Honouring our Past, Building our Future: Reflections on the 128th Anniversary of Chorlton Unitarians

The first meeting of the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Unitarian Church congregation took place on 17 October 1890.  At first there was no church building and no minister. The congregation met for worship in the Masonic Lodge on High Lane (now converted into houses).  The church building opened for public worship on 9 February 1901, with a service led by Rev. Copeland Bowie, Minister at Southwark, and Secretary of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association.

The description of the original church building in 'The Unitarian Heritage: An Architectural Survey' by Graham and Judy Hague, 1986, reads:
“Chorlton-cum-Hardy Unitarian Church, Wilbraham Road, 1900. Congregation founded 1890 as a missionary effort by the Manchester District Association of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. Picturesque, half-timbered; gabled facade with bay window over full-width porch. Steeply pitched roof with small spire. Set in wooded grounds, approached through Art Nouveau gates. Interior plain, design inconsistent with exterior. Organ dated 1856.”

Sadly, our original church building succumbed to dry rot and had to be demolished in 1987.  Our current church building was created from the old Sunday school building.

The congregation was founded to provide a Unitarian presence in the rapidly expanding district of Chorlton. In the second half of the nineteenth century Chorlton expanded from a small village to a suburb of Manchester, growing from 146 houses in 1851 to over 3,300 in 1909.  The growth of Chorlton was facilitated by the provision of public transport, which made it easier for people to live in Chorlton and commute to work in the city of Manchester. A daily horse drawn bus service began in 1864 between Chorlton and Manchester, followed by the opening of the railway station in 1880.

As the population of Chorlton grew, so did religious diversity, and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the building of many churches, of which the Unitarian Church was just one.  Between 1873 and 1909 at least ten different churches were built, including Methodist, Primitive Methodist, Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Unitarian.

Unitarianism also expanded in the nineteenth century. After the repeal of the Trinity Act in 1813 it was no longer illegal to deny the Trinity. Unitarianism began to expand and consolidate into a distinct denomination. In 1910 there were 372 congregations in the UK, a growth of 33% in 50 years.

In the nineteenth century Unitarianism was of course still positioned firmly within liberal Christianity, using biblical interpretation to justify its conclusions about the unity of God, the lack of original sin and other Unitarian teachings. This is illustrated in a publication of 1883 by Robert Spears entitled Unitarian Handbook of Scriptural Illustrations and Expositions.

James Freeman Clarke, an American Unitarian who lived from 1810 to 1888, summarised Unitarian teaching in five points: The fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation by character, and the continuity of human development in all worlds, or the progress of mankind onward and upward forever. This became a popular summary of the Unitarian faith in both the US and UK until well into the twentieth century. After the two world wars, human progress onward and upward seemed overly optimistic. Church attendance declined across all denominations.

Since the mid twentieth century the cornerstones of Unitarian faith have been encapsulated as the values of freedom, reason and tolerance. A non-credal tradition, Unitarianism has been able to reposition itself as pluralistic or multi-faith in today's postmodern society. As a result, the late nineteenth century Unitarian may not have recognised much of the content of our worship today, but they would certainly have recognised our continued commitment to social justice, and Unitarians throughout our history have held dear our core values of freedom, reason and tolerance.

Mission is not a word we use much in Unitarianism today. It has uncomfortable colonial connotations – Europeans preaching the gospel of Christian salvation and 'civilisation' to indigenous colonised peoples. Unitarians did not generally take part in such missionary activity, although they did launch a mission in India. However, the only successful Unitarian Christian communities that have grown in India are those begun by native Indians rather than planted from foreign missions.

Back in Britain, the heartlands of Unitarian growth were in the rapidly expanding textile manufacturing towns and cities of north west England, where thousands now lived in poverty, bad sanitation and poor health. Unitarians founded 'Domestic Missions', which engaged in social reforms, including education, factory legislation and public health, as well as teaching liberal Christianity.

In 1854 the Unitarian Home Missionary Board was founded for the training of Unitarian ministers to serve the urban poor. The Board evolved into the Home Missionary College in 1889, only dropping the label "missionary" in 1926 and becoming simply Unitarian College Manchester.

The word mission is retained in some of our district association titles – North and East Lancashire Unitarian Mission, and Merseyside and District Missionary Association, for example. The Manchester District Association's 'Domestic Mission' still gives small grants to community projects in the city and surrounding area.

How might we understand Unitarian mission today? There are three aspects to a contemporary liberal Christian understanding of mission:
Being – community (how we are as a church)
Saying – evangelism (how we tell people what we offer)
Doing – social action (how we live our faith out in the world)

Over the next few months we will be considering the being, saying and doing of how we understand our community purpose and our vision for the future, with a view to agreeing a new mission statement for our congregation...

Congregational Covenant
May we honour our past.
May we live fully our present.
May we build our future, living our shared purpose:
To be a welcoming spiritual community of open minds and open hearts
To nurture one another
To work for justice
And to care for the earth.
Thus do we covenant with each other:
To dwell together in peace, and to help one another seek truth, meaning, love and deep connection.

Lotus Window in Chorlton Unitarian Church