British and Foreign Unitarian Association
Abbreviation | BFUA; the Unitarians |
---|---|
Formation | 26 May 1825 as an amalgamation of the Unitarian Book Society for literature, The Unitarian Fund for mission work, and the Unitarian Association for civil rights |
Dissolved | 1928 by becoming part of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches |
Type | religious organization |
Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
Location |
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The British and Foreign Unitarian Association was the major
Dates
The British and Foreign Unitarian Association was founded on 26 May 1825, at a meeting chaired by Thomas Gibson, father of Thomas Field Gibson.[1] This was the same day as the American Unitarian Association was formed. (The AUA is one of two bodies that merged in 1961 to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.) The History of Essex Hall, written in 1959 by Mortimer Rowe, the Secretary (i.e. chief executive) of the General Assembly for its first twenty years, claims this was entirely coincidental.[2][3]
Publishing
Under the impetus of Theophilus Lindsey, the first minister of the Essex Street Chapel, and his colleague John Disney, in 1791 the "first organized denominational Unitarian society" was formed, with the cumbersome name of The Unitarian Society for promoting Christian Knowledge and the Practice of Virtue by the Distribution of Books.[4]
The earliest notable publication was
In March 1876
Mission work
The Unitarian Fund "for the Promotion of Unitarianism by means of Popular Preaching" was founded in 1806, largely by laypeople. It gave money to congregations that needed it[5] and employed Richard Wright as an itinerant missionary. Foreign Secretaries of the Association included Sir John Bowring, till 1832, then Edward Tagart.
Civil rights
It took about 150 years from the
People associated with it
Presidents and chairmen of annual meeting
- 1829 Thomas Gibson, father of Thomas Field Gibson (also 1844 and 1845)
- John Ashton Yates, also 1856[9]
- 1850 Thomas Field Gibson
- 1869–70 Samuel Sharpe
- 1898-99 Herford Brook (1830–1903)
- 1918 Richard Durning Holt[10]
- 1921 Charles Sydney Jones
Secretaries
- 1834 James Yates(1789–1871)
- 1835-1842 Robert Aspland
- 1842-1858 Edward Tagart (1804–1858)
- 1859-1868 Robert Brook Aspland, son of Robert Aspland
- 1869-1876 Robert Spears
- 1892-1921 William Copeland Bowie (1855–1936)
Notable members
References
- ^ "Thomas Gibson & Thomas Field Gibson". Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
- ^ (Rowe 1959, chpt. 3)
- ^ "By a happy coincidence, in those days of slow posts, no transatlantic telegraph, telephone or wireless, our American cousins, in complete ignorance as to the details of what was afoot, though moving towards a similar goal, founded the American Unitarian Association on precisely the same day - May 26, 1825."
- ^ (Rowe 1959, chpt. 3)
- ^ (Rowe 1959, chpt. 3)
- ^ Dudley Julius Medley, A Student's Manual of English Constitutional History. Sixth Edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1925), p. 653.
- ^ Maclear J.F. Church and state in the modern age: a documentary history 1995
- ^ (Rowe 1959, chpt. 3)
- ^ Bebbington, D. W. (April 2009). "Unitarian Members of Parliament in the Nineteenth Century — A Catalogue" (PDF). Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society. 24 (3): 54. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-29. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
- ^ Read, J. Gordon (2004). "Holt, Alfred (1829–1911), engineer and shipowner". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 2017-10-11. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
Bibliography
- Rowe, Mortimer (1959), The History of Essex Hall, Lindsey Press, archived from the original on 2012-01-16
External links
Further reading
- Liberty and Religion, by Dr. S. H. Mellon. A centenary history of the BFUA, published 1925.