British and Foreign Unitarian Association
| Abbreviation | BFUA; the Unitarians |
|---|---|
| Formation | 26 May 1825 as an amalgamation of the Unitarian Book Society for literature, The Unitarian Fund for mission work, and the Unitarian Association for civil rights |
| Extinction | 1928 by becoming part of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches |
| Type | religious organization |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Location |
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The British and Foreign Unitarian Association was the major Unitarian body in Britain from 1825. The BFUA was founded as an amalgamation of three older societies: the Unitarian Book Society for literature (1791), The Unitarian Fund for mission work (1806), and the Unitarian Association for civil rights (1818 or 1819). Its offices were shared with the Sunday School Association at Essex Street, on the site of England's first Unitarian church. In 1928 the BFUA became part of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, still the umbrella organisation for British Unitarianism, which has its headquarters, Essex Hall, in the same place in central London.
The History of Essex Hall, written in 1959 by Mortimer Rowe, the Secretary (i.e. chief executive) of the General Assembly for its first twenty years, claims that the British and Foreign Unitarian Association was founded, entirely coincidentally, on the same day as the American Unitarian Association, 26 May 1825. (The AUA is one of two bodies that merged in 1961 to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.)
Under the impetus of Theophilus Lindsey, the first minister of the Essex Street Chapel, and his colleague John Disney, in 1791 the "first organized denominational Unitarian society" was formed, with the cumbersome name of The Unitarian Society for promoting Christian Knowledge and the Practice of Virtue by the Distribution of Books.
The earliest notable publication was Thomas Belsham's The New Testament in an Improved Version Upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome's New Translation (1808), which was continued by the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. At the end of 1826 the Association acquired the Monthly Repository magazine, formerly edited by Robert Aspland. The Association contracted the French historian Gaston Bonet-Maury to write a history of French radical Protestantism.
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