Unitarian Universalism

• 1. A Church Without a Creed

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  Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious tradition with no single creed, and in May 2004 that fact nearly cost one congregation its tax exemption. Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ended the tax-exempt status of the Red River Unitarian Universalist Church in Denison, Texas. Her reasoning was that the church was not a religious organization with just one system of belief. The church's board president said he was shocked, given how long the Unitarian church has existed in the United States. A week later, the comptroller's general counsel reviewed the application again. He decided that the church was an organization created for religious purposes, and the exemption was granted. A 1997 Texas Supreme Court ruling had already held that the comptroller cannot deny tax-exempt status to a religious group because it has multiple belief systems.

  The confusion is understandable. A Unitarian Universalist may draw on agnosticism, atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, neopaganism, Sikhism, Taoism and the Baháʼí Faith, among others. Worship can happen in churches, fellowships, congregations or societies. Members prize intellectual freedom and inclusive love, and they commit to social justice.

  So what holds a congregation together when nobody has to believe the same thing? How did two separate Christian denominations, with very different founding ideas, grow into one such tradition? And what do its members actually do on a Sunday morning, and what do they argue about afterward?

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• 2. Heresy and Toleration

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  In Geneva in 1553, the Spanish physician Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for heresy. He had studied the Bible and concluded that the Trinity, as traditionally conceived, was not biblical. His books On the Errors of the Trinity and Christianismi Restitutio caused a great uproar before his arrest and conviction.

  Eastern Europe produced a very different outcome. Between 1557 and 1568, a series of diets in Transylvania set out the first doctrines of religious freedom in Europe, in what is known as the Edict of Torda. They were issued under John Sigismund, King of Hungary and Prince of Transylvania, who remains the only Unitarian monarch. Unitarian churches were formally established in Transylvania and Poland, the Polish ones by the Socinians, in the second half of the 16th century.

  Those early Unitarians rejected much more than the Trinity. They also denied the pre-existence of Christ and, in many cases, predestination and original sin as Augustine of Hippo had put them. Many rejected the substitutionary atonement developed by Anselm of Canterbury and John Calvin. Views of Jesus varied at first, but the dominant one became psilanthropism: Jesus was a man, though one with a unique relationship to God. The word Unitarian reached English through Henry Hedworth, who applied it to the teachings of Laelio Sozzini and the Polish Socinians.

  In England, the minister Samuel Clarke, who lived from 1675 to 1729, drew on Socinian doctrine to revise the Book of Common Prayer. He removed the Trinitarian Nicene Creed and the references to Jesus as God. Theophilus Lindsey also revised the prayer book, allowing a more tolerant and freer Unitarian reading. Neither man was charged under the Blasphemy Act 1697, which made it an offense to deny the Holy Trinity by writing, preaching, teaching or advised speaking. The Act of Toleration of 1689 had given relief to English Dissenters but excluded Unitarians. Conservative clergy and laity in the Church of England criticized the efforts of both men.

  In 1774, Lindsey applied to register Essex House as a Dissenting place of worship, with help from the barrister John Lee. On Sunday the 17th of April 1774, the first true Unitarian congregation met discreetly in the provisional Essex Street Chapel. Lee attended, along with Joseph Priestley and Benjamin Franklin, then agent of the Massachusetts Colony. Priestley also founded a reform congregation. After the Priestley Riots burned down his home, he fled with his wife to America, where he became a leading figure in founding the church on American soil.

  Laity and clergy eventually relaxed their fierce opposition, and the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 finally protected dissenting religions. The British and Foreign Unitarian Association was founded in 1825, with its headquarters in Essex Hall, successor to Lindsey's Essex House. Cross Street Chapel in Manchester and Newington Green Unitarian Church in north London have both been significant in national life. As of 2024, 170 communities of Unitarians meet under the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

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• 3. The New England Split

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  In 1805, Unitarians won key faculty positions at Harvard, a sign of how far the movement had spread through New England. It began in the Congregational parish churches that belonged to the state church of Massachusetts. Many of those buildings can still be seen in New England town squares. They trace their roots to the division of the Puritan colonies into parishes. Their theology descended from the Pilgrim Fathers' Congregational Christianity, built on a literal reading of the Bible.

  Liberalizing members rejected the tri-personal godhead of Father, Son and Holy Ghost and asserted a unitary God instead. They also rejected original sin, moving away from Calvinism. In the late 18th century, Unitarian and Trinitarian factions came into open conflict inside some of these churches. In 1819, William Ellery Channing preached the ordination sermon for Jared Sparks in Baltimore and laid out the Unitarian position. The American Unitarian Association was founded as a separate denomination in 1825.

  By coincidence, and unknown to both parties, it was formed on the 26th of May 1825, the same day as the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. After the schism, some churches stayed within the Congregational fold and later became part of the United Church of Christ. Others voted to become Unitarian. Later in the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had been a Unitarian minister, and other transcendentalists began pushing Unitarianism from liberal Protestantism toward a more pluralist form.

  The Universalists took a separate road. They rejected the Puritan emphasis on the Elect, the select few supposedly saved from eternal damnation by a just God. They held instead that all people will eventually be reconciled with God. Universalists claim a long history that begins with several Church Fathers, though some modern scholars doubt that those fathers taught universal salvation. The core doctrine says that through Christ every human soul will be saved, bringing about the "restitution of all things," or apocatastasis.

  In 1793, Universalism emerged in the United States as a distinct denomination, eventually called the Universalist Church of America. Early advocates Elhanan Winchester, Hosea Ballou and John Murray taught that all souls would reach salvation, sometimes after a period resembling purgatory. Universalist churches began as independent congregations, entirely outside the established Puritan churches.

  In 1961, the American Unitarian Association merged with the Universalist Church of America to form the Unitarian Universalist Association. It received corporate status in May 1961 under special acts of the legislatures of Massachusetts and New York. The Canadian Unitarian Council formed the same year at Meadville Lombard Theological School. The two bodies dissolved their financial accord in 1998 and agreed to more autonomy by 2002. Canadians had found the amalgamation troublesome. They were a small minority of 45 congregations and 5,200 members, largely ignored, and the Americans were insensitive to cultural differences.

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• 4. Covenant and Belief

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  The Cambridge Platform of 1646 is the root of the covenant tradition that Unitarian Universalists still invoke. Colonial New England's Congregational churches wrote it, and some of them later became Unitarian. It was the first formal declaration of principles of church order and governance in colonial North America. A covenant, in this sense, is a mutual promise about how individuals and communities will behave toward one another. Members say covenants create freedom rather than duties, because people know what to expect from each other.

  The minister Alice Blair Wesley called an authentic covenant "a glad promise to live freely together." She said this freedom exists "in accordance with the laws of reality that make our freedom possible." Many congregations write their own covenants, often called covenants of right relations.

  In 1960, the association adopted the seven Principles and Purposes, which were revised in 1984 and 1985. The first affirmed the inherent worth and dignity of every person. The last called for respect for the interdependent web of all existence. The fourth named a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The principles proved so popular that many members came to treat them as a wisdom source in themselves.

  In June 2024, the General Assembly voted to replace the seven principles in Article II of the bylaws with a covenant of seven values. Love is the central value. The others are interdependence, equity, transformation, pluralism, generosity and justice. Canadian members add an eighth principle: "Individual and communal action that accountably dismantles racism and systemic barriers to full inclusion in ourselves and our institutions." In the Philippines, where the faith is much more theistically oriented, congregations add their own first principle: "There is God. God is love."

  Fifteen of the thirty-four signers of Humanist Manifesto I were Unitarians, and one was a Universalist. Religious humanism had influenced the movement by the late nineteenth century, and it helps explain why views of God vary so widely. Today most Unitarian Universalists in North America identify as Humanists. Most congregations take no formal stance on whether any god exists. Members may be atheists, agnostics or theists, and some are polytheists. Nobody has to renounce a previous faith to join, so a person can belong to this tradition and another at once.

  No text counts as official scripture, since that recognition would go against Unitarian Universalist principles. Two books are nonetheless commonly appreciated. A Chosen Faith, by John A. Buehrens and Forrest Church, has been called the classic introductory text. The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide reached its 7th edition in 2025, edited by Sofía Betancourt, the 10th president of the UUA.

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• 5. Deeds, Not Creeds

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  "Deeds, not creeds" is a common slogan in Unitarian Universalist congregations. The idea is that actions to improve the world matter more than what a person believes. Belief divorced from action does not change anything, and good intentions often make a situation worse over the long term. Many members see justice work as inseparable from their faith.

  In the 19th century, Unitarians and Universalists took part in abolitionism, the women's movement, pacifism, temperance and prison reform. The second women's rights convention was held at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York. Four Presidents of the United States were Unitarians: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft. Susan B. Anthony, a Unitarian and Quaker, was extremely influential in the women's suffrage movement.

  John Haynes Holmes, an American Unitarian minister and Christian socialist, helped found the NAACP in 1909. He was also among the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union and chaired it for a time. Sarah Bagley, a Universalist, was a labor leader in the same Christian socialist current.

  Selma, Alabama, brought the cost of this commitment into plain view in March 1965. James J. Reeb, a minister at All Souls Church, Unitarian, in Washington, D.C., was clubbed there on the 8th of March 1965. He died two days later of massive head trauma. Two weeks after his death, Viola Liuzzo, a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist, was murdered by white supremacists after taking part in the march from Selma to Montgomery. Bloody Sunday, the 7th of March 1965, was the most violent of the three marches.

  The movement's record on same-sex relationships is just as specific. On the 29th of June 1984, Unitarian Universalists became the first major church to approve religious blessings on homosexual unions. In May 2004, Arlington Street Church in Boston hosted the first state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in the United States. In December 2009, Mayor Adrian Fenty of Washington, D.C., signed that city's same-sex marriage bill at All Souls Church. The UUA's official stance, "Siding with Love," supports legalization.

  Inside the movement, politics are not uniform. Liberals and progressives make up a clear majority of American members. Groups such as the Fifth Principle Project have called for more tolerance of political differences, and William Cohen, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense, is a conservative-leaning member. At the 2015 General Assembly, the non-discrimination rule was amended to include "family and relationship structures." Environmental projects are often called "seventh principle" activities. In 2001, William G. Sinkford began a term as head of the UUA that ran to 2009. He is African-American, making this one of the first traditionally white denominations led by a member of a racial minority.

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• 6. Sunday Mornings

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  Hans Deutsch, an Austrian artist, created the flaming chalice, which began as the logo of the Unitarian Service Committee during the Second World War. The holy oil burning in it symbolizes helpfulness and sacrifice. It is often framed by two overlapping rings that many read as Unitarianism and Universalism, though the symbol has no official interpretation. The Disciples of Christ also use a chalice as their denominational symbol. Other readings link it to the chalice of the followers of the Czech reformer Jan Hus. Another symbol is an off-center cross within a circle, a Universalist emblem tied to the Humiliati movement of the 1950s. A pair of open hands releasing a dove is a third.

  Many congregations light a chalice at the start of worship. Services are usually held on Sundays and most closely resemble Reformed Protestant worship. The center is a sermon from a minister, a lay leader or an invited speaker. Since no text is held superior, a speaker can draw on many religious and cultural texts, or on personal experience. Hymns are sung with organ, piano or other instruments, and the most recent denominational songbook, Singing the Journey, holds 75 songs. It supplements the older Singing the Living Tradition, which also contains readings.

  A time for Joys and Sorrows invites people to light a candle or say a few words about events in their lives. Many services also include meditation or prayer, both spoken and silent, and some end with a "talk back" where members may respond to the sermon or even disagree with it.

  Practices reach well beyond Christian forms. Many congregations host Buddhist-style meditation groups, Seder and Passover dinners, Yom Kippur observances, iftaar meals that break the Ramadan fast, and Christmas Eve or Winter Solstice services. The popular curriculum Neighboring Faiths, formerly called Church Across the Street, takes middle and high school students to a Hindu temple, a synagogue and a Catholic church.

  Congregations also name themselves in many ways: churches, societies, fellowships or neither. Unity Temple uses none of those words, and First Unitarian Church keeps its historic name. Far more people identify as Unitarian Universalist on surveys than attend a congregation, by a factor of four in a recent survey.

  In 2004, UU World magazine asked readers for "elevator speeches" that explain the religion to someone who knows nothing about it. One submission ended with four short lines: "It's a blessing each of us was born; It matters what we do with our lives; What each of us knows about God is a piece of the truth; We don't have to do it alone."

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• 7. Disputes Inside and Out

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  In 1998, the Boy Scouts of America withdrew its recognition of the UUA's Religion in Life emblems program. The cause was a 1992 UUA statement opposing the scouts' policies against homosexuals, atheists and agnostics. In 1993, the UUA added criticism of those policies to the program's curriculum guidance. The UUA removed the material, and recognition was renewed. Later, internal supplemental workbook material criticizing discrimination led the scouts to withdraw recognition a second time.

  In 2004, the Unitarian Universalist Scouters Organization, which was not affiliated with the UUA, created its own Living Your Religion emblems program. The scouts approved it in 2005 without the UUA's knowledge. On the 16th of March 2005, the UUA issued a statement clarifying that the group was not an affiliate. The scouts opened membership to gay youth in 2013 and to gay adults in 2015, resolving the main UUA objection. The scouters' group dissolved in 2015, and by 2016 a memorandum of understanding restored recognition of the UUA program.

  During William Sinkford's presidency, a debate roiled the movement over his call for a "language of reverence." He argued that if Unitarian Universalists abandoned traditional religious language, others would take religion's words of power and define them in public life. Critics feared a return to orthodox Christian worship, or a move against the growing influence of humanism and atheism. Sinkford denied those motives and cited humanist writers as examples of what he meant. The debate also produced Understanding the Bible, a book from the UUA's Beacon Press by former president John Buehrens, written for skeptics, seekers and religious liberals.

  A 2001 General Assembly seminar from the UUA's Religious Education Department asked whether borrowing from other faiths is "reckless borrowing or appropriate cultural sharing." It focused on rituals sacred to specific tribes and on spiritual practices used without real context.

  In 2017, a hiring decision in the UUA's Southern Region triggered a crisis. A white man from outside the region was hired rather than a Latina woman who lived there, and resignations and apologies followed. President Peter Morales, the denomination's first Latino president, resigned amid criticism of his handling of the diversity controversies. The three co-presidents who took over commissioned a "racism audit" to address white supremacy within the denomination. In April 2018, The Washington Post reported that the UUA had been asked in the previous year to help resolve 15 congregational conflicts involving religious professionals of color.

  Outsiders get confused as well. The American Unitarian Conference and the Christian Universalist Association hold classical Unitarian or Christian universalist theology and do not belong to the UUA. Their members tend to call themselves the true heirs of the original Unitarian and Universalist churches. The Unity Church is another denomination often mistaken for Unitarian Universalism.

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• 8. Counting the Faithful

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  In 1961, at the time of the merger, American membership stood at 104,821 in 651 congregations. It then rose to its historic high in the mid-1960s before falling sharply in the 1970s. According to the 2008 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, the UUA claimed 214,738 members in 2002. A 2007 Pew survey put the share of American adults identifying as Unitarian Universalist at 0.3%. In 2024, the Public Religion Research Institute's Census of American Religion estimated 0.5%, or approximately 1.7 million people, not limited to the UUA. The highest concentrations are in New England and around Seattle, Washington.

  The UUA is headquartered in Boston and serves churches mostly in the United States, including Puerto Rico. By 2020 it had about a thousand member congregations. A few abroad, in places such as San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and Auckland in New Zealand, are members too. Thirty Philippine congregations are represented as a single member. Massachusetts has the most congregations and members, while Vermont ranks first relative to its population. The International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, with seventeen members including the UUA and the Canadian Unitarian Council, existed from 1995 to 2021 and is now defunct.

  Canada tells a smaller story. The 2001 Canadian census counted 17,480 Unitarians, while the Canadian Unitarian Council's own membership statistics showed 5,150 official members in September 2007. By 2015 the council reported 3,804 members. In December 2023 it had 42 affiliated congregations and emerging groups. In Australia and New Zealand, the Australian New Zealand Unitarian Universalist Association has nine member congregations as of 2026, and 830 Australians reported an affiliation in the 2021 census.

  Elsewhere, older Unitarian bodies keep the tradition going under their own names. They include the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, the Khasi Unitarian Union within India's Indian Council of Unitarian Churches, and the Unitarian Church of South Africa. The largest congregation in the UUA by membership has no building at all. The Church of the Larger Fellowship serves Unitarian Universalists who live remote from any physical congregation.

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