The Unitarians: A Short History

by Leonard Smith

Overview

This short history of Unitarianism concisely explores the origins and progress of a worldwide liberal religious tradition committed to principles of freedom, reason, and tolerance.

Unitarians have exercised an influence out of proportion to their minority status. Through their agency, Poland and Transylvania enjoyed periods of religious toleration. In Great Britain, as pioneers of early modern higher education in Dissenting Academies, they applied Enlightenment reasoning to the study of religion, science, and the humanities. In the United States, they led the Transcendentalist movement, the first major flowering of American intellectual culture.

This book traces the history of the separate but related Unitarian (and Unitarian Universalist) denominations in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, and touches on the new groups that have arisen, or are in the process of emerging, elsewhere in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780981640204
Publisher:	Blackstone Editions
Publication date:	12/01/2008
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Dr. Leonard Smith was principal of the Unitarian College Manchester from 1991 to
2002, and Bishop Fraser Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History (part-time) in the University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Charles A. Howe

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface and Acknowledgments to the First Edition

Part 1: Europe

1. Michael Servetus

2. Sebastian Castellio

3. The Polish Brethren

4. Faustus Socinus

5. The Socinian Diaspora

6. Francis Dávid

7. Transylvanian Unitarianism after Francis Dávid

8. The Twentieth Century

Part 2: Great Britain

9. Origins: Native or Exotic?

10. Protestant Nonconformity

11. Beginnings of the Arian Movement

12. "Humanitarian" Unitarianism

13. Becoming a Denomination

14. Spreading the Message

15. Nineteenth-Century Advance

16. Theological Developments

17. Toward a New Century

Part 3: America

18. Origins

19. The Arminian Movement

20. The Unitarian Controversy

21. The Transcendentalists

22. The Search for Consensus

23. Twentieth-Century Renaissance

24. American Universalism

25. Unitarian Universalism

Part 4: A Global Religion

26. Unitarianism in Africa and Asia

Appendixes

A Bibliographical Essay: References and Further Reading

Glossary

Index