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The Pilgrim Tercentenary And Theological Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

John Wright Buckham
Affiliation:
Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California

Extract

The approaching tercentenary of the founding of Plymouth incites, not to say compels, a review of the remarkable developments and departures from the doctrines of the fathers that have taken place in these three hundred years and calls for a conscientious consideration of what these changes ought to lead to in theological and ecclesiastical readjustments. It is a task which overawes as well as invites and one in which there is need of wide coöperation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1918

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References

1 The treatment of William Pynchon was a marked exception.

2 See Williston Walker; Congregationalists (American Church History Series), p. 160.

3 Ibid. p. 162.

4 This was quite correctly though not quite amicably argued by the Unitarians. The claim provoked resentment, even denial, because converted into capital for controversy.

5 Benjamin W. Bacon: Theodore Thornton Munger, p. 345.

6 “No one, I am sure, can overlook the immense moral gain which has taken place through the transfer of thought in so large degree from speculation to sober inquiry.” William J. Tucker; Idealism in Education; Public-mindedness, p. 314.

7 Horace Bushnell, p. 38.

8 Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, p. 34.

9 The Christ of Today, p. 37.

10 Cooke: Unitarianism in America, p. 157.

11 The Transient and Permanent in Christianity.

12 While Unitarianism, through the fear of dogmatic systemism, has been hesitant about launching theological systems, and thus has contributed less to the science of theology than it might otherwise have done, it has never lost interest in the intellectual apprehension of religion. The one outstanding text-book in theology produced by American Unitarianism, Professor C. C. Everett's posthumous Theism and the Christian Faith, is characterized by learning, philosophic judgment, and breadth, and, although of the Neo-Hegelian school modified by Schleiermacher, deliberately presents the theistic doctrine of God as well as the absoluteness of Christianity.

13 Fenn, Dean W. W.; The Religious History of New England. Harvard University Press (1917), p. 111.Google Scholar

14 Unitarianism: Its Origin and History, p. 156. (Italics mine.)

15 Reason in Religion, p. 238; quoted by Charles A. Allen, in Unitarianism of Today, p. 11.

16 Religious History of New England, p. 132.

17 Op. cit., p. 129.

18 Unitarianism of Today, pp. 30–31.

19 Christie, Francis A.; Unitarianism. American Journal of Theology, October, 1917, p. 555.Google Scholar