UU = Tolerance. We Knew That. UU also = Courage.

I had just posted to this blog a week before about the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and its cultural outreach. I think I mentioned its social justice work and how one member artist in particular managed to merge art with social justice. And that made me think about what makes Unitarianism special: its spiritual synthesis of beauty and art with justice and humanity. What a unique faith.

No, it is not a traditional faith. It never was.

Unitarianism was one of the earliest movements of the Reformation, and its history is old and really interesting. Michael Servetus is the Latinized named for Miguel Serveto, a Spanish theologian and a real Renaissance man in the literal sense of the word. Also an astronomer, mathematician, legal scholar, and meteorologist, he was a keen enough anatomist to have figured out pulmonary circulation and written a treatise on it. (No wonder so many smart people - professors and the like - go to the UU Church.) He didn’t exactly found a church, because he disliked dogma. He especially disliked the theology of the Trinity, and by several writings he more or less established the Unitarian philosophy. Of course he was eventually burned to death as a heretic by Calvinists in Geneva, in 1553.

The Unitarian idea was controversial but popular among educated people in Europe. So many controversial ideas were floating around during that time, you could get away with all kinds of heresy before getting killed. And Unitarians were targets, that’s for sure. But they were brave. Servetus knew he was writing and promoting official heresy, but he didn’t care. It needed to be told! And he knew the ultimate penalty, and he faced it.

I am (partly) ethnically Hungarian and proud to note the role my ancestral country played in nurturing Unitarianism during its infancy. Hungary before the counter-reformation was a boiling pot for any kooky Protestant idea. I think any UU today would admit that if any religious outfit champions the kooky, they do. They always have. It’s part of the process of being rational and tolerant. In 1565 the Reformation in Hungary was in full swing. Ferenc David was its champion, and he was Unitarian. He helped foster the 1568 Diet of Torda which established freedom of religion throughout Hungary. Folks, in 1568, this was huge. Throughout Europe people were being burned for being Catholic or Protestant depending on the reigning religion; it had never occurred to anybody that you could actually have more than one religion and everybody gets to stay alive. The Unitarians were the first people to come up with that idea. Anyway, the Diet of Torda effectively recognized Unitarianism as a legitimate faith and established the Unitarian Church in Hungary.

Celebrity Unitarians throughout history include: Presidents John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and Howard Taft, suffragist Susan B. Anthony, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Horatio Alger, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin (of course), Florence Nightingale - that’s just the really, really famous historical figures, but I’ll throw in two lessers: Rod Serling and Hungarian composer Bela Bartok.

Charleston, South Carolina is my favorite American city. Its beauty and grace are unparalleled anywhere in this country. And the Unitarian Church of Charleston is worth a look. I have seen great cathedrals in Europe, but this lovely, graceful church in Charleston surpasses any other holy place I have visited in its vivacity and gentleness of spirit. Even a tour of its old graveyard, full of the bodies of souls who moved on over 200 years ago, seems more blissful than doleful. And when you browse the Charleston UU web site, be heartened by their call for finding peace for the Unitarian community of Knoxville.

And this Unitarian community of Knoxville, the day after a tragedy that cost two brilliant lives - including a man who gave his life to save others - and caused other brave men to risk their lives to stop more bloodshed, the day that brought sorrowful condolences from all over the world: They put on their children’s show at the Presbyterian Church next door, the church descended from Calvinists, that had reached out immediately after the carnage to embrace Unitarian children who needed shelter. When you think people haven’t changed so much, or that they’ve changed for the worse, you think of times like this, and you have real hope about tomorrow.