The Door We Held Open: Unitarians, Ecumenism, and the Irony of Exclusion
There is a strange and rather laughable irony in the history of Christian unity in Britain. Unitarians, who have often been treated as awkward cousins at the Christian family gathering, were among those who helped create the very spirit of openness, conscience, and religious liberty that later ecumenical movements would claim as their own. And yet, when the official structures of “Churches Together” were reshaped in 1990, Unitarians found themselves outside the door. Not because they had abandoned the cause of unity. But because the doorway had been narrowed. To understand the irony properly, we might begin in Liverpool, with William Roscoe. Roscoe was one of the great figures of Liverpool’s liberal dissenting tradition: lawyer, historian, poet, art collector, abolitionist, and briefly Member of Parliament. He was also a prominent Unitarian, a member of Renshaw Street Chapel, and a man whose faith was not a narrow possession but a moral force. Ullet Road’s own account ...
