UU History

by Rev. Dave Dunn

The UUA’s General Assembly (GA) was held in Baltimore this year. I flew in and out of Philadelphia so I could visit my son there on the way to and from GA. I then took a short train ride from there to Baltimore.

Once arriving in Baltimore, and although it was very hot, I decided to walk the mile between the Baltimore train station and my hotel.

I hadn’t spent much time in Baltimore and really didn’t know my way around; yet on the way to my hotel, I came upon the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore.  I had to stop in for in this church was delivered perhaps the most important sermon in our Unitarian Universalist history. On May 5, 1819, the Rev. William Ellery Channing gave a sermon entitled “Unitarian Christianity.”

Prior to this sermon, there was no Unitarian denomination in the United States. Rev. Channing was a Congregational minister yet there was a schism taking place between the liberal and conservative Congregationalists. The conservatives would accuse the liberals of being like “those Unitarian” heretics in Europe; and for years the liberals cringed at the label.

It wasn’t until Rev. Channing’s Baltimore sermon that he admitted that the conservatives were correct. Rev. Channing essentially planted a Unitarian flag in the ground and said, “Yes, we are Unitarians!”

The American Unitarian Association, the predecessor to the UUA, was formed a few years later.

Although intern minister Liz Martin and I haven’t yet put together the specifics of a UU History course that will soon be offered during 2^nd Hour, rather than a linear history, it might be more of an exploration of UU History through case studies. What might be included? Perhaps the following: The First Unitarians and Universalists, The Unitarian Controversy, the Transcendentalist Controversy, Theodore Parker’s Activism & “Heresy”, Western Conference Schism, Humanism, Formation of the UUA, The UU Activism of James Reeb the Viola Luizzo, the Black Empowerment Controversy…and others.

More information to come on this!

Nurture our spirit. Strive for Justice. Transform the world.

Dave

(photo: The pulpit from which Rev. William Ellery Channing delivered his “Unitarian Christianity” sermon at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore on May 5, 1819.)