Unitarian Universalist Association

Heritage

Two American traditions consolidated in 1961 to form the Unitarian Universalist Association: the American Unitarian Association (1825), heir of the New England congregations — King's Chapel and a wave of former Puritan churches — that affirmed God's unity and human dignity under teachers like William Ellery Channing; and the Universalist Church of America, organized from 1793, which preached with Hosea Ballou that a loving God saves all. Both were Christian churches for most of their history; the merged association, headquartered in Boston, deliberately opened beyond Christianity.

Theological family

By self-description, Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal, pluralist faith: congregations covenant around shared values — long articulated as seven Principles, restated in the association's 2024 revision of Article II of its bylaws — and members draw from many sources, including the Jewish and Christian heritage, other world religions, humanism and earth-centered traditions. Individual UUs may be Christian, humanist, theist, Buddhist or seeking; the association itself is post-Christian by its own account, and this record says so because it does.

Who decides what

Radically congregational — the oldest continuous congregational polity in America runs through these churches: each congregation calls its ministers and governs itself; the association, with its General Assembly and elected president, serves and speaks but cannot bind.

What a first-time visitor would find

A visitor finds a service recognizably Protestant in skeleton — prelude, hymns, readings, sermon, offering — lit by the flaming chalice at the start; the content ranges across scripture, poetry, philosophy and current events, and the congregation may include Christians, humanists and everything between, on purpose.

What it has always cared about

Freedom of conscience as the first inheritance; social reform — abolition, women's rights and women's ordination (Olympia Brown, ordained by the Universalists in 1863, among America's first), civil rights, and public witness since; religious education done seriously; and the dignity of every person held as a religious, not merely civic, claim.

Its gift to the wider church

The two parent traditions gave American Christianity gifts it kept — Universalism forced every pulpit to reckon with the breadth of God's love, and Unitarian congregationalism carried liberty of conscience into the country's bloodstream; the association preserves that lineage, and the meetinghouses, in living form.

Commonly confused with

With the United Church of Christ, a Christian denomination that shares New England meetinghouse ancestry but not the UUA's pluralism; with Unity, the New Thought body with a similar-sounding name and no connection; and the assumption that all UUs are atheists, or that none are Christians, both wrong.

Range of views inside it

The range is the point: individual congregations lean humanist, theist, or explicitly Christian (the UU Christian Fellowship continues within the association), and worship style varies from high New England formality to informal gathering.

Where Unitarian Universalist Association churches are on the map

78 Unitarian Universalist Association congregations appear on The Church Map, across 29 states.

• Massachusetts — 17
• California — 6
• New York — 5
• Minnesota — 4
• Oregon — 4
• New Hampshire — 3
• Illinois — 3
• Tennessee — 3
• District of Columbia — 2
• Vermont — 2