Modern Use of The Term
Although Spears and Sharpe made appeal to the term "Biblical Unitarianism" in The Christian life (e.g. Volume 5, 1880), an appeal to the concept of "Biblical Unitarianism" by individuals and churches is rare until after Unitarian Universalism was formed from the merger in 1961 of two historically Christian denominations, the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association. In some cases in the 1870s where the name "Unitarian" was still considered too associated with "the narrowly Biblical type of liberal theologian", other names, such as "Christian Free Church", were employed. Larsen (2011) applies Spears' "biblical Unitarian" to him in regard to his 1876 resignation.
The term "biblical Unitarian" only begins to reappear frequently in the 1990s in the writings of those associated with a revival of interest in early Unitarian figures such as Fausto Sozzini and John Biddle ("the Father of English Unitarianism"), as well as Arians like Isaac Newton and William Whiston. An example is the journal A Journal from the Radical Reformation, A Testimony to Biblical Unitarianism (1993–present).
Alongside this historical interest in the Radical Reformation, during the 1990s the term "biblical unitarian" also begins to appear in Anti-Trinitarian publications without either 'b' or 'u' capitalized.
Read more about this topic: Biblical Unitarianism
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