Colonizing or synthesizing? Accommodation or appropriation? Ways to form a #Unitarian community of practice - June 2021 gathering for reverence in Ringwood

The influences on the theme of the gathering for reverence in June 2021 were the season (Midsummer), the traditional Bible reading for the season, and the celebration of Pride that happens globally around this time.  Our leader for the gathering was Darren, and Darren’s reflection drew these strands together into a wider look at how Unitarians build community, not just alliances.  And in so doing, Darren set our movement a profound challenge.

Pride is celebrated in the month of June, as that was the month when the Stonewall riots took place.

The chalice lighting words were by Linda Lee Franson (here) specifically for Pride-tide; and the readings were from Everyman’s Book of English Folk Tales (Seeing is Believing - Reflections of a Sussex Labourer), and the Bible book of Luke (chapter 1 verses 57 to 80).  We also heard a line from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a reminder that we were entirely within our rights to dismiss everything we heard during our gathering:

“If we shadows have offended, 

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumbered here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream.”

The first reading was a folk tale, the impact of which hinged around the fact that in Sussex the word Pharisee was synonymous, for generations, with the words faerie or Fae.  It started with:

“They tell me as some folk don’t believe in the little people, as we call Pharisees, no more than they do in dragons. The reason is that they never set eyes on the one nor the other. They believe in the angels, though, and they believe in God, but I don’t suppose any of ‘em ‘as ever seen Him. ‘Ah’, they say, ‘but God and the angels are in the Bible, so they must be true.’ Well, ain’t the Pharisees in the Bible, likewise?” 

It’s clear, almost shockingly, that the speaker has woven together a new understanding of the world from two quite different sources.

Darren said: “What really hit me was discovering that there were people out there who, when they heard the stories of Jesus debating with the Pharisees in the Bible, were hearing not a historical narrative, as some see it, but rather a continuation of the folk tales where the hero has to outsmart the tricksy Fae.  Let that sink in.  After over a thousand years of Christianity on these shores the story being heard was still something older.  And more than that: while this labourer from Sussex was hearing the old story of the Fae which he had grown up with, he also was clearly hearing the ‘new’ (if a thousand years and more can still be called ‘new’).  A new look at what Jesus was doing. The one did not preclude the other.  Both could be heard at the same time.  Not because they are identical, but because each added to the other.” 

The second reading was the Bible story of the birth of John the Baptist, which is traditionally read at Midsummer in the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, and perhaps more widely. There is a line in the Gospel of John that is used as the basis for the seasonal link.  John the Baptist says, regarding Jesus: ‘He must increase; I must diminish’ (John chapter 3 verse 30).  It appears that as the longest day is reached, when the days will grow shorter while the nights grow longer, that this single verse was enough to link this character and this time of year.  Darren chose the reading from Luke because: “The reading, which is used on John the Baptist’s feast day, contains powerful and beautiful imagery of female empowerment, of hope for change, and a message that can unite and enliven communities as disparate as the Jewish and Gentile communities were seen to be at that time.”  Explaining that over the centuries there there was a planned and deliberate adoption of Pagan festivals for the cycle of Christian beliefs, Darren went on: “John and Jesus are often represented as the end of the old and the beginning of the new.  Jesus’ own birth is celebrated at the opposite point of the year, Midwinter.  A clear solar journey is mapped onto these moments in the Bible.  Moreover, the ritual of the communities, who take that text as central, now reflect the practices of pre-Christian people in the Northern Hemisphere, who would never have known about Jesus or John.  But the Bible narratives of Jesus weren’t recorded with the seasons and rituals of Europe and North America in mind.  It took hundreds of years for the celebrations we know today to evolve, long after those first Christians had died. There are multiple stories being told here, multiple voices being heard, and the one should not preclude the other.”

Darren then set out the proposition that it ought to be possible for the Unitarian movement to be more than a collection of separate identities doing the bare minimum to live alongside each other under the single umbrella of the movement.  He declared,

“I firmly believe that we can be more than Earth Spirit and Christian under one roof, more than gay and straight sat side by side.  I believe that our many diverse identities do not preclude a shared one, an identity in common.  I believe we can be one community.  Perhaps this is a dream, but I believe we can.  The question is how?”

Suggesting that the answer to that question lies in accommodation rather than appropriation, in synchronization rather than colonization, we understood what Darren was driving at as he explained what was in his mind about the readings:

“Think about this for a moment: when the stone crosses were carved in the north of England, and the motifs of Loki being bound, or the snake being beaten, were used to show the Devil being overthrown by Christ victorious, Christians were taking the art and literature of a people and using it to tell a different story.  They weren’t translating their message into the local language; rather they were telling the locals what those local symbols now meant.

“But in our first reading, the fairy faith of our Sussex labourer finds a place it can co-exist in the Christian community.  It finds a home; and in so doing sheds a fresh light onto the narratives for the whole community.  How different from a Christian purloining of a tradition of storytelling as a nice style for the telling of the ‘historical’ narratives of the gospels!  I suggest that giving a home to a way of seeing things, and the expressions of such, is Accommodation, whereas taking the outward form or expression of something and using it for one’s own way of seeing is Appropriation.  If Accommodation can be seen as taking in a stranger, Appropriation is just stealing their clothes.

“In the second reading, we saw how wider ways of celebrating and experiencing the divine could coincide.  On the one hand we could try to say that the Christian practices are ‘just’ copies of older Pagan ones — such as Christmas in relation to both Sol Invictus (in Rome) and a northern ritual at the turning of the year — or we could claim that the Pagans ‘really’ mean what the Bible does but don’t understand it yet.  Both claims have been, and continue to be, made.

"And at the very heart of Christianity, those traditions with ritual rely heavily on rituals brought in from Judaism, such as baptism, and a form of shared meal which now forms the heart of the Mass.  But trying to replace the content of something with one’s own interpretation is to Colonize it, to invade and take over, no matter how much is left untouched outwardly.  Whereas, recognizing similarities, points of contact, while respecting the fact that each has its own right to be — well, that opens the way to Synchronize, to align, and ultimately to share and grow together.”

Then we heard Darren’s challenge to the wider UK Unitarian movement: 

“The application of this to the Earth Spirit and the Christian leanings in our UK Unitarian community are apparent, but in this month of Pride I would like to suggest two things.

"We Appropriate, each time that we value talking about inclusivity as a means to grow our numbers over actually making a community in which people with diverse sexual and gender identities are at home.

We Colonize, each time we hold that those with different ways of expressing their love are ‘really’ ‘just’ wanting to do the same thing we are.

"This isn’t about 'just squeezing over to make room for'.  It’s about 'giving a home to'.

Let’s learn to give a home to ways of seeing things differently to maybe the mainstream. 

Let’s find the similarities and points of contact that allow us to share and grow together, making something new to hold in common. 

Let’s not be a tolerant church grumpily sat with each other, waiting for the next argument. We can be more than that, and we can be better than that.

"Let’s Accommodate not Appropriate.

  Let’s Synchronize not Colonize.”

Let's do more than 'squeeze over to make space for'.
Let's 'make a home with'.