As part of my research for the Minns Lectures on American Populism and Unitarian Universalism I recently stumbled across the following description of Unitarianism by the Rev. Ethelred Brown in Langston Hughes’s column “Week by Week,” which Hughes wrote regularly for the Chicago Defender. This was published in 1960, about four years after Brown died. I am not certain when Brown wrote his portion of the text.
The Meaning of Faith: Unitarians
Unitarians in the United States number about 100,000. Some of their congregations in the larger urban centers have a number of Negro members. Ethelred Brown, the late minister of Harlem Unitarian Church in New York City, wrote especially for the readers of this column, the following concise statement on the meaning of his faith:
Unitarians are not Trinitarians—that is, they reject the doctrine of the Trinity which states that God is three persons in one. This denial in itself justifies their name. But they also reject every doctrine or teaching claimed by Trinitarians to be “fundamental”—namely, the miraculous birth and deity of Jesus, the Resurrection, the Atonement, a material hell and a personal devil, and infallible Bible. But it is important to note that Unitarians deny what they deny because they believe what they believe, and because they are what they are.
Unitarians believe in the reliability of Reason as contrasted with Revelation and Intuition. And a distinctive and significant result growing out of this belief is that the Unitarian Church of is a creedless church. Unitarians are united not by intellectual agreement but by an ethical and spiritual purpose. Therefore they are not to be approached or presented as persons who deny certain things and believe certain other things, but rather as persons with a certain attitude to reality—persons dedicated to a certain form of life. From this attitude there stem the following distinctive characteristics:
1. Unitarians believe that Religion and Science are not contradictory but complementary.
2. They talk Sense and Religion at the same time. Any proposition that insults their intelligence is rejected.
3. They believe that theological statements must square themselves with established truths. Facts must never be tampered with to accommodate our theories—but our theories must be corrected to agree with the facts.
4. Unitarians do not believe in a static but in a progressive mind. Knowledge grows from more to more.
5. They believe in the right of the individual to seek truth for himself. They take Truth for authority and not authority for truth.
6. Climaxing all, and inclusive of all, Unitarians do interpret or present Religion in terms of church and creeds and ceremonies, but as Life — as character and service. This was aptly stated by Dr. George D. Stoddard, former President of the University of Chicago, when he spoke at a corner stone laying of the $200,000 North Shore Unitarian church. “Unitarianism is nothing radical, but quite simply a return to the sense of honesty, directness, fearlessness and self-reliance that characterized the behavior of our forefathers.”
This then is the distinctive trait of Unitarianism — it places life and character above forms and ceremonies, and its churches honestly strive to bring together thought and reverence, the fearless mind and the uplifted heart — “That mind and soul according well may make one music as before — but vaster.” This explains why Unitarians feel as did Dr. Charles W. Eliot, late president of Harvard University, “To propagate the simple fundamental convictions of our Unitarian Faith is a holy thing, and a sacred duty.”