In our day we have seen something of an Evangelical Alliance,
that is, a manifestation of the great fact that people are
yearning after a Catholic union, and are caring less and less for
denominational differences. The Unitarians all speak and
write of the orthodox as of a body of Christians perfectly
distinct from themselves. Yet there is an approximation
between them, nevertheless. Unitarianism, as it becomes a
living faith — as it leans to the theology of the sweetest
singers and most impassioned orators of the universal
Church — becomes in sentiment and practice
orthodox; while orthodoxy, as it grows enlightened, and burst the
bonds of habit, and, laden with the spoils of time, gathers up
the wisdom and the teaching of all the ages underneath the sun,
sanctions the Rationalism and the spirit of free inquiry for
which Unitarianism has ever pleaded and its martyrs have died in
our own and other lands.
Sign on a UU church in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Actually, at the meeting of the
British and Foreign Unitarian Society, an effort was made to get
rid of the title altogether, and to call themselves instead a
British and Foreign Free Christian Association, on the plea that
the Christian Church consists of all who desire to be the
children of God in the spirit of Jesus Christ His Son, and that,
therefore, no association for the promotion of a doctrine which
belongs to controversial theology can represent the Church of
Christ. To this Unitarianism has attained in our
time. This is the teaching of Foster, and Ham, and Ierson,
and Martineau — a teaching seemingly in accordance with the
spirit of the age.
Unitarian theology is always coloured
with the philosophy of the hour, and consequently it is now
spiritual and transcendental instead of material and
necessitarian.
As regards London, the statistics of Unitarianism are easy of
collection. In their register we have the names of fifteen places of worship, where HolyScripture is the only rule of faith, and difference of opinion is
no bar to Christian communion. In reality Unitarians are
stronger than they seem, as in their congregations you will find
many persons of influence, of social weight, of literary
celebrity. For instance, Sir Charles Lyell and Lord
Amberley are, I believe, among the regular attendants at Mr.
Martineau’s chapel in Portland Street. At that chapel
for many years Charles Dickens was a regular hearer. The
late Lady Byron, one of the most eminent women of her day,
worshipped in Essex Street Chapel, when Mr. Madge preached
there. In London the Unitarians support a domestic mission,
a Sunday-school association, an auxiliary school association, and
a London district Unitarian society.
- p. 196 - p 204 from The Religious Life of London
by J. Ewing Ritchie
Release Date: June 16, 2010 [eBook #32844]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch - one of the world's leading historians - reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian on BBC 4 and Last broadcast on Saturday on BBC Two.
When Diarmaid MacCulloch was a small boy, his parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life's work.
In a series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity's forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.
The headquarters of Christianity might well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then Western Christianity would have been very different.
2. Catholicism: The Unpredictable Rise of Rome
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's grandfather was a devout pillar of the local Anglican church and felt that any dabbling in Catholicism was liable to pollute the English way of life. But now Professor's grandfather isn't around to stop him exploring the extraordinary and unpredictable rise of the Roman Catholic Church.
Over one billion Christians look to Rome, more than half of all Christians on the planet. But how did a small Jewish sect from the backwoods of 1st-century Palestine, which preached humility and the virtue of poverty, become the established religion of western Europe - wealthy, powerful and expecting unfailing obedience from the faithful?
Amongst the surprising revelations, MacCulloch tells how confession was invented by monks on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, and how the Crusades gave Britain the university system.
Above all, it is a story of what can be achieved when you have friends in high places.
3. Orthodoxy - From Empire to Empire
Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia, with over 150 million members worldwide. It is unlike Catholicism or Protestantism - worship is carefully choreographed, icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere there is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird, the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us?
In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet communism.
MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.
