Biblical Unitarianism - The Unitarian Churches (1774 Onwards)

The Unitarian Churches (1774 Onwards)

Theophilus Lindsey established the first avowedly Unitarian church in England in 1774 at Essex Street Chapel, although, Nontrinitarianism was against the law until the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813; legal difficulties with the authorities were overcome with the help of barrister John Lee, who later became Attorney-General. Unitarians of this time continued to consider their teachings as "Biblical", though increasingly questioning the inspiration of the Bible, and the accounts of the miraculous. Divergence in the Unitarian Church was increasingly evident after 1800 with the majority following the rationalist views of writers such as Thomas Belsham (1806), Richard Wright (1808) who wrote against the miraculous conception while a minority holding to the views of traditionalists such as who published against Belsham's view (1808).

The Unitarian Church of Transylvania remained a conservative "Biblical" Unitarian movement largely isolated from developments in the west until the 1830s. The Summa Universae Theologiae Christianae secundum Unitarios (1787) represents a conservative position which held into the late 19th Century.

The New Encyclopædia Britannica notes that the Transcendentalist movement of Ralph Waldo Emerson "shattered rationalist, biblical Unitarianism — now grown conservative — and replaced it with intuitional religion and social idealism. When Unitarianism spread to the newly opened Middle West, its religious fundamentals changed to human aspiration and scientific truth, rather than Christianity and the Bible."