UU History Continued
More than a hundred years before the affirmation of the Trinity, the seeds of Universalism were being planted by the articulate and prolific intellectual, Origen. Origen, who, like the Unitarians, stressed the humanity of Jesus, produced the issue on which this liberal religious movement would be built. He argued that there was no hell and talked of a benevolent God who would offer salvation to all people.
The same century that saw the
Unitarian Servetus murdered also saw Unitarian beliefs under a
variety of names gain a tenuous foothold in Switzerland,
Britain, Hungary, and Italy. This stubborn movement
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In the 17th and 18th century England, though anti-Trinitarians were still outcasts, their numbers grew. Often they were men and women who found their way into the history books for reasons other than their religious activities. John Milton, Isaac Newton, John Locke, and Florence Nightingale were all people who fought for religious tolerance. By the first decade of the 19th century, 20 Unitarian churches had been established in England, and many others had taken on a Unitarian character.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Universalist view also made great strides. In Germany many Universalist groups expanded and further defined the Universalist doctrine. In 1759 in England, James Relly published "Union," which denied the Calvinistic doctrine of salvation for the few and claimed that all would be saved.
John Murray, a follower of Relly, helped deliver the Universalist movement safely to the shores of America. In 1779 Murray occupied the pulpit of the Independent Christian Church of Gloucester, Massachusetts, which was the first organized Universalist church in America. Twenty-six years later, the movement's greatest exponent, Hosea Ballou, articulated Universalist doctrine in his book, "A Treatise on Atonement," which sought to prove the doctrine of the trinity was unscriptural, and argued against miracles and the view of men and women as depraved creatures who would burn in hell.
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produced its own dynamic ministers. Literature was distributed.
In many cases entire congregations broke away from the orthodox
church. In 1638 the first Unitarian church to use that
name was established in Transylvania, which had become fertile
ground for religious doubt eight years earlier under its
Unitarian king Sigismund (pictured).