J. D. Bowers . Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America . University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press . 2007 . Pp. xiv, 282. $50.00.

Abstract

For generations, historians have insisted that the roots of Unitarianism lie in the liberal wing of late colonial Puritan Congregationalism. In the background are New England pastors such as Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew, while the movement took more formal identity with a well-known sermon preached by New Englander William Ellery Channing in 1819. His “What Is Unitarian Christianity?” gave the movement a name as it claimed a place for this nascent denomination within the Christian family. J. D. Bowers demurs. In this study of the English Unitarian tradition, particularly as expressed by theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley, Bowers insists that multiple strands fed into emerging American Unitarianism. Priestley's version is also significant, if not more central, to those developments. When Priestley arrived in the United States in 1794, English Unitarianism had already crafted a place for itself in the dissenting landscape in Britain. Some early English Unitarians communicated with New England liberal Congregationalists. Richard Price, for example, corresponded extensively with Chauncy.