American Unitarians were not onlookers to the drama of
Protestantism in the nineteenth century, but active participants in
its central conundrum: biblical authority. Unitarians sought what
other Protestants sought, which was to establish the Bible as the
primary authority, only to find that the task was not so simple as
they had hoped. This book revisits the story of nineteenth century
American Unitarianism, proposing that Unitarianism was founded and
shaped by the twin hopes of maintaining biblical authority and
committing to total free inquiry. This story fits into the larger
narrative of Protestantism, which, this book argues, has been
defined by a deep devotion to the singular authority of the Bible
(sola scriptura) and, conversely, a troubling ambivalence as to how
such authority should function. How, in other words, can a book
serve as a source of authority? This work traces the greater
narrative of biblical authority in Protestantism through the story
of four main Unitarian figures: William Ellery Channing, Andrews
Norton, Theodore Parker, and Frederic Henry Hedge. All four
individuals played a central role, at different times, in shaping
Unitarianism, and in determining how exactly religious authority
functioned in their nascent denomination. Besides these central
figures, the book goes both backward, examining the evolution of
biblical authority from the late medieval period in Europe to the
early nineteenth century in America, and forward, exploring the
period of Unitarian experimentation of religious authority in the
late nineteenth century. The book also brings the book firmly into
the present, exploring how questions about the Bible and religious
authority are being answered today by contemporary Unitarian
Universalists. Overall, this book aims to bring the American
Unitarians firmly back into the historical and historiographical
conversation, not as outliers, but as religious people deeply
committed to solving the Protestant dilemma of religious authority.
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