Kendal's Unit: Arian Chapel

Kendal Unitarian Chapel is a fine, eighteenth-century dissenting meeting house. I was delighted that its doors had been left open on the weekday afternoon upon which I had called. It is in good condition and is evidently well cared for, with lovely gardens front and back. Although a Victorian-looking ‘school room’ had a damaged ceiling, the rest looked as good as the day it had been constructed back in 1720.

Unitarians are a religious group which seem to chime well with the climate of contemporary Britain, though their small and ageing congregations do not generally seem to benefit from this. They claim to be characterised by ‘freedom, reason and tolerance’, welcoming and endorsing those of all faith and none, etc, seeing the value and authenticity of all spiritual concepts and claims to truth. Yet they are not entirely consistent in this regard. One thing that united and unites all unitarians is a rejection of the trinity, belief in the triune God. Our friends at Kendal, for instance, in their official church history, claim:

‘It is generally accepted that the doctrine of the Trinity was not recognised by the early Church but was developed by theologians in the first few centuries’

This is hogwash. Even if one presently rejects Christ’s deity, it is clear that it is a belief held by many people in the very first years of Christianity. So Unitarians will speak of tolerance, the validity of all spiritual ideas and all paths leading to God, but they close ranks when you propose that Jesus Christ was God manifested in the flesh; that is a step too far, that is a ‘dogma’ to which one must not subscribe. All people, religious or secular, Western or Eastern, who speak of pluralism in those gentle, soothing tones will find the Lord Jesus Christ an inconvenient stumbling block and intractable obstacle to their sweet-sounding sentiments:

“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” John 3:36

Furthermore, Unitarian chapels were often founded by orthodox Congregationalist or Presbyterian puritans, whose heirs drifted into unbelief. Again, Kendal's chapel’s website states, while discussing its original seventeenth-century foundation:

Although its theological leanings are not clear, it is known that it never imposed any doctrinal tests or creed on its ministers or members, who were devoted to the promotion of religious liberty and social welfare.

I suspect that their leanings were perfectly clear, and they had greater devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ than to their own freedom and others’ social welfare. There is a danger of present religious groups projecting their own preoccupations onto their predecessors; I read one liberal Methodist (need I still use that adjective?) describe John Wesley’s preaching objectives as the promotion of gender and economic equality. Funny, that, because in those sermons of his that I have read, he speaks much of the Lord Jesus Christ and His atoning death.

Those at Kendal who coo about ‘affirming One Creation, One World, One Humanity and one Spirit of Life’ concurrently deny the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, just like the old Arians. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun; there is certainly nothing new in denying the Son.