The Purpose of Community

Rev. Joseph Ketley (left) at the 1840 Anti-Slavery Conference

We gather in a place of worship to remember. Religion is really made up of rituals and practices to help us remember; help us to remember our identity, our true identity, as children of light, as conscientious individuals, as seekers of love and justice. As we come to remember, we make a choice, not once, but every time we are drawn into this building. We may trick ourselves into thinking that our being here is just the way things are, but really, we choose, and choose again. We commit ourselves, weekly, daily, to the ideals which make us who we are. Given this regular choice to gather in an old Meeting House, we affirm over and over again essential components of ourselves. Why do we do this? Why have conscientious individuals been drawn to this place of worship for over 300 years?

This week I have been reading about the Rev. Joseph Ketley, who was the minister here for three years, from 1834 to 1836. He made the choice to turn his back on our Unitarian community, and resigned his post. He did so not in a compassionate and gentle way, but in such a way that highlighted his new found abhorrence for our Unitarian ideals, very much to the embarrassment of this community. Soon after he took up this post, he became friends with the Rev. Piers Butler, who was at the time the curate up at St. Margaret’s Church. Over the course of many conversations, Butler was able to convince Joseph Ketley that his Unitarianism did not hold up under scrutiny. It’s difficult to assess the debate they had in our present day, as they were both operating under a priori assumptions which I would not accept – most notably the inerrancy of the Bible, which both men took as a given. Nevertheless, Joseph Ketley having been thoroughly convinced resigned his post, but not before entering this pulpit to give a final sermon. The sermon followed the standard Calvinistic formula, that we are blind, perverse, and our hearts are depraved. That we stand on the brink of hell, and that as such we require the blood of Jesus to wash away transgressions. We require the atoning sacrifice of Christ to pay the debt of Adam’s sin. He declared his prior views to be heretical, and by extension he declared all those sitting before him to be heretics. It is difficult to imagine this space filled with as much anger as must have been then. I can’t imagine Ketley standing at the back, shaking people’s hands as they left. As soon as he resigned the trustees issued a report in which they slandered Joseph Ketley and declared him quite deranged.

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St. Margaret's Church, Ipswich

As I said, it is impossible today to defend either credulous position. Though Unitarianism of the early 1800s was of course of a more progressive ilk when compared to other Christians of their period, when compared to the Unitarian spirit of today their positions show up as naively literalistic. I think today, as a Unitarian, it matters far less what one believes, and far more the sense in which one believes it. Even Trinitarian theology, or the Atonement, or the divinity of Christ, show up as incredulous only in as far as it is believed that such doctrines elucidate an historical reality, and not a mythological reality. As myths, it seems me, such doctrines can still elucidate “truth”. My trouble then with Joseph Ketley is not in what he came to believe, but in the way he felt it necessary to insult and embarrass his congregation before his departure. I think he did this ostensibly to protect his own ego. Upon leaving this post in 1836, he worked as a Christian missionary in the Caribbean, and South America, for the rest of his life.

In community then, we gather because this place, these people, confirm within us an essential aspect of our reality. When here, we know who we are, for the stories we tell each other, and this physical space, confirm our place in this world, and confirms to us our truth. This community being not just those gathered here today, but those who have gathered here for 300 years, people we agree with and disagree with, we are joined with them all in the peace and gentleness of this space. A web of community stretching back through time, to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in freedom. Unitarianism drew me in because it was a faith in which people were asking and talking about the things that no one else in my world was asking and talking about, in ways that no one else was. It was a place, and still is, to sing aloud words of hope, in a world which takes a pretty cynical view of hope. It was a place in which walls could come down, in which one could say what they really meant, without fear of reprisal. “I disagree, I don’t understand, I think on that point I would differ”, never put me outside the bounds of the community. A place where we can ask what we should do with, as Mary Oliver put it, ‘this one wild and precious life’. A place where we might be pressed into answering foundational questions of our life for ourselves. It’s a place that asks us to live into our truth. If we compartmentalize this world from the other worlds we inhabit, we are failing ourselves. This place asks us to look at our selves seriously, and strive to live up to the best version of our self all the time. Fundamentally, Church, or religious community, is about gathering together, and practicing doing/enacting the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is a speculative reality in which lions lie down with lambs, and swords are beaten into plowshares, and love and justice reign, where milk and honey flows, and none go hungry, or unloved, or forgotten. The picture you have on your order of service is of a man beating a sword into a plowshare. The blade of a plough, that we might make food and not war.

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Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House pulpit.

Our talk is important. Our words are important. Our ideals are important. But it’s really the living of it that matters most. Theoretical enquiry, reading about historical figures, historical controversies - you all know I like that stuff. I’m willing to have an argument any time you want. But without love, and kindness, and justice, and living into those Kingdom ethics, it is all worthless. To practice this is our most essential purpose as church, as gathered community. It’s like our training ground; it’s easier to practice living these values alongside others trying to live these values. We tell stories of our saints, our martyrs, and even perhaps our villains, that we might learn from them, grow by their example. Our faith is the commitment to risk in the goodness of humanity, which cannot always be seen, whispered in the stories we tell. A people who promises to be together in good times, and bad, who learn together through trial and error. And of course, what we learn here, we carry out with us. We carry our lit chalice into the world, to bless the world. For we have gathered to remember what we are, to be reminded our purpose, the purpose of community.

Amen.

The World Wide Web 25th Anniversary

The Internet is not the World Wide Web. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. The World Wide Web is an information system that is hosted on the internet.
 

To the layman, the words ‘World Wide Web’, and the ‘Internet’ are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. The internet is the physical network of computers that spans the world, whereas the World Wide Web is the language, if you will, all these networked computers use to speak to one another. This language, this program, which is the World Wide Web, was written by an English scientist twenty-seven years ago. His name is Tim Berners-Lee. While working for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Tim had an idea: it should be possible to share papers with fellow researchers, which link directly to other relevant papers. If a fellow scientist’s paper is referenced in your paper, for example, then it should be possible to click on the screen and navigate directly to that paper. The notion of linking from paper to paper, or website to website, is taken so for granted by my generation, it’s pretty difficult to imagine what the world must have been like before information was so readily available. In 1991 the public version of the World Wide Web was released. Twenty-five years ago this week. After 10 years it had a billion users, today it has over three billion, and growing.

Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, was born in London and had a pretty conventional Church of England upbringing. In his teens he concluded, as many of us do, that religion was not for him, and rejected the faith. But later on, after children had arrived on the scene, he and his wife wanted to find a community they could be a part of. And they gravitated towards Unitarianism. Or more precisely, Unitarian Universalism, as they now live in the States. It’s an interesting comparison to make, between the Unitarian Movement and the World Wide Web. There are a surprising number of similarities. Let’s start with Decentralisation.

In 1991 there was an experiment done by Loren Carpenter, an American computer scientist, and it revolved around the first computer game - Pong. Loren assembled a large room full of people, and divided them down the middle into two teams. Every person was given a control stick. If everyone in your team pushed up, the paddle on screen would move up very quickly. If half pushed up, and half down, the paddle would stay still. If only a few less pushed down than pushed up, then the paddle would move up slowly. On top of all that, the individuals in each team were not allowed to talk to each other. Remarkably, each time the ball moved across the screen, the paddle moved into position and hit the ball back. Somehow a subconscious consensus emerged and the teams were able to play effectively.

If you think about it, it is incredibly odd that this would work. Each individual is doing what they themselves think is best and yet somehow the whole team is able to be effective. This is not unlike the difference between creedal and non-creedal religion. In most organised religion (admittedly to varying degrees), they are striving the create uniformity of belief, taking as a given that individual expressions of belief would somehow disrupt the fabric of community, and create discord. Despite each individual in this community being guided by their own conscience, there is a funny kind of subconscious consensus at play. We are not unlike the paddle moving to hit the ball; the team being effective, despite each being our own fiercely individual selves. The experiment was repeated in 2014, this time with a game much more complicated than Pong. It was repeated with the 1998 game Pokemon, and this time not in a room of people giving contradictory commands, but online with millions of people giving contradictory commands. And again, despite the anarchy, despite the lack of oversight, the game was completed in just 16 days. The subconscious consensus emerged once again.

The 1991 version of this experiment was used to make some pretty bold claims about where the internet would get us in the coming decades. The theory went like this - with growing connectivity across the world, something akin to the subconscious consensus would surely emerge, healing the world’s divisions. The problem is, of course, that here we are 25 years later, more connected than ever before, and yet it seems as if there is just as much division as there has ever been. There has been no healing of the divisions of nations, class, and culture. Again, the underlying intellectual assumptions being made here I don’t think are that far from our Unitarian movement’s intellectual assumptions. Despite our anarchic individualism, our decentralization, despite our rejection of the ideal of uniformity, and despite our lack of structures of authority, there is nonetheless a belief in progress emerging forth - the progress of humanity. Take the five original principles of Unitarianism, as they were expressed in the 20th Century: the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the Leadership of Jesus, Salvation through character, and the Progress of Mankind Onward and Upward Forever. Looking past the obviously sexist language, Unitarianism has always had at its core this optimism for the state of humanity. Onwards and upwards forever. That despite the challenges we shall overcome.

For the 25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee had this to say, ‘Today, and throughout this year, we should celebrate the Web’s first 25 years. But though the mood is upbeat, we also know we are not done. We have much to do for the Web to reach its full potential. We must continue to defend its core principles and tackle some key challenges’. What is this full potential that Tim Berners-Lee alludes to? He alludes to nothing less than world peace. Not through imposing military supremacy, not through building walls, not through convincing everyone to think alike, but rather through liberty, through connectivity, through community. A global community. A World Web of community.

In Unitarianism we value the virtue of tolerance. We practice the art of listening, striving to understand, striving to walk beside others who we disagree with, perhaps passionately disagree with. This virtue is easy to advance when in reality you surround yourself with others who look and think alike with you. It becomes a far more challenging virtue when you welcome in the other, who in so many ways in contrary to you, and then you don’t play favourites. Again the World Wide Web at its best models this. It does not play favourites. Every opinion under the sun is being advanced somewhere online. Through the web we can encounter the other, the other perspective, in ways ordinary life can never quite accommodate. So what are we to make of the technological optimism which accompanied the birth of the World Wide Web in the early 90s? The optimism of the 90s brings to mind the optimism of the 60s. In the time of Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, and Space Exploration, the world had a similar technological fantasy. 

At the 1962 World Fair hosted in New York City, the world was given a vision of the future, a vision of what the world would look like by the 1990s. There were essentially three promises made. That, one: we would have colonies on the moon, two: electricity would be so abundant it would be free, and three: that computers would think. The optimism of the 60s did not come to pass, and nor has the optimism of the 90s. But, progress has been made. Progress unfolds, and humanity moves upwards and onwards. We are just really bad at predicting what that progress is going to look like, and secondly, we’re really bad at even recognising it as it comes. We belligerently insist upon a focus on the negative. What the inventors and visionaries of the 90s hoped and saw for the future of the internet was entirely wrong, but what of its virtues? Today, senior citizens who spend more time online are less depressed and more mentally active. The internet helps us access critical information, information which can even be lifesaving. Students who have access to broadband internet are more likely to graduate compared to students who don’t. The flexibility of online learning has opened up learning opportunities to people who previously couldn’t access them. The World Wide Web now contributes 10% to our British GDP.

The internet crowd-funds innovation, raising billions for new technologies and other inventions. It is bringing people together like never before. More and more people who are getting married today are meeting first online. Does that sound like a good idea? Statistics also suggest that relationships which start online are in fact more likely to last, because we are able to meet people who share our interests more. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’. The internet has become a critical component of this. With that I want to celebrate the World Wide Web. And what will the next 25 years hold? I have my ideas, my suspicions (which are most likely wrong). But I am optimistic.

Amen.

Our Unitarian Theology?

Cross Street Chapel - Machester

Where to begin? Like the Manchester Conference itself, this address can just act as the beginning of the conversation. To get the ball rolling, the explorers may go out and map territory, but it still takes the pioneers to go and do the colonising. So what do we mean by Theology?

We all do theology: the way we choose to live our lives, what we value, the meaning we give to our lives. ‘What is the meaning of life?’ - this is a bit of a joke question, and rightfully so. Nobody can know what the meaning of life is. But nonetheless we all answer that question quietly within our own hearts. To be loving, to be kind, to further one cause or another. We all do theology. When decisions are made about how this Meeting House should present itself to the outside world, we are doing theology. We’re saying something about who we are, and what we represent.

When you attempt to explain to someone, ‘what is a Unitarian?’, you’re doing theology. And when you’re thinking about, or talking about your faith, your conception of God, if you value faith communities, if you believe that love will overcome hate, if you believe this world is getting better or getting worse, if you have hope. We all do theology. But how examined is that theology? Does it just come from a gut level sense? Do we hold opinions just because? Opinions we have inherited from our elders, or inherited from the way it has always been done? By thinking about theology, we attempt to unpack why we think what we think. We get down to the roots of what we think. We hold opinions or perspectives of ours next to one another, and see if they contradict, and if they do, we examine if that is a problem, or not.

There is an idea within our denomination that because we are a ‘creedless religion’ we don’t do theology (‘Creedless’ meaning there is no set beliefs to which you have to sign up.) But to be ‘creedless’ is deeply theological. By being ‘creedless’ we are making a radical and bold theological claim, that the search for truth and meaning cannot be delegated to any person living, or indeed the writings of any old man from history. We have the sacred task of looking at the place we inhabit in the world, and building a worldview, a spiritual perspective, which is in line with our own conscience, our own rational understanding, our own sense of what has come before. "To trust yourself when all men doubt you, but to make allowance for their doubting too." To consider deeply the perspectives of others within our community, and therefore as a community to grow in our togetherness.

My favourite talk from the Manchester Theological Conference was Jo James’s, his cryptic title being ‘Spectral Hermeneutics’ which he borrowed from the theologian John Caputo. Jo James, if you don’t know, has been the Unitarian minister up at Leeds for the last couple of years. Unlike the other speakers who mainly spoke on the problems we are facing - lack of theological discourse, lack of core identity, etc. - Jo James’s talk was a bit more on the positive side, on the constructive side.

Hermeneutics is about the interpretation and understanding of something, usually in reference to the Bible. We did a bit of hermeneutics last week when we looked at Genesis 3, and explored how it has been understood and how we might want to understand it now. ‘Spectral’ is the adjective for spectre; not the James Bond movie, but rather a ghost or spirit. So ‘Spectral Hermeneutics’ is a fancy way of saying ‘interpreting the spirit’, or ‘a theology of spirit’. That’s what Jo James’s talk was on, a Theology of the Spirit, and how that relates to our Unitarian theology, or identity. Throughout the world, in many different languages, the word for spirit is synonymous with the word for breath. The same breath which sustains all living beings, which binds us and unites us all together.

Jo James went on to list five key ways in which the spirit can be said to be working in liberal religion, acting in its development. They are:

1) Emphasis on reason in faith.
2) Open and thoughtful approach to religious texts.
3) Preference for unity and dialogue.
4) Individual responsibility for faith.
5) An insistence upon tolerance, and freedom of conscience.

Five ways in which the spirit can be seen quietly working in the background of our communities. Ralph Waldo Emerson says we should ‘Refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men.’ Because all our models, all our structures and institutions, are of human making, not divinely created. And we only hold to a particular structure by virtue of where and when we were born.

Those early disciples in Acts were waiting for the return of Jesus, but when he didn’t come, they settled for creating the Church. The Church is a creation of humanity: at best humanity responding to the spirit of God, responding to their experience of the spirit of love, and at worst motivated by egotistical desire, or needs for certainty. As they, the disciples, were inspired by the spirit, so we can be inspired by the spirit. We need not settle for imitating what has come before. We are creedless, we refuse the good models, we are receptive to the inadequacies of “The Church”, and are open to the spirit moving amongst us. The spirit which brings forth such fruits as love and freedom. To recognise the spirit in our own life is to be seized by reality in the depth of our being, as John Caputo says. To know our own humanity, and to be compelled towards love and hope. True love, and true hope, which is the love of the difficult to love, and a hope in the face of hopelessness: this is the Spirit among us.

The power of this spirit is egalitarian, and anarchic in nature, it threatens those who hold onto the reins of traditional Church power. Jo James referenced the Christian mystics who were always feared for this reason. Throughout Church history such mystical groups were systematically suppressed by the Church. Perhaps they laid the popular ground work for religious tolerance and freedom of conscience, characteristic of the early reform traditions.

Jo James went on to talk about the Dutch Low Countries, where in the 17th century there was an interesting exchange of ideas which took place amongst students. They offered there a community open to refugees, the most notable person being Spinoza, who was himself a Jew, whose family fled Spanish persecution. But also at this time, refugee Quakers, Baptists and ‘others’ fled to the Dutch Low Countries from British persecution. Spinoza’s approach to religion moved it away from something based upon superstition, towards something more rationalistically based. In this arena of free flowing thought, the ideas espoused by Spinoza and others fed into the spiritual tradition which we now identify as ‘Unitarian’. Spinoza, on writing about the Spirit, or the breath of God, says that this Spirit is synonymous with the power, mind, intention and effect of God as perceived by human faculties, and in doing so he prepares the ground upon which understanding God and nature as concepts bound together could be taken up, as our tradition of course went on to do.

I think, as one unplugs the name of God from some supernatural supreme being, one understands spirit or God as the name for a certain galvanised form of life in the now, which is expressed as the Kingdom of God, a form of life in this world. That is the core of this tradition. Our tradition is elusive and difficult to pin down. You can’t point to a few sentences, and say ‘that’s what it is’. ‘Unitarian Theology’ is a spirit led broad affair, but it is not a blank space, it is not an anything goes. It has a character, a bolshie tone about it. It is not a soft liberalism of niceness and kind platitudes; it doesn’t think everyone’s opinion is equally valid.

That kind of ‘your mind is so open your brain falls out’ approach to religion is not Unitarian, it is what creeps in when we forget what our traditions stands for: spirit, breath which binds all of creation, sacred anarchy, deeply thoughtful, radical expressions of love and hope, a present-centred spirituality, pioneering, and ready to go deeper.

Look at the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Amen.

James Russell Lowell

“THEY are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.”

James Russell Lowell was a 19th Century Unitarian American abolitionist, a poet and a diplomat. In this poem on Freedom we can hear his opinion of slavery – an obvious evil – full of hatred, scoffing and abuse. But here Lowell is going much further than simply commenting upon indentured servants.

James Russell Lowell

Slaves are not only the shackled, but all those men and woman paralysed by social convention, locked into narrow conceptions of the world around them, unable or unwilling to step out from their comfort zones. In this poem we get a sense of Lowell’s exasperated frustration; why can they not simply receive the liberty afforded to them? I value immensely this ideal that Lowell is grasping after, a world in which each can act according to his or her own conscience, a world in which appeals are made to reason and not to authority.

In my own spiritual journey, as I have moved from Pentecostal Christianity, through traditional Anglicanism, and on into Unitarianism, there has been a recurring theme of butting up against the walls of acceptability. In this journey of spiritual discovery there are always other avenues to explore, other insights to flesh out. The breadth and openness and warmth of Unitarianism lends itself to that ever unfolding journey – which is not to say that Unitarianism is in any sense directionless, for just as Lowell grasped after a world in which each and every person is wholly able to realise themselves and be liberated from within, so we collectively journey to that indefinable end.

James Lowell lived in a world divided along racial lines, an America on the brink of Civil War. He and his contemporaries stood up for the voiceless and the oppressed, the factory workers, the slaves, and those on death row; his spirituality was not a lofty endeavour, but was outwardly expressed in political and social action. Unitarianism and social justice have always gone hand in hand. This has been our unifying rallying cry, no creed or dogma, but justice for the marginalised.

The social justice issues of today are in part quite different and in part disturbingly similar. In the world at large, race is still a defining factor, the labourer is still exploited, and the dispossessed still wander the lands without home or roots. But other issues have also come to the foreground: sexual equality, transgender equality, ethics of war, drones and nukes, and the ever ticking ecological time bomb. In as far as we, like Lowell, remain belligerently ahead on these issues of equality, giving voice to the issues of today and tomorrow as they arise, we remain – and our faith remains – relevant. 

Perched upon the Church’s Branches

I gave today’s address at the Memorial Church, Cambridge; it was good to take the service in the Church where my journey into Unitarianism began. Back while I was training for ministry at Westcott House I discovered Andrew Brown’s weekly discussion group – it proved to be a life saver for me – and set in motion this journey I am now making into Unitarian ministry.

The address was on my uneasy relationship with institutionalized Christianity, and yet my on-going claim upon the Christian label. I explored this topic through various images: a statue of Jeremiah, the Cathedral in Geneva, a mustard seed, John Calvin and the burning of Michael Servetus. (See audio below).

Readings:

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Armstrong, Karen. ‘Chapter 5: The Axial Age’, A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005.

Rollins, Peter. ‘Fiery Preacher Parable’ The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church beyond Belief. Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2008.

Our Unitarian Values

We value this journey of life, and the unique path each of us takes through it. We value each individual's search for purpose and truth, and the freedom to follow our own conscience and reason. We value love, compassion, liberty and justice. We value community, growing and being challenged through the insights and lives of others. We value our Christian heritage, the example and teachings of Jesus and his forebears. We value the insights and rituals of those from other faith traditions, and seek to learn and grow through the rich cultural insights of others. We seek harmony with the earth and its inhabitants, humans and not. We value the conversation, the journey of discovery, and the beauty of life. We value being along side each other, even though we may disagree.

Visiting Godalming Unitarians

On this wet Sunday in May I attended the Godalming Unitarian Church’s alternative service, which is more reflective in nature to their ordinary services – drawing from another faith tradition – this time drawing from Christianity.

The service was an extended reflection on the verses of the Beatitudes – dispelling some of the misconceptions, and ways in which the words are from time to time are narrowly defined, with some Aramaic chants for the musical interludes.  

Though we receive the Beatitudes through the Christian tradition, it is helpful to reflect on these proverbs in isolation of their Christian heritage – as indeed for so many this heritage is not life-giving, but stifling and oppressive. The Beatitudes have a great deal to offer in and of themselves, they certainly do not require a Christian orthodox meta-narrative for them to make sense, in fact in many ways to me the Beatitudes seem to subvert the prevailing Christian narrative.

The various passages were mused upon by considering the native tongue Jesus would have originally spoken the words in – Aramaic. Through this process a richer reading becomes possible…

‘Blessed are those in emotional turmoil; they shall be united inside by love.

Healthy are those who have softened what is rigid within; they shall be surrounded by what is needed to sustain their bodies.

Blessed are those who from their inner wombs, birth mercy; they shall feel its warm arms embrace them.

Blessed are those who plant peace each season; they shall be named children of God...’ (Neil Douglas-Klotz) 

Visiting Kensington Unitarians

This Sunday I visited the Kensington Unitarian Church for the first time. The church is a stone’s throw from Kensington Palace, so I followed up my visit with a very nice walk though Hyde Park, also for the first time.

There was a very warm and friendly welcome to the Unitarian Church which was far bigger than any Unitarian congregation I have been to previously. Compared to the congregations I am more familiar with (Cambridge, Portsmouth, and Southampton) Kensington’s less traditional aesthetic, the American expats, and the semi-in-the-round layout creates an atmosphere unlike what I have experienced to date; perhaps more akin to UU congregations, at least as I would imagine them.

The collaboratively lay-led service’s theme was ‘Sabbath’ – “Most of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest” (Mark Buchanan). The address began with the roots of the Jewish day of rest, then looked at different examples of Sabbath-esque days in other religions and cultures, finally concluding with a reflection upon how we might incorporate a ‘Sabbath’ into our own lives.

We were asked to reflect on questions such as: ‘Where would or does your inspiration come from: Which source or combination of sources? Spiritual? Religious? Literature? Other forms of media?’

Creeds and Liberty

Naturally the essence of creedal denominations necessitates the impulse towards conformity to one degree or another, sometimes very explicitly, and sometimes very subtly. There is after all a party line, and however compassionately and gently it is done, in due course all are cajoled into place. This impulse diminishes our sacrosanct personhood, and our right to self-determine.

We Unitarians value above all else the liberty to be guided by our own conscience and free enquiry, to enter into the open market place of ideas without ulterior motives being hung above our heads. Take for example the orthodox Christian’s trending mantra ‘Belong, before you believe.’ To belong is to be fully embraced as the person that you are, but how can one truly belong to a group when it never loses sight of its underlining goal: to have you conform to certain precepts.

Of course within the flux of group dynamics, no church can really claim to be free of unnamed motives when it comes to its prospective members, but the Unitarians strive to put the questioning soul at the heart of its mission. This mission is to respect true integrity, and to always name and oppose our human propensity to inflict conformity upon others.

The great joy of Unitarianism is that we might act as agents of peace, kindness, and tolerance in this world, all the while co-journeying as equals with our brothers and sisters, truly valuing what such an equality means, being vulnerable, doubting, and confused right alongside one another.

Visiting Southampton Unitarians

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This morning I went to join the congregation at the Edmund Kell Church in Southampton. The service focused upon the season of spring, the return of life, the waking up of our gardens. The service took place in their chapel (pictured to the right) situated on the first floor, above their Church hall. It was a very nice space, with a modern wooden beamed ceiling; the church was redesigned and rebuilt in 1990. The original building which was built by Edmund Kell in the 1850’s was destroyed by Nazi bombing in 1940.

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” – Words from the Native North Americans.

The address unpacked the ecological reality of an interconnected world: the pollution of one country impacts upon another. The El Niño warm water current of the pacific impacts the weather of the American West Coast, but even impacts weather right here in the UK.

Reading from Lay Blaylock’s Creation in Reverse - “On the last day before the end of the earth, man finally realised that he had completely destroyed the way plants, animals and people could live on the earth.  He also had no idea how he was going to get himself out of the fix he was in. And man said: “Oh God!”

And God said…

The obvious question to be posed is what can we do better, how can we respond to the ecological time bomb?

And yet, we do not want to simply reduce creation to an obstacle to be overcome, we want to delight in it also. We should enter into a place of wonder, through enjoying the sacred space which is the garden, by joining with others in religious rituals and metaphor which draw us into delighting in the wonder of this planet.

Jumping Ship

After much prayer and consideration I have decided to leave Anglican ministry, and pursue ministry within the denomination I have for many years felt a natural affinity towards - the Unitarian Church. I did my degree at the London School of Theology, graduating in 2010; towards the end of my degree I happened upon the work of Don Cupitt. I found his non-realist Christian standpoint immensely captivating; his work drew me into considering Anglican ordained ministry.  Upon reflection I decided to train at the most ‘liberal’ Anglican seminary, where Cupitt himself was even vice-principal: Westcott House.

At Westcott House I made some good friends, and enjoyed the insights of a few lecturers but for the most part I found the experience deeply dissatisfying. I was surprised and disappointed to find that the insights of Cupitt had come to be regarded with distain, and so I slowly arrived at the conclusion that there would need to be a stark disconnect between what I thought and the beliefs I promulgated. During this trying period I did however discover an oasis, a place where I did not need to obfuscate my words, a place where I could be open and honest. This was the Cambridge Unitarian Church.

I was in two minds, on the one hand I felt that I should pack the whole thing in and move in an entirely new direction, but on the other, I knew I did not really know to what extent the microcosm of Westcott House reflected Liberal Anglo- Catholicism more generally. There was always the chance that in overcoming the obstacles before me, I would discover my place, where I fit into the Church.

So, I took up my Assistant Curacy role in the Diocese of Portsmouth, in 2013 being ordained to the deaconate, and in 2014 to the priesthood, and then finally I resigned my post in the summer of 2015. My assistant curacy post was not deeply dissatisfying, but nor did I ever feel at home. My colleagues were always very supportive, and the congregation to which I served was very welcoming and friendly, but regardless my theological scruples continued to gnaw at me. I invariably occupied theological space outside Anglican comfort zones. My Christian ‘anarchic’ leanings always left me feeling uneasy, especially when ecclesiastical authority was exercised. So I gradually and probably inevitably arrived at the conclusion that I must leave, I must pursue Unitarian ministry.