Fitz Spengeman: Unitarian religious tradition, and the Unitarian Church

Fitz Spengeman: Unitarian religious tradition, and the Unitarian Church

Built Heritage:

Fritz discusses the Unitarian religious tradition, and the Unitarian Church [in Princes Street].
He mentions a number of notable Cork men who were Unitarians. Temperance movement founder Father Mathew had a connection to the building, and slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglas may also have visited it. He notes that there was apparently a tradition of burying horses’ heads under a church floor.

Restricted Access

26 May 2014

CFP_SR00514_spengeman_2014

Cork, Ireland, 1700s, 1800s, 1950s

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

1.wav File

35min 57sec

Unknown

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24bit / 48kHz

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com

This was Unitarianism, was illegal up until the early part of the 19^th Century in fact it was punishable by death to espouse Unitarian points of view, and understandably Unitarians would of kept their heads low and so and so this church evolved as a liberal Presbyterian church with the lifting of the prohibition on Unitarianism, Unitarian ideas, in the, I think it was 1817. Unitarianism grew as a more identifiable part of the church and this gave rise to friction, and basically there was a schism between the Unitarians who believed in the oneness of God and the Trinitarians who believed in the doctrine of the trinity and that split resulted in eventually Reverent Faris congregation going up, and they eventually built the trinity church and that is how that arose but he is quiet right, the Presbyterians and Unitarians worship here for many, many decades.