![\"\"](\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/STkdN4y7EYI\/AAAAAAAAB60\/IpEAYSBQJIo\/s1600-h\/socinus.jpg\")
<\/a>As we roll into the Christmas season, I find myself thinking about that holy day and its connection to Unitarianism.<\/p>\n
As most people know Christmas came late to the Christian calendar, being in fact a Christianized version of a pagan Roman holiday. In Massachusetts<\/span>, the Puritan<\/span> theocracy, which what ever else might be said of them, were well read and smart, knew without any doubt Christmas was a pagan celebration and did all they could to suppress<\/span> it. They did a pretty thorough job of it and Christmas faded from the New England imagination.<\/p>\n Until, that is the rise of New England Unitarianism. For a variety of reasons, most notably because of their frequent visits to nineteenth century Germany, the emergent<\/span> Unitarians became attached to the form of Christmas and imported it back to New England.<\/p>\n It served a number of purposes, not least of which was shifting emphasis from the death and resurrection motif of Easter, to the birth of a child on Christmas.<\/p>\n And there is little more natural than birth.<\/p>\n I continue to find those theological speculations that turn on Jesus being human, Arianism<\/a>, Ebionitism<\/span><\/a> and Socinianism<\/a> particularly compelling. The Arians<\/span> gave what would come to be considered \u201corthodox\u201d Christians a real run for the money. But they were the least radical of the anti-trinitarians<\/span>. I personally strongly suspect that something along the lines of what is called Ebionitism<\/span> was in fact the religion of Jesus, his family and the original<\/span> Jewish church, and that \u201cnormative\u201d authority didn\u2019t flow to the Pauline school until the destruction of Jerusalem and with it the seat of what I believe to have been the original Christianity.<\/p>\n And since that time the first real articulation of a Christian school that advocated for the naturalness of Jesus would wait for a millennium<\/span> and a half and would be called \u201cSocinian<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n Today is the birthday of Fausto<\/span> Paolo Sozzini<\/span><\/a>. Fausto<\/span> and his uncle Laelius<\/span><\/a> would give their name to this movement.<\/p>\n A complicated figure, Fausto<\/span>, gradually developed toward a view of Jesus as a completely natural creature, and played out many themes of what this might mean.<\/p>\n A true ancestor, one of the most important, of that thread of spiritual thought which would lead to our contemporary movement, Unitarian Universalism.<\/p>\n So, happy birthday, Fausto<\/span>!<\/p>\n And, thanks!<\/p>\n As we roll into the Christmas season, I find myself thinking about that holy day and its connection to Unitarianism. As most people know Christmas came late to the Christian calendar, being in fact a Christianized version of a pagan Roman holiday. In Massachusetts, the Puritan theocracy, which what ever else might be said of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n