UU Identity & History
UU Tuesdays: U is for Unitarian Universalist Association (January 5, 2021)
The ABCs of UUs: U is for the Unitarian Universalist Association The month of May this year will mark the 60th anniversary of the merger of the American Unitarian Association (AUA) and the Universalist Church of America (UCA) . However, rather than exploring the growing pains and continuing evolution of the organization, for the scope of this article I will be considering the events leading up to and the birth of the UUA. After over a century of concurrent development, clergy cross-pollination (see earlier articles on Thomas Starr King and Sophia Fahs Lyons for examples), and complimentary belief systems, in 1961, during an organizing conference from May 10-15th in Boston, Unitarians and Universalists combined their two liberal religions and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) was born. Why then did it take so long, and how much opposition was there to this merger? After literally decades of discussion about the possibilities…
UU Tuesdays, T is for Transylvania (Dec. 15th, 2020)
The ABCs of UU: T is for Transylvania The Unitarian seeds planted by Michael Servetus (see the last article in this series “S is for…”) in the 16th century found two nations where there was fertile ground for reform: Poland and Transylvania. We have already considered the Polish experience when we looked at the community of Racow/Rakovia (See “R is for…”), however the longer lasting of the two was the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, which survives to this day in modern day Romania. Way back in the very first of these columns in March, I wrote about the one and only Unitarian King in history: John Sigismund (1540-1571). Ruling during the height of the upheaval in Europe caused by the Protestant Reformation, John was deeply committed to bringing pacifying the religious conflicts in his realm, which included Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists and Unitarians subjects. Starting in 1557, King John…
UU TUUesdays! – September 22, 2020
The ABCs of UU: N is for Andrews Norton In the liberal religious tradition, we have inherited, there is no longer much thought given to theological debate. Even less to biblical interpretation and scholarship. However, looking at our history, we would do well to remember that our Unitarian roots are firmly grounded in the soil of dissent, and it was only the emergence of Transcendentalist thought in the mid-18th century which would move us past both external and internal debate about the nature of God. The narrative of history is often unkind to those it deems the losers, and Unitarian history is not immune to this tendency. Andrews Norton, one of the most influential Unitarian theologians and leaders in the 19th century is often overlooked today. Derided as the “hard-headed Unitarian Pope” by those whose more liberal interpretations followed in the wake of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Divinity School Address of 1838, Norton was the…