Ask CLiF any questions you have about religion or living
a good life.
Who was William Ellery Channing?
—(No name given)
Dear Person With the Great Question,
This was, in fact, such a great question that I decided to answer it my June REsources column for the CLF publication Quest . But since you asked, you get to read the answer before it ever comes out in Quest . Here what I wrote (at least most of it):
William Ellery Channing didn't start of as someone whom you would expect to have radical ideas about religion. He was born in 1780 into a wealthy New England family, and went to a Congregational church where the minister expressed the harsh view of human nature that was typical of the time.
One Sunday William's father took him to hear a visiting preacher. Overwhelmed by the fiery sermon, William felt “a curse seemed to rest on the earth and darkness and horror to veil the face of nature.” His father seemed to agree with everything the preacher said about how most people were sinners who would be met with the horrible tortures of hell after they died. William assumed that when they got home they would fall on their knees and pray to be saved from impending doom. Instead, the family ate their usual meal, and then his father sat by the fire, puffed his pipe and read the newspaper. William didn't know what to think: Did his family not really believe what the preacher said? Did they believe, but not take it seriously?
Well, William grew up to become someone who took thinking about religion very seriously. Eventually he went to Harvard to study to become a minister. While he was a student, Channing wrote down some thoughts which guided him in his studies throughout his life, and came to guide Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists down the road. He wrote: “It is always best to think first for ourselves on any subject…. The quantity of knowledge thus gained may be less, but the quality will be superior. Truth received on authority, or acquired without labor, makes but a feeble impression.” Or, in the simpler language that we might use today: “Think for yourself, rather than just accepting what other people tell you. You might learn less, but it will mean more.”
By the early 1800s there was a battle of beliefs happening inside the New England Congregational churches. Some people held to the traditional Calvinist beliefs that people are basically born bad—or at least deeply messed up—and that only a few people are destined for salvation in heaven. These conservative Congregationalists also believed that Jesus was essentially the same as God. The liberal Congregationalists had a more optimistic view of people, and thought that people could become better and better through education and good works. They also tended to believe that Jesus was a very special and important teacher, but that his importance was because of his message, rather than because his death paid for the sins of humanity. Over time it became more and more clear that the conservative churches didn't want to have anything to do with the liberal ones.
Finally, in 1819, William Ellery Channing gave sermon, called Unitarian Christianity, which set out the beliefs of these liberal Christians, claimed the name “Unitarian” (which mostly people had used as an insult), and paved the way for the creation of a new religious association. Channing said that people had the ability to think and reason, and that they should use this ability just as much when reading the Bible as in reading any other book. He said that the idea of the trinity—that there are three parts to God: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Ghost—doesn't really make any sense, and gets in the way of the real purpose of religion, which is to help people be better human beings. In fact, he said that the job of human beings is to become as much like God as possible: loving, kind, generous and fair. He said that people aren't basically bad, and that with effort we can keep getting better and better.
Channing's Unitarian Christianity sermon was printed and read by tens of thousands of people, and he continued to work for many years as a minister and an author, stating in beautiful language beliefs that are still held by many Unitarian Universalists today. Although Unitarianism, and eventually Unitarian Universalism, has changed a great deal over the last 200 years, Channing really helped to launch us as a distinct religion of thinking, questioning, caring people.
Thanks for asking!
—CLiF (aka Lynn Ungar, minister for lifespan learning)
