The Religion of Founding Father William Cushing

Cushing was a Unitarian, who was nominated for Chief Justice by George Washington after John Rutledge was rejected by the Senate. Cushing declined and his friend Oliver Ellsworth was nominated. Cushing's pastor was Samuel Deane--a Unitarian, who pastored one of the first churches to officially become unitarian

He was a learned theologian; well acquainted with the controversies of the day, and though far from gathering heat in those controversies, he was conspicuously on the side of liberal Christianity. He used to speak of his acquaintance with Dr. Priestley, as a happy era of his life, and to read and talk of his works with approbation.'4

          4 Deane's History of Scituate, pp. 257, 258.