unitarians deny the deity of Christ. They believe that only the Father should be worshipped, but their attitude to Jesus varies, reflecting their application of reasoned individual judgement to the Bible, and their reluctance to formulate creeds. Their views developed with the Reformation, notably through Michael Servetus (1511–53), the physician burned in Geneva, Bernardino Ochino (1487–1564), the friar turned Lutheran whom Cranmer invited to England in 1547, and Lelio and Fausto Sozzini. By the 17th cent. they had communities in Poland, Hungary, and England, where John Biddle's (1615–62) XII Arguments qualify him as the father of English unitarianism. They grew congregationally in the 18th cent. from presbyterian, independent, and general baptist churches, although avowed unitarianism only became legal in 1813. Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) and Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808) were that century's outstanding unitarians; the former had been an independent and the latter an Anglican clergyman. With no co-ordinating body before the British and Foreign Unitarian Association of 1825, superseded in 1928 by the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, they none the less produced a distinctive social, political, and intellectual culture, represented by such families as the Martineaus, Chamberlains, Wicksteeds, and Holts, and such institutions as Manchester College, Oxford. In Scotland, where Thomas Aikenhead's mockery of the trinity led to Britain's last execution for blasphemy (1697), their corporate existence dates from 1776; in Ireland their strength lies with the non-subscribing presbyterians originating in the early 18th cent. and reinforced after 1829.

Clyde Binfield