Newington Green Unitarian Church
| Newington Green Unitarian Church | |
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| 51°33′08″N 0°05′06″W / 51.55217°N 0.08492°WCoordinates: 51°33′08″N 0°05′06″W / 51.55217°N 0.08492°W | |
| Location | 39A Newington Green, London N16 9PR |
| Country |
 United Kingdom
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| Denomination | General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (British Unitarians) |
| Website | www.new-unity.org |
| History | |
| Founded | 1708 |
| Clergy | |
| Minister(s) | Andrew Pakula |
Newington Green Unitarian Church (NGUC) in north London is one of England's oldest Unitarian churches. It has had strong ties to political radicalism for over 300 years, and is London's oldest Nonconformist place of worship still in use. It was founded in 1708 by English Dissenters, a community of which had been gathering around Newington Green for at least half a century before that date. The church belongs to the umbrella organisation known as the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, and has had an upturn in its fortunes since the turn of the millennium.
Its most famous minister was Dr Richard Price, a political radical who is remembered for his role in the Revolution Controversy, a British debate about the French Revolution, but who also did pioneering work in finance and statistics. The most famous member of its congregation was Mary Wollstonecraft, who drew inspiration from Price's sermons in her work, both in arguing for the new French republic and in raising the issue of the rights of women.
The building, which faces the north side of the green, was extended in 1860, and was listed in 1953. It lies within the London Borough of Hackney, although the rest of the green is part of the London Borough of Islington.
After the end of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth and the Restoration of Charles II, those in England and Wales who were not members of the Church of England found themselves in an uncomfortable position. Several pieces of legislation, known collectively as the Clarendon Code, made their lives difficult. The first restricted public office to Anglicans. The Act of Uniformity the following year was a step too far for many clergymen, and about 2,000 of them left the established church in the Great Ejection of 1662. The third act forbad unauthorised religious meetings of more than five people. The final one prohibited Nonconformist clergymen from living within five miles of a parish from which they had been banned. Where the ministers went, their flocks tended to follow. Some of these restrictions were ameliorated a generation later, with the passing of the Act of Toleration 1689, which guaranteed freedom of worship for certain groups. It allowed Nonconformists (or Dissenters) their own places of worship and their own teachers and preachers, subject to certain oaths of allegiance and to the registering of these locations and leaders, but it perpetuated their existing social and political disabilities, including their exclusion from political office and also from universities (Oxford and Cambridge were the only universities in England and Wales at that time).
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