from the Christian tradition, but moved beyond it. (To complete the picture, it may be worth mentioning that Unitarians in Hungary and Romania are much more conservative and most emphatically regard themselves as Christian, theologically and liturgically, although - obviously - they do not subscribe to the ancient trinitarian creeds.)

The Unitarians' radicalism has not only caused a questioning of Christian identity from within: their credentials to be regarded as Christian have been challenged from outside the denomination too. When the British Council of Churches (BCC) reorganized itself in 1992 to become the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland (CCBI), the Unitarians applied for membership. Since they were unable to subscribe to the trinitarian affirmation which was required for full membership, they applied for observer status on a non-credal basis - a concession which was allowed to the Quakers. The Unitarians, however, were turned down. At the time of writing, the majority of British Unitarians are intent on re-applying, although for many this issue is of little importance.

A further, although less 'official', challenge to Unitarians' possibly Christian identity comes from certain Christian evangelical publications, in which Unitarianism is considered as a 'Occult' in the same way as Christian Science, the Unification Church and the Church of Armageddon are considered to be aberrations from true Christianity (Martin, 1985; Watson, 1987; Larson, 1989; McDowell and Stewart, 1992).

Notwithstanding the fundamental principle of 'tolerance', however, and their openness to other faiths, Unitarians themselves tend to be less than tolerant of new religious movements. I believe there are two reasons for this. First, many new religious movements are thorough-going forms of Christian fundamentalism (for example the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Worldwide Church of God and The Family), and represent all that the liberal tradition of Unitarianism has rejected. Second, many new religions have a special prophet or guru, such as Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon or L. Ron Hubbard. The idea that there are special human intermediaries of divine truth does not fit well with the Unitarian notion of the universality of reason. One Unitarian has recently written a book entitled The Prophethood of All Believers - a concept which not only sums up the denomination's own position, but which serves to explain its somewhat negative attitude to these minority religious groups.


What holds Unitarianism together?

My discussion of Martineau has shown how Unitarianism prised itself away from scripture, and not merely from the ancient creeds, which it had already done centuries earlier. After Martineau, Unitarianism became Protestant individualism carried to the ultimate extreme - reason and conscience were to be the guiding principles in Unitarians' lives. To many non-Unitarians this seems somewhat vague and unsatisfactory, and it is often asked how Unitarianism holds together when it emphasizes individual reason, freedom of inquiry and conscience, and seemingly unlimited tolerance of the opinions and practices of others. There is no creed, no common set of moral obligations, no religious leader whose authority is recognized.

Yet, although individual freedom may seem a recipe for institutional anarchy, the denomination seems to hold together remarkably well. The surprise that a denomination without a creed can do this is no doubt part of the legacy of mainstream Christianity, where the ancient creeds are recited (or at least believed in common) where canonical scriptures are clearly defined, and where doctrinal tests are demanded as a means of securing membership.

Asking 'What holds Unitarians together?' or 'What do Unitarians believe?' is like asking 'What do students believe?' or 'What do business people believe?' or 'What do doctors or dentists believe?'. A community does not have to be held together by a common set of dogmas. One can be united by common themes, common purposes. One could make a bland statement about what students, business people, doctors and dentists believe. For example, it might be suggested that dentists believe in the existence of teeth, their susceptability to decay, the desirability of treatment, such as extraction, filling and crowning. It takes little reflection to realize that this unduly cerebral definition of dentistry will not do: groups of people - such as dentists - do not need to be defined in terms of common beliefs; groups may be defined in terms of the service they provide (dental health, in the case of dentists) or in a common goal that they seek to achieve (as is the case with a political party or a campaigning group).

It is therefore inappropriate to saddle Unitarians with some kind of - generally negative - creed, such as that they reject the doctrine of Trinity, the deity of Jesus, or the personal existence of the Holy Spirit: indeed the principles of freedom, reason and tolerance entail that a modern Unitarian might believe all or none of these! (Paradoxically, there are a few Trinitarian Unitarians in existence today!) If one wanted to give an appropriate characterization of a Unitarian, one might say something like the following.

A Unitarian is one who has a profound respect for human reason. One must use one's own mind to adjudicate on matters of religious, moral and non-religious truth, and avoid blind acceptance of a dogma or a course of a course of action simply because it is stipulated by some authority. This entails a positive welcome for advances in science, historical research and Biblical scholarship, believing that these cannot pose threats to a mature faith. The respect for human reason does not entail that all human beings are throughly reasonable; many - perhaps most - are not, but they are not so 'totally depraved' as Reformers like Calvin suggested, that they cannot be educated and improved, intellectually, morally and spiritually. Human beings are capable of using reason and conscience, and on the whole are responsible for their actions and their consequences. Salvation from the human predicaments of hatred, greed and ignorance is therefore to be gained, not by some miraculous atoning sacrifice on the part of a saviour figure, but by human beings themselves acting responsibly. Since each human being - as a bearer of reason and conscience - has intrinsic worth, Unitarians share a responsibility for improving the lot of humankind. Hence Unitarians have attached great importance to moral issues, both as individuals and as a denomination.

The respect for human reason entails a willingness to consider the fruits of human reason, from whatever source they may come - whether that be from the Judaeo-Christian tradition from which the movement took its rise, or from the world's larger store of religious ideas. Unitarians offer enquirers the service of enabling each to develop his or her own spirituality, to come to terms with life's fundamental questions of why we are here, how we should live, and what - if anything - one might expect in a life hereafter. In practical terms, it offers adherents the means of marking the life-cycle events of birth, marriage and death, of celebrating the seasons of the year and honouring humanity's great religious leaders.

Unitarianism offers the goals of freedom from oppression, exploitation and poverty, and a world in which there is mutual tolerance, understanding and respect amongst the different races, creeds, sexes and ages. These goals, of course, do not exist any more than the Christians' kingdom of God or the Jews' messianic age: they have to be worked for, rather than enjoyed as present states of affairs.

A useful model for understanding how members of very different credal backgrounds can co-exist within an organization is that of a university. There is no creed to which one must subscribe in order to become a student or a member of staff; indeed, any imposition of a creed would be quite contrary to the spirit of academic freedom which is fostered within a university system. There are, however, some shades of opinion which would be difficult to place within a University - someone who did not believe in education at all, for example; someone who did not believe in equal opportunities for people of colour, or for women. From time to time, too, there may be situations which cause a university to consider whether its tolerance is being stretched beyond acceptable limits: for example, when a psychologist suggests that his research findings demonstrate that black people are of less intelligence than white, or if a Students' Union is used as a platform for a supporter of the IRA.

To determine the exact edges of tolerance is no easy matter, either for Universities or for Unitarians, and I doubt if Unitarians would have a clearly defined answer. But to point out that tolerance has its limits is no more problematic than to indicate that, in an organization with a creed, there can be matters on which individual thought is allowed. What Martineau achieved was to pave the way for an organization in which freedom of thought - reason and conscience - reigned supreme, not in an unproblematic way, but certainly in a non-dogmatic way, establishing a new and less constraining seat of authority than the Church, the scriptures, or a prophet such as Jesus of Nazareth.


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Larson, B. (1989). Larson's New Book of Cults. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House.

Lindsey, Theophilus (1792). The Catechist, or An Inquiry into the Doctrine of the Scriptures concerning the Only True God. London,

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