Coleridge and the Unitarian Consensus

Abstract

Coleridge was always at centre a religious man and during the most vital decade of his life that religion was Unitarian Christianity. After his introduction to its beliefs in 1793 he was from 1794 to 1799 an active Unitarian and a preacher, though not a paid one, and from then until early 1805 he was at least a ‘negative Unitarian’, declaring as late as the end of 1803 that the article of his faith nearest his heart was ‘the absolute Impersonality of the diety’ (CL, ii, 1022). But for its followers there was generally more to Unitarianism than this single article. Its adherents made up a large and active part of the non-conformist community and had, as part. of their gospel Christianity, a number of commonly held views, some Socinian and some necessarian. But though they did not believe that Christ was God, Unitarians were Christians and indeed Theophilus Lindsey, one of their leaders, incorporated the Apostles Creed into the Unitarian liturgy he published in 1774.¹