VI The American Unitarian Association
The time had come for the liberals to organize in a more distinctive form, in order that they might secure permanently the results they had already attained. The demand for organization, however, came almost wholly from the younger men, those who had grown up under the influence of the freer life of the liberal churches or who had been trained in the independent spirit of the Divinity School at Harvard. The older men, for the most part, were bound by the traditions of “the standing order”:1 they could not bring themselves to desire new conditions and new methods.
The spirit of the older and leading laymen and ministers is admirably illustrated in Rev. O.B. Frothingham’s account of his father in his book entitled Boston Unitarianism. They were interested in many, public-spirited enterprises, and the social circle in which they moved was cultivated and refined; but they were provincial, and little inclined to look beyond the limits of their own immediate interests. Dr. Nathaniel L. Frothingham, minister of the First Church in Boston, one of the earliest American students of German literature and philosophy, and a man of rational insight and progressive thinking, may be regarded as a representative of the best type of Boston minister in the first half of the nineteenth century. In a sermon preached in 1835, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his settlement, Dr. Frothingham said that he had never before used the word “Unitarian”, in his pulpit, though his church had been for thirty years counted as Unitarian. “We have,” he said, “made more account of the religious sentiment than of theological opinions.” In this attitude he was in harmony with the leading men of his day.2
Channing, for instance, was opposed to every phase of religious organization that put bonds upon men; and he would accept nothing in the form of a creed. He severely condemned “the guilt of a sectarian spirit,” and said that “to bestow our affections on those who are ranged under the same human leader, or who belong to the same church with ourselves, and to withhold it from others who possess equal if not superior virtue, because they bear a different name, is to prefer a party to the church of Christ.”3 In 1831 he described Unitarianism as being “characterized by nothing more than by the spirit of freedom and individuality. It has no established creed or symbol,” he wrote. “Its friends think each for himself, and differ much from each other.”4 Later he wrote to a friend: “I distrust sectarian influence more and more. I am more detached from a denomination, and strive to feel more my connection with the Universal Church, with all good and holy men. I am little of a Unitarian, and stand aloof from all but those who strive and pray for clearer light, who look for a purer and more effectual manifestation of Christian truth.”5
Many of the Unitarians were in fullest sympathy with Channing as to the fundamental law of spiritual freedom and as to the evils of sectarianism. A considerable number of them were in agreement with him as to the course pursued by the Unitarian movement. Having escaped from one sect, they were not ready to commit themselves to the control of another. Therefore they withheld themselves from all definitely organized phases of Unitarianism, and would give no active support to those who sought to bring the liberals together for purposes of protection and forward movement. Under these circumstances it was difficult to secure concert of action or to make successful any definite missionary enterprise, however little of sectarianism it might manifest. Even to the present time Unitarianism has shown this independence on the part of local churches and this freedom on the part of individuals. Because of this attitude, unity of action has been difficult, and denominational loyalty never strong or assured.
However, a different spirit animated the younger men, who persisted in their effort to secure an organization that would represent distinctively the Unitarian thought and sentiment. The movement towards organization had its origin and impulse in a group of young ministers who had been trained at the Harvard Divinity School under Professor Andrews Norton. While Norton was conservative in theology and opposed to sectarian measures, his teaching was radical, progressive, and stimulating. His students accepted his spirit of intellectual progress, and often advanced beyond his more conservative teachings. In the years between 1817 and 1824 James Walker, John G. Palfrey, Jared Sparks, Alexander Young, John Pierpont, Ezra S. Gannett, Samuel Barrett, Thomas R. Sullivan, Samuel J. May, Calvin Lincoln, and Edward B. Hall were students in the Divinity School; and all of these men were leaders in the movement to organize a Unitarian Association. Pierpont gave the name to the new organization, distinctly defining it as Unitarian. Gannett, Palfrey, and Hall served it as presidents; Gannett, Lincoln, and Young, as secretaries. Walker, Palfrey, and Barrett gave it faithful service as directors, and Lincoln as its active missionary agent. A number of young laymen in Boston and elsewhere, mostly graduates of Harvard College, were also interested in the formation of the new organization. Among them were Charles G. Loring, Robert Rantoul, Samuel A. Eliot, Leverett Salstonstall, George B. Emerson, and Alden Bradford. All these young men were afterwards prominent in the affairs of the city or state, and they were faithful to the interests of the Unitarian churches with which they were connected.