Skip to main content

I'm a Servetian


I've always had some envy of Quakers who have a strong sense of who their founder was - George Fox - and all Quakers know that and still talk about Fox. Unitarians have less of a sense of a founder, and this gives us less of a sense of identity.

Recently though I've started to read more about Michael Servetus. And I've started to really warm to the idea that he is our founder, and should be viewed as such. True, he didn't start a community, but then, neither did Jesus. True he wasn't perfect, but then, neither was Jesus.

I've recently gained more insights into Servetus that I didn't appreciate before. He was an ethnic minority as a dark-skinned Spanniad in France. He was a healer as he worked as a doctor. He read the Qur'an, and possibly read Arabic, and had a very positive approach to Jews and Muslims. He suffered a death for what he believed in, much like Jesus and Al Hallaj.

But mostly I love his mysticism, his sense of God within, that I'm beginning to think is the very essence of Unitarianism. This is the great mystical strand of Unitarianism that we've lost too much. It's just as important as the rational side.

I think we're very impoversished when British Unitarians only trace ourselves back to Priestley and Lindsey, and Americans only trace themselves back to Channing. I think we're a global family with many branches that starts with Michael Servetus.

Right now I feel like being Unitarian means following Servetus.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wouldn't you trace it all the way back to King Sigismund since he first codified freedom of religion when Unitarianism was brought before him?
5:53 pm
Anonymous said…
would Servetus, Priestley, Channing et al recognise modern Unitarian-Universalism as the faith community they sought to develop?

a typical UU contradiction - rejecting Christ, yet championing Servetus
12:00 pm
Jaume de Marcos Andreu said…
Great to know about your interest in Servetus, Stephen. I am also a Servetian Unitarian, and I think that the main elements of historical Unitarianism (not just rejection of the Trinity, also freedom of speech in churches, radical criticism of received dogmas, search for the pure religious experience untainted by human manipulation, that we need to pay attention to the wisdom found in religious traditions other than our own, that we all are sons and daughters of God and God is in everything and in everyone...), everything that is truly Unitarian can be found in seminal form in Servetus's thought.

I recommend that you visit the website of the Michael Servetus Institute (of which I am a member), which preserves his legacy:
http://www.miguelservet.org (click the English version of it)
11:49 am
Anonymous said…
did Servetus proclaim himself Hanif?
9:50 pm
Anonymous said…
I'm a former JW who sees good things in Servetus - I definitely share similarish beliefs about the Lord.

but what seems funny is how after tearing up most of their history and identity, your church still claims Servetus as their patron saint. why is this?
7:02 pm
Jaume de Marcos Andreu said…
Anonymous, Servetus said that the Muslims, unlike the Trinitarian Christians, had got it right about God and Jesus, and extensively quoted the Qur'an to support that view. See Peter Hughes's article on the issue published last year in the Journal of UU History. That was an extremely odd and dangerous thing to do in 16th-century Europe, and it was one of the strongest arguments that the Geneva officials used against him. If you want to call it hanif...
2:43 pm
Stephen Lingwood said…
Bart: Servetus definitely came before Sigismund, and had an influence on him, I think via Bladratta (spelling?)

Tony S: You make a good point, but personally I'm not rejecting Christ at all.

Jaume: yes to everything you said. Does the Servetus Institute have any plans to translate the major works of Servetus into English (or Spanish, French, Hungarian) in print or online? I'd love to get into his own writings.
4:21 pm
Anonymous said…
So basically what jamue is saying is "SERVETUS AGREES WITH ME". Which is fitting the 'Servetian' label to YOUR belief system and not vice versa. But as tony said most UUs reject Christ which Servetus NEVER did.
8:45 pm
Jaume de Marcos Andreu said…
Prince Sigismund was never a theologian, he was a politician (and a rather weak one, BTW). The Unitarian Reformation in Transylvania has its origins in Servetus via Blandrata, who influenced Ferenc (Francis) Dávid, the court's preacher and Calvinist superintendent. Servetus's influence in Dávid's work has been shown by Stanislas Kot, Mihály Balázs, and others.

On books: the complete works of Servetus are being edited these days with funds from the autonomous Government of Aragon, in a bilingual Latin/Spanish edition. You can see the books in the shop of the website I quoted above.

As for English, the first two theological books were translated by E.M. Wilbur in the 30s', and now there is at least one translation in progress of the Restitutio in the USA. It will probably be published in several volumes and not just one, to facilitate the process. I cannot give further details for the moment...
10:09 pm
Jaume de Marcos Andreu said…
Did you get the dark-skinned Servetus from "Out of the Flames"? This is not an accurate book. AFAIK there are no reliable pictures or physical descriptions of Servetus. All early pictures were drawn years after his death. Besides, being a Spaniard does not mean that you are dark-skinned. He was born in the northernmost area of Aragon, and his father's family came from a hamlet in the Pyrenees, therefore he must have been rather pale-skinned for Spanish standards.
10:18 pm
Anonymous said…
Stephen,

Thanks for answering the questions raised.

It really is great to see a Unitarian-Universalist blogger that can address issues directly without having to fall back on the usual monologues about tolerance etc.

Keep up the good work,

Tony
11:09 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What does it mean to be non-creedal?

Steve Caldwell says "The problem here isn't humanism vs. theism for theist Unitarian Universalists -- it's the non-creedal nature of Unitarian Universalism" This is a good point. We need to think much more deeply about what it means to be a non-creedal religion. The first thing I want to say is that there is more than one possible understanding of non-creedalism. The Disciples of Christ are a non-creedal church, they say here : " Freedom of belief. Disciples are called together around one essential of faith: belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Persons are free to follow their consciences guided by the Bible, the Holy Spirit study and prayer, and are expected to extend that freedom to others." Quakers are also non-creedal and say here : Quakers have no set creed or dogma - that means we do not have any declared statements which you have to believe to be a Quaker. There are, however, some commonly held views which unite us. One accepted view is that th...
3 comments
Read more

LOST and theology: who are the good guys?

***Spoiler alert*** I'm continuing some theological/philosophical reflections while re-watching the series LOST. One of the recurring themes in LOST is the idea of the "good guys" and the "bad guys." We start the series assuming the survivors (who are the main characters) are the "good guys" and the mysterious "Others" are definitely bad guys. But at the end of series 2 one of the main characters asks the Others, "Who are  you people?" and they answer, in an extremely disturbing way, "We're the good guys." The series develops with a number of different factions appearing, "the people from the freighter" "the DHARMA initiative" as well as divisions among the original survivors. The question remains among all these complicated happenings "who really are the good guys?" I think one of the most significant lines in the series is an episode when Hurley is having a conversation with ...
3 comments
Read more

What is Radical Christianity?

Radical Christianity is about encountering the God of love . It is first and foremost rooted in the discovery of a universal and unconditional source of love at the heart of reality and within each person. God is the name we give to this source of love. It is possible to have a direct and real personal encounter with this God through spiritual practice. We encounter God, and are nourished by God, through the regular practice of prayer, or contemplation.  Radical Christianity is about following a man called Jesus . It is rooted in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish prophet living under occupation of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. It understands that's Jesus' message was the message of liberation. His message was that when we truly encounter God, and let God's love flow through us, we begin to be liberated from the powers of empire and violence and encounter the  "realm of God" - an alternative spiritual and social reality rooted in love rather th...
Post a Comment
Read more