The church I served before coming to Providence has one of the most distinctive pulpits in the Unitarian Universalist denomination. It is hand carved oak, and quite large. around the outside there are a set of three quarter carved statuettes demonstrating the evolution of the Christian faith. It starts with Paul, moves to Augustine, then Luther followed by Wycliff (or maybe its the other way around) then John Biddle and finally the flower of all that is good, true and Christian, William Ellery Channing. This is possibly the only example of Unitarian Universalist Christian triumphalism that exists, certainly the only example carved into a pulpit.
I notice today is the birthday of one of those figures, John Biddle, a school teacher and headmaster who in the seventeenth century was the first Englishman known to declare himself a Unitarian.
He suffered for following the light of reason and the intimations of his heart, and then publishing his findings, spending a goodly part of his life in prison and eventually dying there.
If anyone deserves to be remembered, carved into the pulpit of a prominent UU church, it certainly is he…
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In