Unitarianism was especially prominent in the early United States. For example, John Adams, a leading figure in the American Revolution and second president of the United States, was a Unitarian. In the early 19th century, the Divinity School at Harvard College (now Harvard University) was dominated by Unitarianism. It was at the Harvard Divinity School, in 1838, that the essayist, poet, and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) gave his "Divinity School Address." In this speech, Emerson asserted that Jesus saw "that God incarnates himself in man and evermore goes forth to take possession of his world" (quoted in 5minutesinchurchhistory.com). In other words, ALL human beings are divine, not just Jesus. In effect, Emerson was rejecting the "Christian" version of Unitarianism, which, while refusing to accept Jesus' equality with the Father, still viewed Him as greater than any human being. Emerson's rejection of the Unitarianism of his day should not, however, been surprising. Previously, he himself had been a Unitarian minister, but had left the ministry because he could not accept some of the Unitarian Church's beliefs.
Almost a century later, another American literary figure, the poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), would also announce his departure from Unitarianism. Eliot's grandfather had actually been the founder of the Unitarian church in St. Louis, Missouri, where Eliot was born. Eliot eventually moved to Great Britain, where he wrote what would be his most influential work, a long poem entitled The Wasteland (1922), which seemed to express much of the post-World War I despair of Europe's intellectuals. The Wasteland was followed by another bleak poem, The Hollow Men (1925). However, soon after writing The Hollow Men, Eliot experienced a religious conversion. Like Emerson, he rejected Unitarianism, but took a quite different direction from Emerson, embracing Anglican Christianity. His new faith was announced in two poems from 1927--Ash Wednesday and The Journey of the Magi. The latter is an imaginative re-telling of the story of the Magi who brought gifts to the young Jesus, told in the voice of one of the Magi. It ends:
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt, I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for use, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
In effect, Eliot was using the journey of the Magi to find the young Jesus as a metaphor for his own spiritual journey to the Christian faith--it had been difficult and had entirely changed his perspective on life, making him "no longer at ease...in the old dispensation" of his former beliefs.
To conclude, it is apparent that for both Emerson and Eliot Unitarianism had, in the end, been a path to a new faith. For Emerson, it had been a path to a sort of pantheism that went beyond the Unitarianism of his day, but for Eliot had been a path back to orthodox Trinitarian Christianity--how ironic!
Image of T.S. Eliot from Wikimedia Commons