The subject of this paper was inspired by our esteemed professor’s comments in the introduction to Session 10: The Oxford Movement which read, “In the mid-1800s the Western Conference within the American Unitarian Association began questioning whether Unitarianism needed to be grounded in specifically Christian religious and ethical values.” This topic interests me because I am a Unitarian Universalist and am interested in that denomination’s history. The UU movement in these times is described as non-creedal but it began as a liberal offshoot of Protestantism. I have always been curious how and when that transition took place.
The change for Unitarian Universalism from an identity within a large umbrella of Christianity toward a more open-ended pan-religious theological framework did not happen all at once, of course, but events and attitudes surrounding the Western Unitarian Conference of the American Unitarian Association did have a major and long lasting impact on the formation of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961 from a merger between the Unitarians and the Universalists.
The Western Unitarian Conference (WUC) first formed in 1852 at the Unitarian church of Cincinnati with a “conservative basis doctrinally, largely due to the influence of its first president William Greenleaf Eliot.” The conference was formed primarily to bring Unitarianism to the West (the section of the United States we would now call the ‘Midwest’). It may be because of the aura of rugged individualism associated with the pioneers of the West, the influence of the founding of the Meadville Theological School established for Unitarian ministers in 1844, or the words of the Unitarian minister Theodore Parker but the Western Unitarian Conference soon began to earn the reputation of being a radical collection of ministers who “tried to move Unitarianism away from a Christian focus towards non-sectarian engagement with world religion.”
The names of Jenkin Lloyd Jones and William Channing Gannett are mentioned most often in the changes that took hold in the WUC. “The drive of Jones, Gannett, and other radicals was to organize western Unitarianism on an ‘ethical basis’ - not to require any statement of theistic belief of those individuals, ministers, and congregations accepted as Unitarian.” Jones had been one of those students at Meadville (entering in 1866) and was first ordained in 1870.
In 1876, Jones was appointed Secretary of the WUC. Two years later he and Gannett began publication of a journal named “Unity” with the purpose of “getting people to work together to improve human life. A religious, yet non-Christian, publication, Unity's mast-head proclaimed the principles of ‘Freedom, Fellowship and Character.’” He helped to found the All Souls Unitarian Church in Chicago where he became their first minister.
As previously mentioned the change in theology for the Unitarians and eventually for the UUA did not happen all at once but two assemblies of the Western Unitarian Conference helped move forward that change. In 1875, the WUC met and declared that Unitarianism should be non-creedal. As the Harvard Library biography of Jenkin Lloyd Jones put it, “Jones, in collaboration with his friend, Gannett, got the Western Unitarian Conference to accept the principle that there should be no doctrinal test of Unitarian fellowship. No matter how liberal might be its phraseology, there should be no semblance of a creed. Western Unitarianism should stand for Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion and should welcome into its fold all who wished to join it to help establish Truth, Righteousness and Love Among Men.” This move was in direct response to an action taken by the American Unitarian Association (AUA) whose secretary had dropped the name of Rev. William J. Potter, minister of the strong and loyal church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, from the Association’s Year Book list of Unitarian ministers on the ground that he did not call himself a Christian – just a Unitarian.” Jones and others insisted that there be no dogmatic tests as had been the earlier practice in the AUA.
At a meeting in Cincinnati in 1886, the conference went even further when Gannet presented a statement entitled “The Things Most Commonly Believed By Us” which summarized many of the writings of the “Unity” men (those who published in the journal by the same name) “in hopes that this statement could encompass the growing disparity between Christian-centered Unitarians and the “Unity men” (such as himself and Jones) who leaned toward a post-Christian Unitarianism.” The following is a quote from that proclamation.
“In all matters of church government we are strict Congregationalists. We have no “creed” in the usual sense; that is, no articles of doctrinal belief which bind our churches and fix the conditions of our fellowship. Character has always been to us the supreme matter. We have doctrinal beliefs, and for the most part hold such beliefs in common; but above all “doctrines'' we emphasize the principles of Freedom, Fellowship, and Character in Religion. These principles make our all sufficient test of fellowship. All names that divide “religion” are to us of little consequence compared with religion itself. Whoever loves Truth and lives the Good is, in a broad sense, of our religious fellowship; whoever loves the one or lives the other better than ourselves is our teacher, whatever church or age he may belong to. So our church is wide, our teachers many, and our holy writings large.”
The statement had a major impact on the WUC and the AUA as a whole. Though it met with great resistance at first it was later published by the AUA. Charles Lyttle claims that Gannett’s paper “remains the most comprehensively and nobly conceived, the most justly and persuasively argued, the most ethically inspired and the most beautifully expressed document of its kind in all Unitarian history.
Jones and others went on to further their determination to understand and appreciate other religions by creating the first World Parliament of Religions. “Jones was the general secretary of the group that planned the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago. To raise enthusiasm for the enterprise he preached a series of sermons, "Glory of the Parliament." Many of its 4,000 attendees encountered non-Christian religions for the first time.” Jones’ intent was to include as many Christian and non-Christian religious traditions as possible. “Jones intended for the Parliament to reveal the essential unity of religious traditions and urged the inclusion of participants from non-Western religious traditions.”
Religious leaders from all over the world were invited to attend. Though opposition came from the Presbyterian Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Sultan of Turkey, some Roman Catholics from Europe, and several American Evangelical leaders, the meeting was considered a success in its attempts to introduce world religions to the country–a fact that gave pride to many of the WUC leaders. The Parliament helped to foster the study of comparative religions and raised the general awareness of religious plurality. In his own words, Jones reflected on the success of the meeting. love. “The Parliament, if it has proved nothing else, has proved what a splendid thing human nature is to build a religious fellowship upon.”
Charles Lyttle sums up the effect of the World Parliament of Religions on the history of Unitarianism with his statement, “ The Parliament of Religions in 1893 – where it was made obvious that world unity in religion could rest only on a universal Ethical Theism unconstricted by sectarian loyalties to this or that prophet, saint or sage – gave Eastern Unitarians a new conception of the potential inclusiveness of their denominational name.”
The effect of the Western Unitarian Conference, through the efforts of leaders like Jenkin Lloyd Jones and William Channing Gannett, was to pull the American Unitarian Association into a stance of non-creedalism–a position it did not enter lightly. In less than a century, that position would later give the Unitarian Universalist Association its current theology and identification.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gail, Neal. “Abraham Lincoln Centre, Settlement House of Chicago, and All Souls Unitarian Church.” Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal (online). November 2020. https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2020/11/abraham-lincoln-centre-settlement-house-of-chicago-all-souls-unitarian-church.html
Lyttle, Charles, H. Freedom Moves West: A History of the Western Unitarian Conference 1852-1952. Boston: Beacon Press, 1952.
McKanan, Dan. A Documentary History of Unitarian Universalism, Vol. 1: From The Beginning to 1899. Boston: Skinner House Books, 2017.
Michaud, Derek, ed. “The World Parliament of Religions (1893).” The Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology (online). http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/worldparliamentofreligions1893.htm
Robinson, David. The Unitarians and the Universalists. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985.
“Jenkin Lloyd Jones.” Harvard Square Library/Bibliographies (online). https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/jenkin-lloyd-jones/
“Jenkin Lloyd Jones.” Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (online). https://uudb.org/articles/jenkinlloydjones.html
“William Channing Gannett.” Harvard Square Library/Bibliographies (online). https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/william-channing-gannett/