Biblical Unitarianism - First Uses of The Term

First Uses of The Term

An early example of the term "Biblical Unitarianism" occurs in the British & Foreign Evangelical Review (1882) in an article on the "Waning of Biblical Unitarianism". In the following year, Peter William Clayden's biography of Samuel Sharpe (1883) describes him as a "Biblical Unitarian", adding, "His intensely practical mind, and his business training, joined with his great though rational reverence for the Bible, made him long for definite views expressed in scripture language."

The context of the term in the above examples relates to the tension from the 1830s onward between more traditional and relatively scripture-fundamentalist Unitarians and those advocating a freer approach such as transcendentalists Theodore Parker and James Martineau. This conflict came to a head in 1876 when Robert Spears resigned from the British and Foreign Unitarian Association and, with the support of Sharpe, a former president of the Association, began to publish a rival magazine. In this context, Sharpe is referred to again by John M. Robertson (1929) as a "Biblical Unitarian," and adds that Sharpes' magazine, The Christian Life, was largely aimed at combatting growing agnosticism in Unitarian pulpits. However, though Sharpe may have used the term, and later been called, "Biblical Unitarian", he did not set up any lobby group of that name within Unitarianism.

The label of "Biblical Unitarianism" is also attributed to earlier generations than Sharpe by Henry Gow (1928), who even compares this with "Channing Unitarianism", a reference to the still relatively scripture-fundamentalist views of William Ellery Channing.:"... and for a time, Unitarianism became the faith of many, if not most, of the leading citizens and thinkers of New England. As in England, it was a definitely Biblical Unitarianism."

Alexander Elliott Peaston (1940) pinpoints 1862 as the year of change from "Biblical Unitarianism" to newer models in England, where formerly belief in miracles and the resurrection were dominant. The entry of higher criticism into Unitarianism via Alexander Geddes and others dealt a "blow at the biblical Unitarianism of Joseph Priestley". Walter H. Burgess (1943) adopts the same terminology -- "Biblical Unitarianism" vs. "the newer Unitarianism"—to describe the tension in Wales in the 1870s between the deists David and Charles Lloyd vs. Gwilym Marles. A similar example occurs in quotation marks from historian Stange (1984)

Earl Morse Wilbur, in his monumental A History of Unitarianism (1945), does not describe any group by the terminology "Biblical Unitarian", though the tension between the fundamentalist origins of Unitarianism and post-Christian direction of late 19th century Unitarianism does begin to appear in the later volumes.