HIST 732
Unitarian Universalist History: A Survey.
Spring '02: M., 2-4:50. Dr. John A. Buehrens, former President of the UUA
Theological, social, and institutional developments, pre-Constantinian to post-modern, with particular attention to the Radical Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the denominations which consolidated to become the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

The course will require considerable reading. Much of it will be available on-line, through special arrangement with Dr. Alicia Forsey, Professor of Church History at Starr King School for the Ministry. Registered students will be given a pass code with which to access readings and to post responses to the reading. 

 

Class sessions will be broken into two segments of approximately 75 minutes each, during which the period of Unitarian Universalist history under review will be examined from the point of view of social history, the history of ideas, and institutional history.

 

Students may choose, by March 25, one of two options for written work in the course. Proposed topics must be approved by April 1. Papers are due May 6.

 

Option one:  A focused research paper of approximately 15 pages,

utilizing both primary and secondary sources.

            Option two:  A brief biographical sketch of a figure in Unitarian or Universalist

                                    history to be submitted for the on-line Dictionary of Unitarian and

Universalist Biography. The subject of the biography must be selected from a list provided by the editors of the Dictionary. 

An interpretive paper of 6 to 8 pages concerning an episode, dispute or institutional change in Unitarian or Universalist history.

 

There will be no class on Monday, January 28. Class sessions begin Monday, Feb. 4.

 

  1. February 4                              Precursors

 

A. Orthodoxy and Dissent in Early Christianity

The establishment of the boundaries of orthodoxy in early Christianity.

The definition of “heresy.” The formation of the New Testament canon.

The universalism of Origen.  Arius and Arianism. The Constantinian establishment of the Church. Augustine of Hippo and his opponents. Heresy and the crusades. Dissent and orthodoxy before the Reformation.

                             

                  B. Renaissance Humanism

                  Many of the humanistic values of modern liberal religion have their origin

in Renaissance humanism. Selected readings from Petrarch, Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa, and Erasmus. Key events and ideas to 1517.

 

 

  1. February  11               Anti-Trinitarianism in the Reformation

 

A. The Radical Reformation

The magisterial reformation versus the radical reformation. Michael Servetus and John Calvin. The voluntary principle and anabaptism. Responses both to radical excesses and to magisterial suppression.

 

B. Socinian and Transylvanian Unitarianism

Faustus Socinus and the Socianian movment of Poland and Lithuania. Francis David and the Unitarian Church of Transylvania. 

 

No class on February 18 (Presidents’ Day observed)

 

  1. February 25                Unitarianism in the British Isles

 

A. Unitarians Among the English and Irish Dissenters

The Puritan Revolution and the rise of English Dissent. John Biddle and John Milton. How the English Presbyterians became Unitarians. The General Baptists as universalists. The Non-Subscribing Presbyterians of Ireland. The empiricism of Joseph Priestley.

 

B. 19th and 20th Century British Unitarianism

Theophilus Lindsey to James Martineau: “broad church” Unitarianism. Organization, contributions, and 20th c. decline of British Unitarianism. 

 

  1. March  4                     Puritanism and Arminianism in America

 

A. The Pilgrims and the Puritans

The Congregational Way: The Cambridge Platform of Church Governance

Church, parish, and covenantal faith. The ‘Half-Way Covenant.’ Dissent against the Puritan establishment. The Great Awakening and revivalism. The rise of Arminian liberalism.

B. New England Religion in the Revolutionary Era

Case studies of ministers and parishes of the Standing Order in the Boston area. The case of James Freeman and the revision of the Book of Common Prayer at King’s Chapel.

 

No class Mar. 11 – Spring Break

 

  1. Mar. 18                       Early Universalism in America

 

A. Key figures in the rise of American Universalism: John Murray, George de Benneville, Caleb Rich, Elhanan Winchester, and others.  Hosea Ballou’s 1804 Treatise on the Atonement: unitarian Universalism.

 

B.  The Restorationist controversy and expansion of Universalism.

 

  1. Mar. 25                                   Early Unitarianism in America

 

A. The so-called “Unitarian controversy,” 1785 to 1835. The election of Henry Ware, Sr. as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard in 1805 and the founding of Andover Seminary.

 

B. The theology of William Ellery Channing and other early professors of Unitarian Christianity in America. The organization of the American Unitarian Association, 1825.

 

 

  1. Apr. 1                                      The Transcendentalists

 

A. The Transcendentalist Circle (Hedge’s Club) and its members, with special emphasis on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Influence on American letters, culture, and social thought.

 

B. The Transcendentalist Ministers

Individual approaches to ministry and church practice: Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Frederick Henry Hedge, and others.

 

  1. Apr. 8              Unitarian and Universalist Women of the 19th Century

 

A. Daughters of the American Revolution: pioneers from Judith Sargent Murray and Hannah Adams through Margaret Fuller. Lives of two minister’s wives: Anna Tilden and Sarah Alden Ripley.

 

      B. Suffrage, Civil War, and Peace

      From the Women’s Rights Conventions through the passage of the 19th

Amendment, with special emphasis on Susan Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, Mary Livermore, the ‘Iowa Sisterhood’ of Unitarian Ministers, et al.

 

  1. April  15                      From the Civil War to the Gilded Age

 

A. Henry W. Bellows and the organization of the National Conference of Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Churches (1865). The Free Religious Association and the ‘broad church’ Unitarian churchmen.

 

B. The rise of denominational bureaucracies. Universalism at its centennial (1876) and thereafter. Samuel Atkins Eliot as president of the American Unitarian Association.

 

 

 

 

  1. April  22                                  The Crisis of Liberalism

 

A. Industrialism and the Rise of the Social Gospel Movement. Social Darwinism among the liberals. The Pullman Strike. Francis Greenwood Peabody and the social gospel among Unitarians and Universalists.

 

B. After World War I. Wm. Howard Taft’s support of ‘The Crusade for Democracy’ vs. John Haynes Holmes’ pacifism. The rise of religious humanism. The Humanist Manifesto of 1933. The Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and of neo-orthodoxy. Responses by James Luther Adams and the AUA Commission on Appraisal. By the Universalist Humiliati.

 

 

  1. April  29                                  Consolidation and Struggles

 

A. Unitarian consolidation with the Universalist Church of America. Rejections by the National Council of Churches. The Council of Liberal Churches. Liberal Religious Youth. Resistance to ‘merger’ and its completion in 1961. The shaping of the new denomination.

 

B. Division in the newly formed UUA. UU participation in the Civil Rights movement. The Black Empowerment controversy. The UUA crisis of the 1970s. A new statement of Principles and Purposes.

 

  1. May 6             Unitarian Universalism in the Post-Modern Era

 

A. Theological considerations. The influence of James Luther Adams and the theology of covenantal commitment. Process theologies from Whitehead through Henry Nelson Wieman to Rebecca Parker.

 

B. Social and institutional considerations.    Gender, race, class, age and culture in the emerging Unitarian Universalism of the 21st century. The International Council of Unitarians and Universalists.