Warwick's Unitarian Chapel

A pleasant nineteenth-century construction in the heart of medieval Warwick is the town’s Unitarian Chapel. Unitarianism claims be a 'creedless' version of Christianity which is itself, ironically, a creed. It is not a ‘church’ or religious organisation with which we at Salem Chapel would share much common ground. Its website is informative, though it pushes the bounds of credulity with one of its opening lines:

“Warwick Unitarians have been meeting in Warwick for over 375 years. Our first congregations met in 1635, during the reign of Charles 1st in the Castle grounds by kind permission of the Earl of Warwick, who was sympathetic to our cause. By 1711 we had our own premises, on the site of the present Castle Orangery…

I am certain that the puritan Earl of Warwick, Robert Rich, would not have supported a sect like the Unitarians; more likely, they were Congregational or Presbyterian, and drifted, probably in the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, into the gospel-free religious manifesto it currently espouses. Just as cars seem determined to veer off the straight road if left to their own devices, so congregations and denominations will inevitably drift into drab liberalism and soul-destroying unbelief if they do not constantly abide by the directions of God’s revealed word.

The Unitarian chapel looks pretty and compliments the attractive market town of which it is part, but the beautiful message of the gospel -that God the Father through the God the Son and by the drawing of God the Holy Spirit, still saves people from the consequences of their sins- is ignored. This good news is unlikely to be heard in any contemporary Unitarian pulpit, but I am certain it would have been the primary focus of those Warwick folk who, 375 years ago, assembled with their Earl’s blessing for their God’s worship.

"A faith for this age", its sign boldly asserts.

"The Faith for every age", replies the Gospel. 

Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:26-27

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