Monday 11 September 2023

Coleridge's Unitarian Chapel in Taunton

After asking a community policeman for directions in Taunton town centre, we quickly found the Unitarian chapel that Coleridge had preached in during the 1790s on Mary Street:



Have just read that this Unitarian chapel started life as a Baptist church.

And that in the spring of 1798, while Coleridge was living at Nether Stowey, he temporarily took over leading church services for Reverend Joshua Toulmin at the Taunton Unitarian Chapel while Toulmin was grieving over his daughter, Jane, who had drowned to death at the seaside.

In order to lead the Unitarian church services, Coleridge had walked 11 miles from Nether Stowey to Taunton (and back) every Sunday during Reverend Toulmin's grieving time.

Of course, in time, Coleridge moved away from Unitarianism towards orthodox Trinitarian Christianity and ended up being involved in High Church Anglicanism. Tied in with this, Coleridge came to view Unitarianism as a kind of unappealing synthesis of atheism and Calvinism. 

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