Word: unitarianism
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...Unitarian minister: "Bless...
Earnest John G. Gill looked like just the man to take care of the Unitarian Church in the quiet, well-kept town of Alton, 111. (pop. 32,000), on the bluffs of the Mississippi River. At Harvard, John Gill had written his Ph.D. thesis on Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the fiery Abolitionist minister and editor who was beaten to death by an Alton...
...went well until last year, when Unitarian Gill began to see local conditions in terms of black & white. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was fighting segregation in Alton's schools, and Gill was openly in the anti-segregation fight. One day 175 Negro boys & girls tried to register at five grade schools and two junior high schools. Gill organized his fellow ministers to supervise the demonstration and prevent trouble. When crosses in the Ku Klux Klan tradition were burned on the riverfront to intimidate the Negroes, Gill's pulpit denunciation, and a newspaper statement...
Last September the board of his church (one of the few Unitarian congregations which re-elects its ministers each year) voted 46 to 25 not to rehire "troublemaking" Minister Gill. The decision had nothing to do with Gill's outspoken stand on the racial issue, the board explained. But last week, after a stiff letter from the Rev. Robert Raible, president of the Unitarian Ministers' Association, the Alton church board found it advisable to pledge that 1) its ministers would never be required to consult with the church board before taking a stand on anything; 2) the practice...
...Religion? Young Philosophy Student Antoine Pelletier considers that "the principal characteristic of American Protestantism of today seems to be the complete loss of the idea and the very meaning of religion . . . Religion has given way to religiosity and belief to opinion . . . The Unitarian Church . . . hesitated, a few years ago, over whether it should define itself as 'Christian' or 'humanist' . . . One may well ask whether American Protestantism is still, in its various forms, a religion...