UU Christianity

Welcome to our collection of UU Christianity documents. This information has been compiled by James Hamilton, of Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, Texas.

See the FAQs and Links for additional information on contemporary Unitarian Universalist Christianity. For additional information on alternative/liberal Christianity at Live Oak UU Church, contact James Hamilton, jacobus8@juno.com.

Unitarian Universalist Christianity

Live Oak Church is a pluralist Unitarian Universalist congregation with a small number of people who are liberal Christians or who derive inspiration and insight from an alternative Christian spiritual vision. We invite theologically and culturally liberal or progressive Christians to come worship alongside UUs of many different spiritual orientations in our diverse, religiously plural community.

Alternative Christianity

The playwright Gore Vidal once said that the only time you hear the words “Jesus Christ” in a Unitarian Universalist church is when the janitor trips on the stairs. With that in mind, it should not be surprising that the oft-heard question, “How can you be both a Christian and a Unitarian Universalist?” reveals a continuing need for education about the origins and the history of the Unitarian and Universalist churches. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, the Christian Coalition, fundamentalism, the evangelical movement, and even Pope John Paul II are not the only manifestations of Christianity in our world today. There are alternative Christian perspectives that do not carry the baggage of exclusivism, prejudice, and rigid dogma that many religious liberals have come to associate with the Christian religion.

The Foundation of Unitarianism and Universalism

In fact, one of the most enduring forms of “alternative Christianity” is Unitarian Universalist Christianity. The Unitarian and Universalist churches were founded upon the ethical and spiritual ideals of Protestant Christianity, with theological roots in the early Christianity of the first millennium. The word “universalism” originally meant a belief in or theology of universal salvation, or the eventual salvation of all, and a denial of the concept of “eternal damnation.” This idea is often attributed to the 2nd-century theologian, Origen. The term “unitarian” originally meant belief that God is a singular “Unity,” in opposition to the notion of the “Trinity,” or God as three persons, which was not developed by the Church until the fourth century. Thus Unitarianism and Universalism evolved as nonconforming movements within Christianity, dissenting from the doctrines and dogma of the established church, and appealing to individual freedom and reason, with a focus on the life and message of Jesus, rather than speculation about his cosmic nature.

A 400-Year History

The same was true when Hungarian priest Francis David founded the Unitarian Church in the Kingdom of Transylvania in 1568 during the Protestant Reformation. A brief period of religious tolerance proclaimed by King John Sigismund engendered this watershed event. Although this period was followed by a time of religious repression, during which Bishop David was imprisoned (followed by his death in prison in 1579), it began the 400-year history of the Unitarian movement. The Unitarian Church remains the religious home for many Hungarian Christians today (mostly in Romania). These Christian Unitarian churches in Romania and Hungary are two of the four largest Unitarian denominations in the world today, the others being the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in North America, and the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in Great Britain.

In Britain and America, the 18th-century Christianity of Unitarians and Universalists was heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, resulting in a faith in which reason and experience were seen as equal (and eventually greater) measures of belief alongside scripture and tradition. This liberal Christianity has changed and evolved for over two hundred years as it has been expressed by a long line of American Unitarian and Universalist Christian preachers and theologians including Joseph Priestley, John Murray, William Ellery Channing, Hosea Ballou, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, James Luther Adams, and Charles Hartshorne.

The Alternative of Unitarian Universalist Christianity in the 21st Century

Today, Unitarian Universalist Christians practice their faith within the context of a denomination in which most members do not profess Christianity, and in which there may be as many atheists as theists, and as many Neo-Pagan pantheists as mystical panentheists. Still, a number of UU congregations in America, especially in New England and the Northeast, identify as liberal Christian congregations. One of these is King’s Chapel (in Boston) http://www.kings-chapel.org/, the first Anglican parish in New England, which became the first Unitarian church in America in 1786. Another is Independent Christian Church, Universalist, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, founded by John Murray in 1779 as the first Universalist congregation in America.

However, many other Unitarian Universalist Christians worship and participate in the religious communities of hundreds of “pluralist,” predominantly non-Christian UU congregations throughout North America. A 1997 survey indicated that perhaps as many as 10 percent of UUs consider themselves to be Christian. Another source estimates the number at 25 percent (Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance http://www.religioustolerance.com/). The alternative Christianity of the Unitarian Universalist tradition continues to attract theologically and culturally liberal Christians to UU churches throughout the world, as evidenced in part by the founding of at least one new Christian UU church in recent years—Epiphany Community Church, Unitarian Universalist http://www.epiphanyuu.org/, in Fenton, Michigan.