AHC: Make Unitarianism the most widespread religion in Europe

I'm not talking about Unitarian Universalism, but the more traditional Protestant religion developed in Transylvania in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The main beliefs of Unitarians are:

-God is the sole, indivisible creator and master of the Universe. He/she is perfect, omnipotent and omniscient, he/she is simply one being, a bodyless, purely spiritual force who is sentient and made our world possible.
-There is no Trinity.
-There is no Original Sin.
-Jesus was a human, who was born from Mary and Joseph in the traditional, biological way. However, he was a prophet of God, a man of very good moral character, the closest man to God that ever existed.
-Humans have completely free will, and the most important values in the world are Freedom and Tolerance. Freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of enquiry and freedom of will. Unitarians hold the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the American Revolution in high regard.
-The Bible is a collection of tales of morality, inspired by God, but written by Man in the language of the common people. It is not infallible, but is an important source of morality, particularily the New Testament and the Gospels about Jesus. Thus it shouldn't be followed literally, but it should form the base of our moral character. The most important role model from the Bible is naturally, Jesus.

This religion in still somewhat widespread in Transylvania and Hungary.

A typical Unitarian sermon (from 3:42):



How do you think this could've been possible?
 
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Nope! Religion, the modern organized version, takes 2 steps. First, man creates god in his own image. Second, the movers and shakers get over their initial opposition and realize the potential of co-opting the whole shebang, re-writing the rules and turning it into a method by which they can continue their domination over the cannon fodder of humanity, even improve on the level of control that can be manifest...free will, tolerance and morality have no place in that recipe excepts as suits the masters. Sin must abound, the masses need to spend all their time and effort with concerns of their next life, too busy to try to improve this one. Anything that doesn't look pretty much like what they got already is pretty much DOA or "_______ in name only".
 
FWIW, Unitarian Universalists do claim some historical affinity with the Transylvanian Unitarians. From the UUA's history page...

In sixteenth-century Transylvania, Unitarian congregations were established for the first time in history. These churches continue to preach the Unitarian message in present-day Romania. Like their heretic forebears from ancient times. these liberals could not see how the deification of a human being or the simple recitation of creeds could help them to live better lives. They said that we must follow Jesus, not worship him.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Unitarianism appeared briefly in scattered locations. A Unitarian community in Rakow, Poland, flourished for a time, and a book called On the Errors of the Trinity by a Spaniard, Michael Servetus, was circulated throughout Europe. But persecution frequently followed these believers. The Polish Unitarians were completely suppressed, and Michael Servetus was burned at the stake.

Though they emphasize that American Unitarianism and later UUism developed pretty much on its own....

Despite these European connections, Unitarianism as we know it in North America is not a foreign import. In fact, the origins of our faith began with some of the most historic congregations in Puritan New England where each town was required to establish a congregationally independent church that followed Calvinist doctrines. Initially, these congregational churches offered no religious choice for their parishioners, but over time the strict doctrines of original sin and predestination began to mellow.

Apparently, some UU churches in the US do maintain partnerships with Unitarians in Transylvania. From the UU Church Of Berkeley...

The Transylvanian Partner Church Committee carries our social justice commitment across 6,000 miles to Homoródújfalu, a small village in Eastern Europe. The oldest community of practitioners of a Unitarian approach to religion lives in Transylvania, part of the Hungarian-speaking minority of present-day Romania.

UUCB is one of many UU congregations with a long-established relationship with a Transylvanian church. We make pilgrimages to our partner church village every few years, and help support their students. Our mission: We endeavor to join with our partners in faith in Homoródújfalu to exchange the stories of our lives, to deepen our faith, to share our learnings and resources in order to support each other’s dreams.

But yes, this probably relates more to shared theology, than any formal ancestral connection.
 
As for the OP, I don't know how you get old-school Transylvanian Unitarianism into the dominant European religion. I think you might need a pre-1900 POD for that. I'm a theistic UU myself, but I do recognize that for a lot of people, once they abandon traditional beliefs in the Deity and the divinity of Christ, they don't see much need to continue involvement with an institutional church. Except maybe for weddings and funerals, in which cases the more conservative denominations are usually happy to open their doors.
 
And, by the way, not all of the people claimed as forebears by modern Unitarians viewed Jesus as only human. Michael Servetus, for example...

Unitarian scholar Earl Morse Wilbur states, "Servetus' Errors of the Trinity is hardly heretical in intent, rather is suffused with passionate earnestness, warm piety, an ardent reverence for Scripture, and a love for Christ so mystical and overpowering that [he] can hardly find words to express it ... Servetus asserted that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were dispositions of God, and not separate and distinct beings."[44] Wilbur promotes the idea that Servetus was a modalist.

Servetus states his view clearly in the preamble to Restoration of Christianity (1553): "There is nothing greater, reader, than to recognize that God has been manifested as substance, and that His divine nature has been truly communicated. We shall clearly apprehend the manifestation of God through the Word and his communication through the Spirit, both of them substantially in Christ alone."[45]

This theology, though original in some respects, has often been compared to Adoptionism, Arianism, and Sabellianism, all of which Trinitarians rejected in favour of the belief that God exists eternally in three distinct persons. Nevertheless, Servetus rejected these theologies in his books: Adoptionism, because it denied Jesus's divinity;[46] Arianism, because it multiplied the hypostases and established a rank;[47] and Sabellianism, because it seemingly confused the Father with the Son, though Servetus himself does appear to have denied or diminished the distinctions between the Persons of the Godhead, rejecting the Trinitarian understanding of One God in Three Persons.[48]

That's from the wiki page on Servetus.
 
King's Chapel

Boston Episcopalian(Anglican) church that became Unitarian in 1785, and now affiliates with UU. Maybe if there had been no American Revolution, and King's Chapel still becomes Unitarian, it could start a trend that drifts over to the motherland, with the C Of E becoming Unitarian as well, and Unitarianism eventually spreading the globe via the Empire? Not sure how that could happen, given that King's Chapel IOTL didn't exactly take America by storm(though Boston was heavily Unitarian), and the C Of E probably wouldn't wanna ditch the 39 Articles.
 
Unitarians are heretics to both Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox. No Unitarian state in this era would be allowed to survive.

Heck Protestants and Catholics just might gang up on it and destroy it.
 
Unitarians are heretics to both Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox. No Unitarian state in this era would be allowed to survive.

Heck Protestants and Catholics just might gang up on it and destroy it.
Unitarians are heretics to both Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox. No Unitarian state in this era would be allowed to survive.

Heck Protestants and Catholics just might gang up on it and destroy it.

I was once told by an Air Force Catholic chaplain that I might just as well been an agnostic as a Unitarian, to which I replied that I was an agnostic, but I put Unitarian to avoid being sent to see the Catholic chaplain...(I had correctly anticipated being sent to the Protestant chaplain, but he was out of area...)
 
But yes, this probably relates more to shared theology, than any formal ancestral connection.
Having once gone on such a trip, I can assure you that the theological differences between Unitarian Universalist and Transylvanian Unitarian churches are vast. Frankly, I don't know why these relationships are maintained when the differences are just so huge. I suspect if the Romanian economic situation was a bit better, the relationship would quickly disappear.
 
King's Chapel

Boston Episcopalian(Anglican) church that became Unitarian in 1785, and now affiliates with UU. Maybe if there had been no American Revolution, and King's Chapel still becomes Unitarian, it could start a trend that drifts over to the motherland, with the C Of E becoming Unitarian as well, and Unitarianism eventually spreading the globe via the Empire? Not sure how that could happen, given that King's Chapel IOTL didn't exactly take America by storm(though Boston was heavily Unitarian), and the C Of E probably wouldn't wanna ditch the 39 Articles.

Butterflying away the American Revolution might make Unitarianism into a different religion that what it is today. In my experience, Transylvanian Unitarians tend to have a high opinion on the various revolutions that took place in the Western world in the 18th and 19th centuries. If you meet an old Hungarian Unitarian person from Transylvania and discuss history with him/her, he/she might speak about random facts about George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, which are pretty accurate historically.

Hungarian and Transylvanian Unitarians also celebrate Thanksgiving, though it is a more strictly religious affair, unrelated to the Native Americans, or to the Thanksgiving Dinner that is part of the American version of the celebration.

American culture had a profound, if nowadays not that apparent effect on Eastern European Unitarians.
 
This actually sounds rather easy, though I can't think of a particular POD.

Is it possible that less cooperation between the Catholic Church and the fascist regimes would lead to a better environment for Unitarianism? This is pure guesswork, but I would wager that the tarnished reputation of the Church led many nonbelievers to go to the extreme of atheism/agnosticism instead of deism.

Alternatively, maybe have Communists choose to not promote atheism but instead deism. You'd then possibly get a strong basis for deism in Eastern Europe.
 
Having once gone on such a trip, I can assure you that the theological differences between Unitarian Universalist and Transylvanian Unitarian churches are vast. Frankly, I don't know why these relationships are maintained when the differences are just so huge. I suspect if the Romanian economic situation was a bit better, the relationship would quickly disappear.

Going by the catehchism of the Hungarian church, it would seem that they are both more theisitic and more Christian than the UUs. Though, in line with what alter wrote, the site also includes a link(albeit defunct) to a list of American Unitarians.

If the eastern Europeans regard Jesus as a prophet but not in any way divine(contra Servetus, who saw him as the physical mode of the one God), that's probably not completely antithetical to the general trends in UUism, even if the latter doesn't unanimously focus on Jesus. Even non-Christian UUs are generally more indifferent than hostile to Christ.
 
Could Unitarianism have been an inspiration for the religion of the Holy Light in the Warcraft universe? The religion of the Holy Light seems to be some kind of non-theistic, but spiritual version of Unitarianism.
 
Obviously, not related to Europe directly, but this map might be of interest to posters on this thread.

No big surprises, I guess. Heaviest concentration(well, above 1% anyway) in New England and assorted outposts of west coast liberalism, with scatterings of purple in what I assume are college towns and state capitals in between.

But what IS that solitary hit of purple in the middle of Texas? From the maps I've been looking at, it doesn't quite seem to line up with Austin.
 
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