Thomas Belsham

Thomas Belsham (26 April 1750 – 11 November 1829) was an English Unitarian minister

Belsham was born in Bedford, England, and was the elder brother of William Belsham, the English political writer and historian. He was educated at the dissenting academy at Daventry, where for seven years he acted as assistant tutor. After three years spent in a charge at Worcester, he returned as head of Daventry Academy, a post which he continued to hold till 1789, when, having adopted Unitarian principles, he resigned. With Joseph Priestley for colleague, he superintended during its brief existence the New College at Hackney, and was, on Priestley's departure in 1794, also called to the charge of the Gravel Pit congregation. In 1805, he accepted a call to the Essex Street Chapel, which was also headquarters and offices of the Unitarian Church under John Disney, there succeeding as minister Theophilus Lindsey who had retired and died three years later in 1808.

Belsham remained at Essex Street, in gradually failing health, till his death in Hampstead, on 11 November 1829. He was buried in Bunhill Fields burial ground, in the same tomb as Theophilus Lindsey.

Belsham's beliefs reflect that transition that the Unitarian movement was going through during his lifetime, particularly from the early Bible-fundamentalist views of earlier English Unitarians like Henry Hedworth (who introduced the word "Unitarian" into print in English from Dutch sources in 1673) and John Biddle, to the more Bible-critical positions of Priestley's generation. Belsham adopted critical ideas on the Pentateuch by 1807, the Gospels by 1819, and Genesis by 1821. Later, following Priestley, Belsham was to dismiss the virgin birth as "no more entitled to credit, than the fables of the Koran, or the reveries of Swedenborg." (1806)

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