The earliest Christians were known as Gnostics. A number of their values and beliefs are yet present in the tenets of Unitarian Universalism. The Roman Church spent centuries trying to destroy this early Gnostic movement and was to a great degree successful, though remnants of Gnostic wisdom persevered and found their way into other wisdom traditions, including the modern UU movement. Within the last few decades archaeologists and biblical scholars have discovered a number of the seminal “Gospels” of Gnostic Christianity, revealing a very different liberal/progressive perspective on Christ that challenges the history of many current conservative Christian movements. Spiritual threads of the Gnostic writings run through not only Unitarian Universalism, but Neo-Platonism, and other spiritual wisdom traditions that have tended the flames of these ancient candles of Gnostic wisdom for millennia.