The Index: A Weekly Paper Devoted to Free Religion, 1870
The Free Religious Association (FRA) was an American organization founded in 1867 to encourage free inquiry into religious matters and to promote what its founders called "free religion," which they understood to be the essence of religion that is expressed in a variety of ways around the world. The FRA founders hoped eventually to see the development of a new religion that was rational, progressive and based on what was universal in the world's existing religions.
Most of its founders were Unitarians who opposed the decision by a Unitarian national convention in 1865 to define the denomination as exclusively Christian. Seeking a broader movement, the organizers of the FRA invited people from several other religious traditions, including Jews and Spiritualists, to their founding meeting, and they invited representatives of eastern religions to address other meetings.
Many FRA members continued to be active as Unitarians, and they continued to promote the ideas of the FRA within their denomination. In 1894, the Unitarian National Conference essentially accepted the position of the FRA, removing part of the original reason for its creation. The FRA was still active until at least 1917, when it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.
The FRA worked largely through lectures, books and periodicals, including The Index, which was published weekly from 1870 to 1886.
History
In 1825, the American Unitarian Association (AUA) was formed by people who disagreed with the traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that God is three persons (Jehovah, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit). The founders of the AUA believed in the unity of God, considering Jesus to be an exalted but subordinate being.[1]
A national convention of Unitarians was organized in 1865 that for the first time included direct representation of individual congregations. The convention's decision to characterize the denomination as exclusively Christian created friction with a vocal minority who wanted a broader approach.[2] Unitarians who wanted the denomination to be open to non-Christians argued for their approach again at the 1866 convention but again without success.[3]
Characterizing the AUA as exclusively Christian created a problem for the increasing number of Unitarians who were beginning to challenge traditional views, such as the authority of the Bible and the existence of miracles.[4] This was especially true for two influential groups within the denomination, the transcendentalists and those drawn to the use of scientific methods.[3] The transcendentalists, who were closely identified with Ralph Waldo Emerson, challenged orthodox thinking with their belief that religious understanding was best achieved through direct intuition.[5] The group oriented toward science wanted to modify traditional Unitarian teachings to accommodate recent scientific developments, including evolution. Francis Abbot, a leader figure in this group, developed what he called "scientific theism," which called for all theological concepts, including God and immortality, to be subjected to scientific scrutiny "on the basis of observed facts and leading to verifiable results."[6] Despite their very different approaches, these two groups wanted to join with others to form an organization that would actively encourage the exploration of alternative religious views.[7]
On May 30, 1867, Unitarian dissidents organized a meeting in Horticultural Hall in Boston that formed the Free Religious Association (FRA). A large proportion of the participants were Unitarian ministers.[8] Other participants included Universalists, Quakers, Jews, Spiritualists, and people with no religious affiliation at all. Among the speakers were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lucretia Mott, Robert Dale Owen, and Rabbi Isaac M. Wise.[9] Emerson was the first person to be officially enrolled in the new organization.[10]
The founders of the FRA were guided by two main principles. One was the freedom to explore unorthodox religious ideas without any restrictions of tradition, creed and external authority.[11] William J. Potter, the primary force within the FRA during its most active years,[12] described the FRA as a sort of "spiritual anti-slavery society", referring to the recent success of the movement to eliminate slavery in the U.S.[13] He said the goal of the movement was to "bring people together in religious union" while "liberating religion from every sort of thralldom to irrational and merely traditional authority".[13]
The other principle was to promote what its founders called "free religion," which was understood to be the essence of religion that is expressed in a variety of ways in cultures around the world. They believed that all major religions are fundamentally the same, and that every specific religion is simply a phase of universal religion.[14] The FRA founders hoped their movement would eventually lead to a new religion that was rational, progressive and based on what was universal in the world's religions.[15] Potter said, "Free Religion is the natural outcome of every historical religion—the final unity, therefore, towards which all historical religions slowly tend."[16] Potter predicted that the new religion would appear in his lifetime through process of evolution that was already working through the existing religions.[17]
The founding convention adopted a constitution that said the goal of the FRA was "to promote the interests of pure religion, to encourage the scientific study of theology, and to increase the fellowship of the spirit."[18] The constitution was modified in 1872 to make it clear that one did not need to believe in God to be a member.[19] In 1874, Lucretia Mott succeeded in having the constitution modified to say, "to encourage the scientific study of man's religious nature and history" instead of "to encourage the scientific study of theology," which put less emphasis on technical issues of theology and more on issues of religion in everyday life.[19]
FRA members held a variety of religious views. Abbot, who advocated "scientific theism," understood God to be a person, whereas Octavius Frothingham saw God as a force of nature. The Cosmists, who were followers of Herbert Spencer, conceived of God as the soul of the universe and inseparable from it. The transcendentalists believed in "the Emersonian concept of the Over-Soul, the transcendent universal Mind."[20] Some FRA members were agnostics, including Felix Adler.[21] None of its members were avowed atheists, although they would have been considered to be religious if their actions were based on "an inward ethical imperative".[21]
In 1892, FRA vice presidents included the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, who had escaped from slavery as a young man and gained fame as a public speaker and the editor of the North Star, an abolitionist newspaper.[22]
Many FRA members continued to be practicing Unitarians, and they promoted the ideas of the FRA within that denomination with increasing success.[23] In 1894, the Unitarian National Conference essentially accepted the position of the FRA, removing part of the original reason for its creation.[24]
The FRA began to decline in the mid to late 1870s. Octavius Frothingham was succeeded as president of the FRA in 1878 by Felix Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture movement, which was open to people of diverse religious beliefs. Adler tried to rejuvenate the organization with a program of establishing a network of local societies that would promote education about the science of religion and would work to advance social welfare. Adler's project failed to gather enough support within the FRA, however, and he resigned from the organization in 1882.[25]
The proceedings of the FRA's 47th annual meeting were published with the title World Religion and World Brotherhood.[26] The association was still active until at least 1917, when it celebrated its 50th anniversary in Boston.[27]
Lectures
The FRA sponsored a series of lectures near Harvard University in 1867-1868 to reach students at the Harvard Divinity School. The lectures were so successful they disturbed the school's leadership. The class of 1868 afterwards invited FRA member John Weiss to be to be their class preacher, and the class of 1869 did the same with FRA member Octavius Frothingham. The committee of conservative Unitarians in charge of overseeing the divinity school subsequently interrogated each member of the class of 1869 about their religious views and denied two of them their stipend. In response, almost all students in that class refused to accept their stipends. The issue was eventually settled to the students' satisfaction.[28]
Encouraged by the success of those lectures, the FRA organized a series of lectures at Boston's Horticultural Hall. They attracted considerable interest for several years, but as the novelty of the FRA's views wore off, the lectures were discontinued in 1878.[28]
The FRA held annual national conventions at various cities throughout the country. These conventions usually included three or four public meetings at which FRA speakers would discuss the principles of free religion.[29] Representatives of Eastern religions were often invited to speak at FRA meetings.[30]
Publications
Books and pamphlets
Several FRA members published books to support their movement. Samuel Johnson produced a three-volume work called Oriental Religions and Their Relation to Universal Religion.[31] In 1875, the FRA published Freedom and Fellowship in Religion, a collection of addresses by several members on issues relevant to the FRA.[32]
The FRA produced an influential series of pamphlets, especially during the period from 1875 to 1877.[32] Thomas Wentworth Higgenson's "The Sympathy of Religions" was the most widely distributed.[31] In it, Higgenson discusses the admirable features of several non-Christian religions and says, "The name of Christianity only ceases to excite respect when it is used to represent any false or exclusive claims, or when it takes the place of the older and grander words, "Religion" and "Virtue". When we fully comprehend the sympathy of religions we shall deal with other faiths on equal terms."[33] Also well-known was Frances Abbot's "Fifty Affirmations". This collection of brief statements expressed Abbot's views about the nature of what he called pure religion, its current expression in the world's specific religions, and its future expression in a universal religion.[34]
The Radical
Samuel H. Morse edited and published The Radical, a monthly magazine, in Boston from 1865 to 1873. With about a hundred pages per issue, it represented the interests of the FRA, especially its transcendentalist wing.[35][36]
The Index
The Index: A Weekly Paper Devoted to Free Religion was founded in Toledo, Ohio in 1870 as the semi-official periodical of the FRA under the editorship of Francis Abbot. In 1873, it moved to Boston, and in 1880 it came under the direct control of the FRA.[35] Abbot resigned in 1880, after which The Index was edited by William Potter and Benjamin Underwood until the last issue was published in 1886.[37]
Sources disagree on what followed the demise of The Index. Religious Periodicals of the United States by Charles Lippy says, "The Open Court became the official publication of the Free Religious Association in 1887."[38]The Open Court was a new journal published by Edward Hegeler that focused on the intersection of religion and science. Underwood, the previous editor of The Index, was its editor.[39] However, Free Religion: An American Faith by Stow Persons, a book-length study of the free religion movement, says, "The passing of The Index left free religion without an organ of its own."[29] Persons says the subscribers to The Index were transferred to Unity, a progressive Unitarian publication or to Open Court.[29] An edition of Abbot's "Truths for the Time" that was published sometime after 1888 includes a "Notice" on the final page that quotes Abbot as saying that "Unity is the sole legitimate heir, successor and continuation of the Index."[40]
In 1872, Abbott sent a copy of his pamphlet "Truths for Our Times" to Charles Darwin. Darwin liked it and gave Abbott permission to print his endorsement of the pamphlet in The Index. In gratitude, Abbot gave Darwin a lifetime subscription to The Index. Darwin sent a donation of £25 to Abbot, but then, in 1880, he withdrew his endorsement of the pamphlet without explanation.[41]
Isaac Mayer Wise, a leading rabbi of Reform Jews and one of the first set of FRA's directors[47]
Related Research Articles
Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious movement characterized by a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists assert no creed, but instead are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth. Unitarian Universalists do not have an official, unified corpus of sacred texts. Unitarian Universalist congregations include many atheists, agnostics, deists, and theists; there are churches, fellowships, congregations, and societies around the world.
Unitarianism is a nontrinitarian branch of Christianity. Unitarian Christians affirm the unitary nature of God as the singular and unique creator of the universe, believe that Jesus Christ was inspired by God in his moral teachings and that he is the savior of humankind, but he is not equal to God himself.
Religious humanism or ethical humanism is an integration of nontheistic humanist philosophy with congregational rites and community activity that center on human needs, interests, and abilities. Religious humanists set themselves apart from secular humanists by characterizing the nontheistic humanist life stance as a non-supernatural "religion" and structuring their organization around a congregational model.
Transcendentalism is a philosophical, spiritual, and literary movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the New England region of the United States. A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the everyday. Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities.
William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton (1786–1853), one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. Channing was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. His religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists although he never countenanced their views, which he saw as extreme. His espousal of the developing philosophy and theology of Unitarianism was displayed especially in his "Baltimore Sermon" of May5, 1819, given at the ordination of the theologian and educator Jared Sparks (1789–1866) as the first minister of the newly organized First Independent Church of Baltimore.
Theodore Parker was an American transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.
William Henry Channing was an American Unitarian clergyman, writer and philosopher.
Octavius Brooks Frothingham was an American clergyman and author.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who went by the name Wentworth, was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, politician, and soldier. He was active in abolitionism in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. He was a member of the Secret Six who supported John Brown. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized black regiment, from 1862 to 1864. Following the war, he wrote about his experiences with African-American soldiers and devoted much of the rest of his life to fighting for the rights of freed people, women, and other disfranchised peoples. He is also remembered as a mentor to poet Emily Dickinson.
George Ripley was an American social reformer, Unitarian minister, and journalist associated with Transcendentalism. He was the founder of the short-lived Utopian community Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
The Universalist Church of America (UCA) was originally a Christian Universalist religious denomination in the United States. Known from 1866 as the Universalist General Convention, the name was changed to the Universalist Church of America in 1942. In 1961, it consolidated with the American Unitarian Association to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Francis Ellingwood Abbot was an American philosopher and theologian who sought to reconstruct theology in accordance with the scientific method.
The Young People's Christian Union (Y.P.C.U.), organized in 1889, was a Universalist youth group created to develop the spiritual life of young people and advance the work of the Universalist church. Soon after it was founded, the Y.P.C.U. focused its attention on missionary work. It was instrumental in the founding of new southern churches and the creation of a Post Office Mission for the distribution of religious literature.
Biblical unitarianism is a Unitarian Christian tradition whose adherents affirm the Bible as their sole authority, and from it base their beliefs that God the Father is one singular being, and that Jesus Christ is God's son but not divine. The term "biblical Unitarianism" is connected first with Robert Spears and Samuel Sharpe of the Christian Life magazine in the 1880s. It is a neologism that gained increasing currency in nontrinitarian literature during the 20th century as the Unitarian churches moved away from mainstream church traditions and, in some instances in the United States, towards merger with Universalism. It has been used since the late 19th century by conservative Christian Unitarians, and sometimes by historians, to refer to scripture-fundamentalist Unitarians of the 16th–18th centuries.
Unitarianism, as a Christian denominational family of churches, was first defined in Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania in the late 16th century. It was then further developed in England and America until the early 19th century, although theological ancestors are to be found as far back as the early days of Christianity. It matured and reached its classical form in the middle 19th century. Later historical development has been diverse in different countries.
Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham was an American Unitarian minister and pastor of the First Church of Boston from 1815 to 1850. Frothingham was opposed to Theodore Parker and the interjection of transcendentalism into the church. He also wrote sermons, hymns, and poetry.
Caroline Wells Dall was an American feminist writer, transcendentalist, and reformer. She was affiliated with the National Women's Rights Convention, the New England Women's Club, and the American Social Science Association. Her associates included Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller, as well as members of the Transcendentalist movement in Boston.
George Willis Cooke (1848–1923) was a Unitarian minister, writer, editor and lecturer. He is best known for Unitarianism in America, his history of that movement in the 19th century, and for his work on Transcendentalist writers and publications.
The First Universalist Church of Atlanta, organized in 1895, re-established a Universalist presence in Atlanta, Georgia. Initial missionary efforts in 1879 were short-lived and failed to establish a permanent presence in the city. With the explicit assistance the Young People's Christian Union, this second missionary effort enabled the Universalists to sustain their presence and construct a church building on East Harris in 1900. The Universalists occupied the church until 1918 when they merged with Atlanta's Unitarians.
↑ Affirmation 41 in "Fifty Affirmations" by Frances Potter. Reprinted on page 407 of A Documentary History of Unitarian Universalism, Volume One: From the Beginning to 1899, (2017), edited by Dan McKanan, Skinner House Books, Boston
↑ Lippy, Charles H. (1986). Religious Periodicals of the United States. Academic and Scholarly Journals. Greenwood Press. p. 253. ISBN978-0313234200
↑ Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 8: 1890–1892. Indiana University Press, 2009. pp. xxiii-xxxiv. ISBN978-0253004215
↑ "Truths for the Times" by Frances Abbot, final page. Originally published in 1872, this version of "Truths for the Times" with the Notice page was apparently printed in 1892.
↑ Browne, E. Janet, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. 2 (1996), Princeton University Press, p. 392
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
