Chapter 3 - Great Britain

Summary

Unitarian history in Great Britain often begins with the “father of English Unitarianism,” John Biddle (1615–1662), but the faith goes back much further, beginning with the translation of the Vulgate at the end of the fourteenth century. The Vulgate, a fourth-century Latin translation of the books of the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible, was, by the thirteenth century, both the official and the commonly used version of Christian scripture. John Wycliff (c. 1330–1384) developed a vernacular Bible to deepen a personal relationship with God, from whom all rights flowed to those who were in a state of grace. Wycliff then interpolated this belief into an attack on the institutionalized Catholic Church, which he believed had fallen into a state of sin. The Church could not claim rights that were only available as a gift of God. Wycliff proposed that the Church abandon all its property, require priests to live in poverty, and that the king eradicate the Church's endowment. He very quickly brought together the issues defining Unitarianism even today: locating authority; individualism both in piety and in the use of reason; and the relationship between assets and influence on the law.