unitarians

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. 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. With no co-ordinating body before the British and Foreign Unitarian Association of 1825, they none the less produced a distinctive social, political, and intellectual culture, represented by such families as the Martineaus, Chamberlains, Wicksteeds, and Holts.