Unitarian theology

There is nothing definitive, nothing formal, nothing official that can describe or encapsulate the mental models that Unitarians use to describe our world.  But there have been some good efforts at trying.

One of our favourite bloggers, whose blog you can link to at the bottom of this website, is Stephen Lingwood, and his latest version of what ties Unitarians together whilst setting us apart from non-religious types, is his blog entry of 17 July 2014, extracted below - cheekily, without his permission.

"Unitarianism is a theological tradition with commitments. This list could be improved, or put in different ways, but we really are committed to the following theological points:

1. There is a spiritual dimension to reality - though this should be understood as an existential claim rather than a metaphysical one. In other words there is a deeper, fuller, better, more mysterious, more alive way to live - and this is what the religions have been wrestling with for thousands of years.

2. Revelation is not sealed: the fullest truth about the nature of our lives and the universe has not once and for ever been revealed and codified at any point in the past. Instead we are part of our continuous process of seeking ever deeper, bigger and more complex understandings of this truth. We are part of a historical process of discovery.

3. The spiritual reality is imminently and fully present in the here and now. We do not look to the past for evidence of revelation or to the future for a time of fulfilment and completion. Neither should our attention be on the afterlife or some other place. Religion drives us deeper and deeper into this reality, not an escape from it.

4. Related to this is the affirmation that fundamentally reality, the universe, life is good. There is pain and tragedy, but ultimately "it was good" - it is good.

5. The human being (the human "soul" if you like) is a source and locus of spiritual reality. We are intimately involved in this: "the Highest dwells within us.... As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins." Emerson.

6. We are One - we are deeply intertwined with one another in an "interdependent web of all existence" or an "inescapable network of mutuality" (ML King). This may be point 5 above just described in a different way. The fundamental truth of our existence is that we are not separate but deeply connected with all that is.

7. Human beings have sacred inherent worth and value. For this sacredness not to be trampled human beings must be free. Therefore relations between people should be based on free consent and not coercion.

8. Related to this is the realisation that the human race is one. We have more in common than divides us. There is not one particular people who are superior. There is a foundational equality for all people.

9. We live in an non-optimal world where the oneness and equality of all is frustrated by various systems and forces. It is a moral obligation to seek to put this right and commit to justice. Or, to put it another way, love and spirituality cannot be separated. "You cannot love God without loving your sister." Religion must lead us to a greater compassion, and any religion that does not increase our capacity for compassion is a false religion.

10. Community is necessary. We cannot live out these truths in isolation, but must enter into the discipline of community-making to live out this calling in the world.

11. We are ultimately hopeful about this universe. Not immediately, "not without dust and heat" but eventually there is a reason for hope. "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." "

July 2014 meeting

The July worship meeting of Didymus (Ringwood Unitarians) was on Sunday 13 July.  Darren led the meeting and took the theme 'No Bystanders'.

Life happens whatever the choices we make.  And the greatest danger to the ethical life is thinking that we can 'sit this one out.'

We can choose to do nothing; we can have good reasons to do nothing; we may even be right to do nothing; but we are never not involved because of that.

 

Prove it to me

Unitarians are, by nature, people who examine evidence, lines of logic, myths, legends and argument.  They tend to lend greater weight to the evidence of their own lives and experience than to hypotheses handed to them by others.

In the Christian story we notice that the disciple called Thomas was sceptical about the claims of others: the claims that Jesus had been resurrected, and had been seen walking and talking to those who followed him.  "When I can put my finger in the wounds on his hands, feet and side," Thomas is supposed to have said, "then I'll believe."  Doubting Thomas, he became dubbed, and the name has stuck. Well, Unitarians are perhaps the Doubting Thomases of religion.  "Show me how what you are saying matches my experience," Unitarians say.

So it comes as no surprise that the Unitarian congregation of Ringwood, at some point in the 19th century, renamed their Meeting House as "St Thomas' Chapel".  It did revert, and by the time the Unitarians sold it off, it was once again simply the "Meeting House".

Now Unitarians once again use the Meeting House in Ringwood for their worship, and this year to mark the feast day of Thomas on 3 July we presented the Meeting House with a floral arrangement specially commissioned from the Ringwood Floral Decoration Society.  We are grateful to them, and also to Rivendell Designs Photography (also from Ringwood) for the photos on this post.

Being frightened by difference

Unitarians, with people the world over who take a liberal, inclusive, generous view of religious faith and belief, look back and remember Jan Hus on 6 July.  Jan Hus was born around 1369 and he was a  Czech priest, philosopher, reformer and master at Charles University in Prague. After John Wycliffe, the theorist of ecclesiastical Reformation, Hus is considered the first Church reformer, as he lived before Luther, Calvin and Zwingli.

Jan Hus was tortured and executed in 1415 because, as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, one of the things he did wrong was to offer his congregants both bread and wine, known as “communion in both kinds”.  This mattered to the authorities because in doing so he disobeyed their rules – and they felt that their power and their communities were threatened by his actions.

Jan Hus had read the Bible for himself and had noticed that, at the Last Supper, celebrating the Jewish Passover, Jesus had invited his followers both to take and eat the seder bread and to take and drink the wine, and to continue to do that in his name until he returned in glory.  At Mass, therefore, Jan Hus fed his congregants both bread and wine, in defiance of the Catholic instruction of the time, which was that only the priests should drink the wine at the Mass.

Such things may seem trivial to us but – as Dean Jonathan Swift pointed out in his satire about the big-endians and the small-endians, who fought over which end of a boiled egg should be broken into with a spoon – every culture has its blind spots and taboos, over which the most terrible wars can be fought.  Optional approaches, that come to be seen as “right” or “wrong,” are often bound up in our own sense of who we are and who we include in our tribe.

In remembering Jan Hus and the ultimate price he paid for thinking for himself about religion, and making his stand in witness to what he believed to be right, let us look at ourselves a bit more closely.  What are the arbitrary habits and assumptions that we hold so dear, that are so much part of ourselves and our identity, that we feel frightened when someone does them differently?  How realistic is our fright?  How likely is it, that what is being done will damage our identity or the conditions under which we live our lives?  And how do we express our fear?  Finally, how do we behave towards the person who is doing things differently?