this disturbance inside and outside the parish, I have no doubt. But
as I look back over the years, I also have no doubt that there was
something much more fundamental here, at the heart of the trouble.
That I was a heretic on the social question was insignificant, for
Unitarians have long since learned not only to tolerate but to
respect their heretics. What was infinitely more important, as I now
see, was the fact that unconsciously through these years, I was
coming to question not the church itself, as I have explained, but
the whole order and purpose of the church as it now exists. Every
ecclesiastical institution today is denominational in character. It
belongs primarily to some particular sectarian body, and is pledged
to the service of this body. Sometimes the central body is narrow,
as in the case of the more orthodox Protestant denominations;
sometimes it is liberal, as in the case of the Unitarians and
Universalists. [11] But always there is a distinctive form of
organization, or type of ritual, or doctrine of belief, or spirit of
association, which binds these separate churches into a single
group; and always this distinctive feature is something which had
its origin, and still finds its vitality, in the thought and
experience of an earlier age. Every one of our denominations, and
every one of the churches in our denominations, is representative of
past controversies, not of present interests and duties. No one sect
can be distinguished from any other, except by a reference to the
text books of Christian history.

Now with the intrusion of the social question into religion, a new
concept of church organization came immediately to the fore. The
unit of fellowship was now no longer the denomination, but the
community. The centre of life and allegiance was no longer the
challenge of ancient controversy, but the cry of present day human