How Rev. William Ellery Channing’s 1819 Radical Sermon Led to Modern-Day Unitarian Universalism

It was the mic drop of its time.

On May 5, 1819, in a much-anticipated sermon at a new liberal church in Baltimore, Maryland, Rev. William Ellery Channing seized a pejorative used by New England conservatives—“Unitarian”—and turned it on its head. His sermon “Unitarian Christianity” claimed the word and named a liberal faith that rejected the commanding trinitarian God of Calvinism in favor of an understanding of Jesus as human, not God, among other radical—and ultimately, deeply influential—ideas.

“The title is very important. He’s embracing the name Unitarian … which had been flung at [the liberal faction] as an insult,” explains Rev. Dr. Nicole Kirk, the Rev. Dr. J. Frank and Alice Schulman Chair in Unitarian Universalist History at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago. “From the get-go, it’s a huge signal that he’s going to say something.”

And did he ever. In the ninety minutes of what’s commonly called the “Baltimore Sermon,” Channing laid out tenets of the new faith: the unity of God in contrast to the idea of a Trinity; the use of reason in understanding religion and interpreting the Bible; a concept of Jesus as human rather than human and divine; a rejection of Calvinism’s idea of depraved humanity where salvation was reserved for a select few.

The wealthy men who a year earlier had established what’s now called First Unitarian Church of Baltimore knew exactly what they were doing when they invited Channing to preach at the ordination of its first minister, Rev. Jared Sparks. They made sure Channing’s seminal message would reach as many people as possible, inviting many leading liberal clergy and arranging for the sermon to be quickly printed and disseminated around the country and in Europe.

“It was known this would be a major moment,” Kirk says, and the news spread fast: On Channing’s journey from Boston to Baltimore, he’d stopped in New York City, where he spoke to a small crowd gathered in the drawing room of a home. Only a month later, when he again stopped in New York, crowds were so large a hall in a medical school was rented, and Channing filled it three times. His sermon was influential in Great Britain, Transylvania, and India, Kirk adds, and, six years later, led to the formation of the American Unitarian Association.

More than 200 years later, UUs are preparing to gather for General Assembly 2025, a multiplatform event that will be held both online and in Baltimore, a city with deep historical importance for UUs. With Channing’s historic sermon in mind, we talked with Baltimore-area UUs to learn what their congregations are proclaiming about our faith today, two centuries later.

Channing’s Enduring Influence on Unitarian Universalism

“Channing in still shaping us today,” insists Kirk, who will give the Sunday morning worship sermon at GA 2025. “He is still a conversation partner.”

Kirk sees a through-line from Channing’s early preaching right up to the latest expressions of Unitarian Universalist values. In his second-most-famous sermon, “Likeness to God,” Channing in 1838 argued that humans are made in the image of God, which later led him to the idea of the divine spark in each of us, Kirk explains. That “later leads us to the inherent worth and dignity of everyone”— one of the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism that were adopted in 1984—which, in turn, “leads us to Love at the Center,” a core tenet of the statement of UU Values adopted at GA 2024, she says.

“It’s funny because when we talk about Love at the Center, we lean heavily on the Universalist side” of the faith, notes Kirk. “But I think we can equally pull on our Unitarian side, because how else do you talk about humanity’s relationship to the divine? If you are made in someone’s image, that is love, and to speak of the divine spark in each of us is love.” (The Unitarian Universalist Association resulted from the consolidation in 1961 of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America.)

Moreover, she adds, “Channing’s talk about humanity’s potential instead of depravity could be interpreted as love, just not expressed in the same way. And to celebrate reason—which has its problematic edges—is to have faith in human beings’ ability to study scripture for themselves and find their way to meaning”—which remains key to Unitarian Universalism today.

Rev. Karyn Marsh is developmental minister at First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, where the Baltimore Sermon took place, and which is one of the oldest continuously operating Unitarian churches in the country. Marsh agrees that Channing’s words continue to offer guidance as UUs grapple with identity. “Channing did a very important thing: self-definition. It was a powerful moment and inspiring, and it was really critical for the flourishing of Unitarianism,” she says.

Now, UUs again are examining their identity, and Marsh is happy to be part of that process. Among other things, she is pushing back against the idea that Unitarian Universalism is not a religion, which she sometimes hears among some UUs. “No, we really are a religion, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” says Marsh. The word religion comes from a Latin word meaning “to bind together,” she says, adding, “Religion really is anything that binds a group together. With my sermons I’m beginning to address all these issues of identity—and I’m reminding us that the past is part of the present.”

These days, First Unitarian Baltimore is in a developmental period of examining and determining its identity, and for that reason, “I’ve been preaching things connecting us back to our history,” Marsh says. More broadly, just as the Baltimore church was essential to the birth of American Unitarianism, “I think we can do it again, be a part of rebirth and renewal of Unitarian Universalist identity. We can begin to identify who we are, just like Channing did more than 200 years ago.”

Rev. Clare Petersberger, minister at Towson UU Church in Lutherville, Maryland, says, “I think we’re saying, this is how we can gather in community where we need not think alike to love alike, but we share these common values with Love at the Center. I don’t know that he’d disagree with that; it’s just that the language has changed over the past 200 years.”

Unitarian Universalism Evolves as a Living Tradition

Should Channing return today, “I don’t know that the members and friends [of the congregation] would talk about their likeness to God,” Petersberger says, “but I think he would see people who are seeking to become the best people and best community they can be.” The congregation has a core commitment to a wide range of social justice efforts, including many in the city of Baltimore, which is about half an hour away. For one, it has a partnership with Bridge Maryland, a faith-based advocacy organization that Petersberger notes is primarily Black-led, where the congregation is supporting water equity, affordable housing, and after-school programs.

Valerie Hsu, executive director of the UU Congregation of Columbia, Maryland, sees parallels between Channing’s sermon and what UUs face today. “The sermon drew a line in the sand between orthodox factions and a new imagination of what a liberal expression of faith can be,” she says. “And 206 years later, as GA is coming to town, we can see the same throughlines of reason and faith in our current day expression of UUism. In some ways I think we are drawing a new line in the sand, in positive ways.”

“For the last thirty or forty years, Unitarian Universalism has tried to be a big-tent, catch-all-people sort of thing,” Hsu continues. “But in recent years we’ve tried to become explicitly antiracist, anti-oppressive, multicultural and to make that a core piece of our identity. By design, we need to clarify where we stand on many important, pressing issues of our time. Channing knew where he stood on reason and faith and the personhood of Christ, and he was willing to go there and draw that line. With our Article II revisions, I’ve heard people say [the faith] has become too political, too progressive, and I say, maybe that’s by design, maybe that’s our line in the sand. That’s one parallel I see between Channing and where we are today.”

Jen Hayashi is a retired geriatrician and former president of the UU Congregation of Columbia, Maryland. Describing herself as “one of many UUs who is kind of allergic to religion,” she says she defines Unitarian Universalism today by “what I don’t want it to be”: “people who want it to be a country club and we all gaze at our navels and develop our spiritual loveliness, and the rest of the world can do what it wants. That is not my Unitarian Universalism.”

She’s encouraged by the explicitly antiracist and liberatory work of the UUA of recent years. “I know it’s a different UUA today, and it looks to me like they’ve made a fair amount of progress in the last decade, and yet they’ve encountered so much resistance, because, like everything else, it was a faith built by old white men,” Hayashi says. Still, she notes that the Columbia congregation recently changed its mission statement to expressly state that it “embodies love in action, and that is true, and that to me is what Unitarian Universalism is: love that shows up publicly and loudly—and quietly—whatever is needed to support the people who need it the most.” The new mission statement, Hayashi says, “really does give hope for me and my congregation.”

Eleanor Hughes, board president of the Towson congregation, admits she finds Channing’s sermon difficult to read. “It’s very long, very early-nineteenth century preaching of unity over Trinity, and the part about going out into the world is very short and it’s at the end,” she says, with a laugh. And yet, she says, that part is what is most important to her as a UU.

“Baltimore is a very good place to think long and hard about the inherent dignity and worth of all people. I think about that every day,” says Hughes. “The challenge, as UUs, is nurturing hope, recognizing the problems, and not getting weighed down by them but continuing to work.”