Wednesday, October 2, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 2nd of October 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

Let’s head back to the early American Republic- let’s say 1780. Sure, the Constitution is in its embryonic stage, but you get it. To trace the development of the church in New England at the beginning of the United States, you’ll need to get through the character William Ellery Channing and his character and controversies. And to get through Channing you’ll need to understand the epithet that he took as a badge of honor and has since become a watchword for heresy for others: Unitarianism. Whether you know a little, a lot, or none at all about this movement, hold on.

Channing was born in 1780 in Rhode Island- the one-time home of rogues and outcasts from the original pilgrim settlements. Channing was born into New England Blue Blood- his grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence. Young William would head to Harvard at the age of 14 and be off to a career as a preacher at the Federal Street Church at the age of 23 in 1803, a position he would be in for the rest of his life and career.

Channing believed that he was an inheritor of the best of the Protestant Reformation, European Enlightenment and American Revolution- this is, after all a combination of influences many would be proud to call their own.  

But part of Channing’s independent, even rebellious, spirit was a radical questioning of the past (something certainly in his traditions). And his first target as a mature man was a common one: the faith of his youth.

It can be an easy target- then and now- but for Ellery the chief complaint was that of an oppressive Calvinism. I use the word “oppressive” as he saw it this way, and from his own recollections as to how it was taught I might agree it was a harsher version than that I’ve come across elsewhere.

And so, in the spirit of the Reformation, Enlightenment, and Democratic Revolution, Channing was going to question EVERYTHING. He rejected the Calvinism of his youth, the concept of necessary blood atonement (this, seen by many of his contemporaries as barbaric), and stressed the oneness of God.

It’s always been a tension: “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord Your God is One” and the claims of divinity for Christ and the Holy Spirit. Sure, the early creeds worked through some objections, but some radicals thought (and have since the time of the Reformation often in Eastern Europe): “If we are ditching ‘traditions’ and overdeveloped doctrines, why not ditch that troublesome word “trinity.”

This cemented itself in the belief that Jesus had only 1 nature- after all, that’s what all humans we know have. And this kind of rationality becomes the basis for Christian Doctrine and life.

Where Luther said "My conscience is captive to the word of God! To go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” These later Unitarians elevated their view of conscience to include how they preferred to understand God’s nature and character.

Channing’s break with the old churches of the Ecumenical Creeds took place officially in 1819 with a sermon at a friend's ordination. This “Baltimore Sermon” would later become known as “Unitarian Christianity”. “Unitarian,” an old 16th-century epithet, was given to Channing, and he wore it as a badge of honor. He and others were not like the old Arians or others who explicitly denied the trinity- he would say, “As the word is sometimes used… we all believe it”.

By 1820, he still referred to himself as a congregationalist, but his conference of liberal ministers soon took the name “the American Unitarian Association.

And Channing’s legacy would be this new church, he was called “the apostle of Unitarianism”- beyond the pale of anything evangelical or confessional it would become the seedbed for Transcendentalism, the American philosophy of the 19th century. There are two later “William Channings” who were transcendentalists and nephews of the minister.

Later in life he would claim that he always “inclined towards the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ, though I am not insensible to the weight of your objections”- the “apostle of the Unitarians” seemed to be closer to his brethren than he may have appeared. William Ellery Channing, born in 1780 died on this, the 2nd of October in 1842 at the age of 62.

  

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary:

Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime;
    it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms.


He gives showers of rain to all people,

  and plants of the field to everyone.

The idols speak deceitfully,

    diviners see visions that lie;


they tell dreams that are false,

    they give comfort in vain.


Therefore the people wander like sheep

    oppressed for lack of a shepherd.

…

“I will strengthen Judah

    and save the tribes of Joseph.


I will restore them

    because I have compassion on them.


They will be as though

    I had not rejected them,


for I am the Lord their God

    and I will answer them.

…

I will signal for them

    and gather them in.


Surely I will redeem them;

    they will be as numerous as before.

Though I scatter them among the peoples,

    yet in distant lands they will remember me.


They and their children will survive,

    and they will return.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 2nd of October 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a noted Boo-natarian- that’s a Halloween enthusiast (?) He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who does not like October- not the heat, the baseball playoffs without us, or Halloween… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.