Thomas Jefferson predicted in 1822: "I trust that there is not a young man living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." Our third President further believed that "the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States." For all his great qualities Jefferson turned out to be a poor prophet. By 1977 the Unitarians (bolstered by a 1961 merger with the Universalists) claimed only 184,552 adult members in this country.
Yet an impressive case can be made for the proposition that no religious denomination has and does provide a greater number of national figures than the Unitarian Universalists. The last Unitarian who ran for the presidency - Adlai Stevenson - lost the election, but five presidents stand in the Unitarian tradition: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft.
Other Unitarian figures in American literature include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Edward Everett Hale, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bret Harte, and Louisa May Alcott. Suffragette Susan B. Anthony, reformer Dorothea Dix, and Horace Mann are claimed by the Unitarians. Of 77 Olympians in the Hall of Fame, 17 were Unitarians.
Despite the small membership of the denomination, the influence of Unitarian Universalists must be reckoned as a major force in contemporary American life. What is more, millions of Americans hold views similar to Unitarianism but do not belong to a Unitarian Universalist church or fellowship. Some remain in mainline Protestant denominations.
This small building also houses the Zen Fellowship of Alexandria. The building once was owned by the Church of Later Day Saints.