Theophilus Lindsey

On this day in 1773, the Anglican clergyman Theophilus Lindsey preached his farewell sermon to the congregation he served in Caterick, Yorkshire. He explained that he could no longer in good faith serve as an Anglican priest. His theology had shifted over the years and he was now a convinced Unitarian.

The back story is interesting enough. The Anglican church as a national church was of necessity comprehensive. From the beginning of the Elizabethan settlement there were tensions between the Calvinists and the Latitudinarian liberals and the Catholic inclined. (hence the old saw about the great variety of Anglicanisms: low and lazy, broad and hazy and high and crazy…) Nonetheless they held together through a combination of devotion to the episcopal model of ecclesiastical polity and at least a nominal devotion to the Calvinist Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. Well, that and state support…)

But increasingly the Thirty-Nine Articles stuck in the craw of all but the Calvinists. People were required to subscribe to them not only to ordain, but to graduate from university. It appears this subscription could be entirely nominal, no one appears to have been checked to see it they held their fingers crossed as they assented to the various articles. But the hypocrisy of the subscription seemed to anger even more people.

Finally a number of academics and clergy, Theophilus Lindsey being among their leaders, presented to Parliament what has come to be called the Feathers Tavern Petition (because it was framed at the Feathers Tavern). It called for a relaxation of the requirement of subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. Two hundred and fifty clergy and academics signed the document, including some of the great luminaries of the age. In February 1772 Parliament refused even to receive the petition. A second attempt later was met with the same disdain.

Which would lead by the next year to the farewell sermon by Mr Lindsey.

And a year after that he would open a chapel at Essex Street in London, the first religious gathering in England to be advertised as “Unitarian.” Among the notables at that inaugural
service were his friend the Presbyterian minister and noted scientist Joseph Priestly as well as the American envoy who shared some scientific interests as well as being intrigued by religious liberals, Benjamin Franklin.

The Essex Street congregation would become the first gathering of what would eventually become the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.