Unitarian Connections of T.S. Eliot

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T. S. Eliot

Unitarian Connections of T.S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot's grandfather was William Greenleaf Eliot, the midwestern 
"conservative" Unitarian minister who helped found the First Unitarian Church in 
St. Louis and Washington University. Another ancestor was Andrew Eliot (18th 
century) who was a Congregational minister and President of Harvard -- and 
opponent of Anglicanism.

T. S. Eliot was thus related to Charles Eliot of Harvard, Abigail Adams Eliot 
and Samuel May Eliot, and to many other well-known Unitarians who shared the 
Eliot name. His parents, Henry Ware Eliot (1843-1919) and Charlotte Champe 
Stearns Eliot (1843-1929), were active Unitarians. Thomas Stearns Eliot was 
raised as a Unitarian.

When T. S. went to England, he became a British citizen and joined the Church of 
England (1927 -- in his late 30s). He did not find Unitarianism adequate for the 
crises of his life in the 1920s, apparently -- including his wife's continuing 
emotional problems and near death.

He's been described as a "Christian monarchist" and a 
reading of "The Idea of a Christian Society" (1940) would seem to put him 
far from the general Unitarian or Universalist position on the source of 
authority and on church polity: he supported an American national 
church which would be the final authority on Christian dogma and faith.

http://www.famousuus.com/bios/t_s_eliot.htm