Later Unitarians in Christianity 245In 1825, the American Association was formed, the same year as
was done in England. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) resigned
the pulpit in Boston and the breach between the old and the new
thinking was complete. The religion of Jesus was proclaimed to be
the love of God and service of man, and an 'absolute religion'.
o o o o o
Unitarianism within Christianity has continued up to the present
day. Many of the Christian sects, although they have little access to
the existential reality of Jesus - of how he behaved towards people
and conducted his transactions with them, of how he did every
thing and lived his life - do believe in One God and seek to live
according to the Bibles precepts, despite the contradictions within
il. However, the confusion caused by the doctrines of Original Sin,
of the Atonement and Redemption of Sins, and of the Trinity, corn
bined with the absence of any real transmitted guidance as to how
to live the way Jesus lived, peace be on him, have caused the now
almost complete rejection of thevariousforms of Christianity which
existed a hundred years ago.
Today many churches lie empty, and the relatively new and more
cheerful, at times even ecstatic, congregations which now tend to
be more popular in sorne quarters are characterised more by their
refusal to be bound by the outmoded European Christian dogmas
of the past than anything else.
It is significant, however, that the old doctrines continue to
manifest in new forms. Although less emphasis is placed on the
doctrine of Original Sin, for example, the majority of 'modem'
Christians still believe that the only way to get to heaven is by
believing in Jesus Christ - who, they will still enthusiastically main
tain, died on the cross in order to atone for all the sins of whoever
believes in him.
Thus the doctrine of the Atonement and Redemption of 5ins
still plays animportantpart in'modemChristianity',and it is be
cause of this that Jesus is still regarded as being 'God-like', if not
God Himself. He is sometimes treated as God in certain contexts
and situations, even ifmany Christians really believe that he is not
actually God. In other words, although sorne - although by no
means all - of today's Trinitarïan Christians no longer indulge in
the semantics and the sophistry and the casuistry of their Euro
pean predecessors, there is nevertheless an underlying orthodoxy