by Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho
published in The Moscow Pullman Daily News (July 7, 2026)
I would address my daughter as a rational being,
and guard her against a low estimation of self.
—18th Century Universalist Judith Sargent Murray
The most recent issue of the Unitarian Univeralist World contains an article about Gloster Dalton, a free Black man who, in 1779, signed the charter of the Independent Church of Christ in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was the first Universalist Church in America. The congregants believed in universal salvation, a Christian doctrine that held that everyone is saved and nobody is damned eternally.
Univeralists and Unitarians at the time identified as Christian and Bible believers, but the Independent Church of Christ was threatened with losing its charter because it had not published a statement of faith. Church members filed suit in 1783 and it was not settled in their favor until 1786.
Church member Epes Sargent formulated the winning argument based on reason not revelation. He explained that his associates did not believe in “any particular tenets or peculiar doctrines, because we conceived that all conviction must arise from evidence rationally applied to the understanding.” In rejecting the divinity of Christ and the Trinity, Unitarians applied the same theological method of choosing reason and not rigid doctrine.
The Independent Church of Christ subscribed to an egalitarian and democratic church polity. In addition to African American Dalton, the minister’s wife Judith Sargent Murray was allowed full participation in the church. The office of minister, however, was barred to her. It would take another 80 years for Olympia Brown to be ordained as the first woman Universalist minister, the first woman of any denomination.
In 1790, Murray published “On the Equality of the Sexes” two years before the more famous English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft released “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Murray published over 100 essays and in them she was particularly critical of parents who “pointed their daughters towards marriage and economic dependence.” She was a strong proponent of equal opportunity for the education of girls.
During this period, Murray was active in Republican Womanhood, a movement led by Abigail Adams. Just like Murray, Adams was a feminist. Here she chided her husband John: “Men of sense abhor those customs which treat us only as the servants of your sex.”
Just like the Universalists, Adams affirmed the unity of God by using reason alone. Writing to her son John Quincy, she rejects the Trinity: “There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.”
Thomas Jefferson once predicted that by the end of the 19th Century most Americans would become Unitarians. I’m sure Universalists hoped that most would also embrace universal salvation by that time.
In 1831, Episcopal Minister Bird Wilson had already, reluctantly, acknowledged this possibility: “Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.” Please note the implication that Unitarianism was not actually a religion, a view held by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who has just eliminated the religion of many founders from his acceptable chaplains’ list.
Alas, Jefferson’s prophecy was not to be. The Great Awakening was already under way, and evangelical enthusiasm soon replaced religious rationalism. It was our nation’s great fortune, however, that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by Unitarians and not evangelicals. Even orthodox Christians who ratified a Constitution with no mention of God were astute enough to realize that our government must, to avoid the religious wars of Europe, be secular and religiously neutral in nature.
Jefferson was mistaken in his belief that most people choose to be religious by reasoning alone. There are powerful affective drivers in religious belief, and one could say that the heart reigns supreme in these matters.
The failure of Jefferson’s prediction appeared in stark relief when, on May 12, 1961, a mere 141,685 Unitarians and Universalists (UUs) merged to become the Unitarian Universalist Association. That number has now climbed to 1.1 million, but Jeffersonian rationalism was still apparent in a 1989 survey that showed that 75% of UUs went to church for “intellectual stimulation.”
Since then, there is now much more “heart” in UU churches, primarily under the influence of women clergy, who now comprise 57% of the UU ministry. After a successful 14-year tenure, where she preached from a Unitarian pulpit with a LOVE sign on it, Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Stevens will be leaving for a North Carolina church. With her heart-filled sermons and powerful social justice outreach, she will be sorely missed not only by her grateful congregants but also by the Moscow community at large.
Gier is celebrating 250 years of religious liberty in America. Read his other articles on this topic at bit.ly/3OPnPwR. Email him at ngier006∂gmail.com.