Sharing a place of worship did not require agreement about the faith to be recovered there. In Philadelphia in 1796, Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) delivered discourses on revealed religion at the Universalist church gathered by Elhanan Winchester (1751–1797). The two men could oppose attacks on revelation while differing over its meaning. The invitation gave Priestley an audience, without settling the religious questions that separated him from his hosts.
Priestley approached restoration through the history of doctrine. He believed the Trinity and the natural immortality of the soul had obscured an earlier Christianity. To recover that faith, readers needed to establish when teachings entered the record and how they acquired the authority of inherited truth. The age of a doctrine became a question that historical investigation could address.
This gave his defence of religion an unusual shape. He could affirm revelation while rejecting beliefs that other defenders regarded as necessary to it. An opponent of Christianity might welcome part of his criticism, but Priestley intended that criticism to clear away additions rather than remove the faith itself. His account of corruption depended on confidence that something original and recoverable remained.
Winchester had hoped to draw him toward the Universalist cause. The shared pulpit did not accomplish that reconciliation. Philadelphia instead provided a place where different programmes of Christian reform could address overlapping audiences. The encounter shows how much variety lay within the apparently common desire to restore religion. Priestley delivered his defence of revelation from the borrowed pulpit and retained his own account of the Christianity to be recovered.