Famous Unitarians

Dr. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)

Minister at Birmingham Lower Meeting House (where New Street Station is today), from 1780-1791. He was a man of immense intellect, speaking ten languages and undertook scientific experiments as a spare time activity. He discovered the element Oxygen and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded its Gold Medal. He was also awarded a Doctorate in Law. He was an enthusiastic member of the Lunar Society, a monthly gathering of distinguished men who met to discuss their scientific observations and experiments. Their numbers included Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood. Priestley was also an assiduous student of the scriptures and aroused intense hostility from the Church of England by concluding that Jesus was not the Son of God but a human being who had led an exemplary life. He strongly upheld freedom of enquiry, the authority of conscience rather than dogma and the critical use of reason in religion. Despite the antipathy which this created, his methodology was widely admired and copied. Priestly was a strong believer in civil and religious liberty and spoke out boldly about the need for social reform and greater justice for the common man. He was a great friend of Benjamin Franklin, the American Ambassador to the Court of France. All of this aroused the ire of the Government as well as the Church of England and on the second anniversary of the French Revolution, a mob was incited to attack and burn both the Lower Meeting House and Priestley’s home and laboratory. Priestley fled to London and shortly afterwards to America where he founded the first American Unitarian Church in Philadelphia.