Because
Unitarianism calls for a fairly high level of intelligence
and a spirit of independence, and, when sincerely accepted,
requires ethical relations of a high order, both among
individuals and in society, the Unitarian movement has
always been small, with few churches in comparison with
those of the larger Protestant denominations. For the
same reasons, its influence has always been vastly disproportionate
to its size. In the nineteenth century it included almost
all the noted authors who distinguished that literary
awakening known as the New England Renaissance: the
poets and essayists, Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes
and Lowell; the historians, Sparks, Bancroft, Motley
and Prescott. The chief founder of our modern public
school system, Horace Mann, and the great president
of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot, were Unitarians, as other
noted educators have been, and are today. Several presidents
of the United States have been Unitarians: John Adams
and his son John Quincy Adams (both buried beneath the
Unitarian church in Quincy, Massachusetts), Jefferson,
Fillmore and Taft. The great preacher, Theodore Parker,
the most notable figure in the Boston pulpit after Channing,
was influential in introducing into America the momentous
developments of German biblical scholarship. Through
the influence of these and many other leaders of American
thought, past and present, a great number of persons
and of churches in other denominations have been liberalized
in their thinking. The great principles of freedom of
thought, of toleration of diversity of opinion, and
of the trustworthiness of human reason in the search
for religious as well as scientific thought, which are
fundamental to the Unitarian movement, have acted as
leaven to modify the hard, encrusted lump of orthodoxy
far beyond the walls of Unitarian churches.
Although Unitarians are popularly supposed to be "coldly
intellectual" and to ignore the emotional and spiritual
aspects of religion, they have made important contributions
to the religious life of America through the sermons
of many of their ministers, through noted publications
of devotional literature and, above all, through their
hymn writers who have produced almost half the finest
hymns written in this country and widely used here and,
to some extent, in Great Britain. American Unitarians
have written as many hymns of fine quality as the writers
of all other denominations put together. Their hymns
are of two general types: some are deeply spiritual
expressions of mystical feeling; others trumpet calls
of the social gospel.
The third great contribution of the Unitarian movement
to the religious life of America has been in the field
of social reform, though it has never been adequately
recorded and is little known. Channing and Parker were
among the earliest preachers of a social gospel, and,
a generation after Parker, Francis G. Peabody began
at Harvard the first formal instruction in "social
ethics" to be given at any educational institution.
Today in practically every Unitarian pulpit the teaching
that religion must bear fruit in human affairs and in
the promotion of the common welfare is strongly emphasized.
In the nineteenth century the same churches that numbered
in their membership the famous authors already listed
included also the most noted social reformers of the
time. They gave a large measure of support to the early
antislavery and temperance movements. Joseph Tuckerman,
whose biography has been written by an admiring Roman
Catholic, is described by him as the pioneer in what
we now call social service for the least fortunate classes
in our great cities. Dorothea Dix, for a time a member
of Channing's household, inaugurated nation-wide reforms
in prison management and in the care of the insane.
During the Civil War her work in nursing sick and wounded
soldiers in army hospitals was comparable to that of
Florence Nightingale (an English Unitarian); it was
done under the auspices of what was called "the
Sanitary Commission," directed by a Unitarian minister,
which was the immediate forerunner of the International
Red Cross. Samuel Gridley Howe (husband of Julia Ward
Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic")
was a pioneer in the education of the blind and the
care of the feebleminded. This leadership in social
reform continues to the present day. It issues naturally
from a realization that religion is more than a matter
of personal piety and the cultivation of the inner life,
and that it must be unceasingly applied to the betterment
of human relations in every aspect of the social order.
The Unitarian movement in North America is today committed
to the advancement of these principles and practices,
which those who support it believe to be of the highest
importance for the development of a nobler life for
all sorts and conditions of men everywhere on this earth.
Return
to Henry W. Foote Biography
