Unitarianism – one God
In its earliest days of revolt from Catholicism and orthodoxy, Unitarians emphasized the humanity of Jesus and the essential oneness of God. No trinity. This heresy brought on the wrath of other Protestants such as John Calvin, who had the early Unitarian Michael Servetus burned at the stake in Geneva.
Over the years, Unitarian and Universal thinking has moved increasingly to emphasis on a spirit of search for truth, an avoidance of dogma, the inherent value of each individual and the right --indeed the necessity--for each individual to find ultimate religious reality within. This has fostered a wide tolerance for and interest in studying faiths of peoples through the world.
Each Unitarian Universalist church is autonomous, and there can found a wide range of practices and commitments. Throughout history, however, this "Free Religious Faith" puts faith in the individual's ability to pursue the good life without having to subscribe to an arbitrary formula.
Historically, we came out of the Protestant Reformation. In the 15th and 16th Centuries, the ideas that came to be called Unitarian spread to Poland and England, and then New England, eventually forming the American Unitarian Association.
Universalism – no Hell
The name Universalism refers to the belief in Universal salvation—that in the end, all souls will be reconciled with God, and no-one will be left in eternal torment. As modern Universalists like to say, “God is not a sadist.”
A Frenchman (George DeBennevllle) and an Englishmen (John Murray) founded the Universalist Church in the late 18th Century, in America. American Hosea Ballou established the theological grounding for the new faith with his sermon “Treatise on Atonement.”
Universalism thrived in the 19th Century but weakened in the 20th, largely because so many Americans stopped taking the threat of Hellfire seriously.
In 1961, the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America merged to become the Unitarian-Universalist Association.
