Arizona republican., 1908-09-14
UNITARIANISM AND AMERI-
 CANISM

CANISM
 A secular journal, The Republican though striving for the moral and material uplifting of the community. seldom attempts to influence religious thought or to enter the field of polenical discussion. When it does so it keeps safely near a point of egress.
 It is constrained now to consider a doctrinaI matter on account of it's relation to the presidential campaign. For a month or more there have been rumors that there was a mort or less widespread movement within (not oO orthodox churches, to op- pose the election of MT. Taft because he is a Unitarian. Newspapers have given comparatively little space to the matter, though as much as it de- serves. but it is the subject of com ment generally by those who have come from the east, where it is widely discussed.
 A gentleman of Phoenix who lately returned from a tour of the middle states said that in the course of a dinner with a friend at Toledo, O., the latter who is a gentleman of prominence in professional, social and orthodox religious circles, brought the question up. He said that he was forty eight years of age, had never voted any other than the republican ticket, but would be com pelIed to vote against Judge Taft, be- cause he was a Unitarian. In the same city the pastor of a church ad- dressing the members of his congre- gation on the same subject, denied report that he was opposed to MT. Taft, but said that the course of orthodox Christians toward the can didate was a matter for solution by their consciences, thus encouraging the notion that MT. Taft's religious belief was a proper subject for con- sideration by the faithful.
 It is not the purpose here to de- fend Unitarianism. It is a belief concerning which there is much mis- information among the average ortho- dox church members. All know in a general way that it rejects the doc Urine of the Trinity, and some think that it rejects Christ. Unitarianism itself says it believes in "The father hood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, saliva tion by character and the progress of mankind forever onward and up ward" Thus while Jesus is not re- garded as one with God or as a god, he is recognized as a divinely pre- pared teacher. The tenets of the Unitarian church relating to the mat ter of salvation, the only essential thing, are not different from those of orthodox churches and in fact, in England, some Unitarian churches are called Presbyterian churches.
 The so-called heresy of Unitarian ism was not established until late in the fourth century. Previous to that time the Arians, who consti- tuted fully half of Christendom, were Unitarians The making heretics of them was the work not of God but of man, who subjected them to such hideous prosecutions as have always been visited by powerful religious sects upon the weaker.
 No doctrine has had more respect able or loftier adherents. John Million, John Locke, the philosopher, and Sir Isaac Newton finally accepted the Unitarian interpretation of Christian ity Other eminent Unitarians were Joseph Priestley, William Ellery Charming, Theodore Parker a% James Freeman Clark. Surely no one will contend that any of these men were not moral enough, not re- ligious enough to be presidents of the United States, especially inas- much as many of our greatest presi- dents have entertained no well de- fined denominational belief.
 But we come to something else which is less doubtful than the com parative merits of Unitarianism and orthodox doctrines and that is the Americanism of those who oppose MT. Taft for his religious belief which was the belief of his ancestors through at least three generations.
 There is a clause in the constitu- tinn of the I-nited States u-hich