What do Presidents John and John Quincy Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Revere, Clara Barton and Horace Greeley have in common?
All were either Unitarians or Universalists, liberal-leaning, 18th-century Protestant religions that merged in 1961 into an open-entry, trans-denominational faith espousing broad principles instead of doctrines, according to the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations Web site.
“We believe that what you do is more important than worrying about dogma,” said the Rev. Phyllis Hubbell, co-pastor of the historic First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, who estimated U.S. Unitarians at 200,000 and her congregation at 250.
“We are people of traditional faith ? Buddhist, Christian, humanist ? and try to encourage each other in our individual spiritual paths,” Hubbell said.
With roots in Arianism and other Christian splinter movements suppressed by early church councils, Unitarianism and Universalism were respectively once defined by rejection of the God-as-trinity doctrine and disbelief in damnation and hell.
Today, however, the combined church receives all comers, regardless of their beliefs.
“The things we believe tend not to be about God and Jesus,” Hubbell said. “They tend to be more about values.”
These values include human dignity; justice, equality and compassion; interpersonal acceptance and spiritual growth; rationalism; the primacy of conscience and democratic processes; world community; and respect for all life.
Gay rights, peace-making and environmental activism currently express these values prominently at the church, Hubbell said.
“The link is Puritanism,” Hubbell?s husband and co-pastor, the Rev. John Manwell, said of Unitarianism?s American roots, “a form of Calvinism which gradually polarized into liberal and conservative [forms].”
The early 19th-century split, Manwell said, produced the then-conservative United Church of Christ and what later became the Unitarian Church ? and its most distinctive landmark, the architecturally acclaimed downtown Baltimore edifice, opened in 1818.
Manwell, who considers himself a Christian Unitarian, agreed that a no-dogma policy was problematic from the standpoint of church identity.
“It could happen,” he said of a hostile takeover. “It?s a nightmare, but it?s unlikely.”
Hubbell, however, preferred to talk about practicalities ? and religion?s historical drawbacks.
“So much violence has been done in the name of certainty ? ?my religion is right, your religion is wrong,? ” she said. “I would just say that no one knows all there is to know … and we?re struggling to find out how to be at peace with each other.”
CONTACT INFO
First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
» Charles and Franklin streets, Baltimore
» 410-685-2330; www.firstunitarian.net
