UK Unitarianism is not a national church

Just in case a passing viewer is wondering - there is not a national Unitarian church. What there is, is a national association of local, independent and self-governing churches and fellowships (although it is allowed for individual persons to also affiliate as Associates to the association). The association is called the "General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches", and it is therefore a 'community of communities'.

(People who don't live close to where a Unitarian church or fellowship operates are encouraged to join what might be thought of the original "virtual" congregation, called the National Unitarian Fellowship (operating since 1945, in the old days only by post). In that way, people a long way away from a physical church are equally represented by their own congregation, the NUF, at the General Assembly.)

This explains why the variety of views and styles of worship exists. Each church or fellowship worships and develops in the way its members and trustees permit. It's not like football with everyone playing to the same rules and doing the same thing: it's more like athletics, with each church specialising in its own "sport".

Memory, imagination, loss - and where to find comfort for loss in the Bible -- Ringwood Unitarians' gathering in November 2021

The gathering opened with a roll call of the Ringwood Meeting House worshippers who were killed in military service during the First World War.  This was not an act using the memory, but an act using the imagination, and invoking emotion.

Then, in the light of the COP 26 climate emergency conference of the nations, the president of the day (Lucy) offered a deeper perspective on the relationship between imagination, emotion and memory.  She considered the future, reminding us all that the climate emergency is ‘only’ about accelerating the extinction of the human species and not about the end of life as we know it on Earth, nor even about the destruction of the planet itself. That event will come much later, and will be caused by the explosion of the Sun.

In imagining the future explosive death of the Sun, which will obliterate the Earth, we may experience the emotion of sorrow for loss as we imagine the ending, ending of our personal era, and indeed the whole Earth.  We respond like this because we have experienced loss in our own lives; our sorrow is based on our personal memory of previous loss.  But of course this is hugely ironic as, when that future destruction of the Earth occurs, there will long since have ceased to be any humans, so there will be no sense of loss.

Lucy then looked to the Bible for thoughts that might assist us when we are experiencing loss.  The loss, the overwhelming loss, featuring in the Christian consciousness is the loss of the personage of the poet and teacher Yeshua who is also known as Jesus.  Early followers of Jesus had imagined and eagerly awaited a new everlasting era with Jesus recognisably holding sway over the entire course of human events, and they must have been devastated in the face of losing him.  Thus it was suggested that the New Testament is, in essence, an anthology attempting to help successive generations of disciples come to terms with the loss of Jesus, and helping them to remember him.

She said: “As Christianity crystallised, very early on Jesus became seen as supernatural.  Then Jesus could not be equated with other humans and the loss of Jesus could not then be equated with the loss of other humans.  In the form that the New Testament finally took, the reader is almost throughout the compilation being encouraged to seek their comfort in their faith in Jesus as the Risen Christ.  And it’s quite hard work to read the New Testament in any other than the traditional way.  So, if as Unitarians we do not accept the traditional views of the supernatural nature of Jesus, then it can be hard to find much help in the New Testament for our everyday and oh so ordinary experience of loss.”

So it was to the Old Testament that Lucy turned.  The OT focuses on Jewish life and traditions before the emergence of Jesus, so the loss themes in the OT are those experienced as a community by Jewish people throughout the centuries. In it, perhaps the most basic loss, the most continuously noted loss, is the loss of the homeland and its sacred spaces and places.  So this loss, and other calamities that befell individuals and kingly Jewish states, are more akin to social and personal problems of today, and may speak to us with more relevance.  The inspiration we may get from the OT comes from the record of the Jewish struggle to understand how they came to be exiled and oppressed, with a basic loss of control over their lives, and how to retrieve the situation.  

The OT books of the prophets and the wisdom books help us by supplying a range of different responses to loss and sorrow.  The prophetic books include a sense, described by mystics as having been given by God, that loss will be washed away by God, no demands made.  To illustrate this there was a reading from Isaiah (Isaiah 44:21-26 (New English Bible)).  This was a radical approach when it was experienced and recorded by the Arameans/Hebrews/Jews, as it denotes a loving God, a merciful God.  A God who did not need the ritual human or animal sacrifice of older belief systems. 

In contrast with the prophetic books, the wisdom books of the OT rely less on an interventionist God to help through loss, and more on a human, personal, internal change of attitude in the face of loss.  An example was the second reading was from the book of Ecclesiastes (edited from Ecclesiastes by A World Religions Bible (page 282)).  The teacher and poet Jesus would have been living and working against the backdrop of these and other Jewish scriptures.

Lucy reflected: “We each deal with loss on perhaps a daily basis — loss of people, loss of opportunity, loss of resources, loss of self-esteem, loss of memory, loss even of basic forms of trust.  With a Unitarian heritage coming from the Christian culture, we may be able to find insights, from examining certain Bible passages and letting our imaginations roam freely, that will help us to cope with loss.  The culture and governance systems of our land are steeped in traditions and systems coming out of Christianity.  So we might imagine we no longer need the Christian sources, now that our society has mainstreamed ideas from Christianity, in particular in relation to justice, and support for those least able to cope with life’s demands.  But a German academic, Dr Isolde Karle, once said at a conference:

“The Christian cultural memory cannot be taken for granted. It is completely imaginable that one day the story of the Good Samaritan will no longer be known or understood.  Solidarity with the powerless, deliberate care of the marginalised, of the sick and of people in need are not self-evident.”"

Lucy suggested that we live in times when common standards of integrity and moral behaviour are being shunted out the door and the public expectation of what counts as acceptable behaviour is in danger of being re-normalized to a new low.  And worse: there seems to be no visible, widespread public outrage at how our representatives are behaving, and no recognition of the danger that we risk, if we do not return to ‘word being bond’, general trustworthiness, and the courage to maintain and insist on truth.

Under these circumstances the possibility exists that anything or everything can be lost, even the Christian cultural memory.  So it is surely important to us who inherit the culture to keep alive the compassionate standpoint of the Jewish poet, teacher and leader Jesus, and all who followed after him, even if we no longer hold the beliefs in a supernatural Jesus that drove most of those followers on?

At the end of our gathering, after the readings, and hymns, and lighting of candles, and contemplation in silence, this was our witness, the closing words we all said while muted on Zoom:

"We are aware, and we affirm that we do not find our peace

in the certainty of what we confess,

but in wonder of what befalls us and what we are given;

that we do not find our destination in indifference and greed,

but in vigilance and in connection with all that lives;

that our existence is not fulfilled by who we are and what we possess,

but by what is infinitely greater than we can contain.”

Extract from 2006 Confession of Faith of the Dutch Remonstrant Church

The still, small voice that whispers to our burdens - Ringwood Unitarians gathering October 2021

Our gathering on 10 October 2021 was again held on Zoom.  In the background to the gathering was an awareness of Black History Month and World Mental Health Day.

The chalice lighting words were by W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), African American Educator and Civil Rights Activist.  

"Give us grace, … to dare to do the deed which we well know cries to be done. Let us not hesitate because of ease, or the words of men’s mouths, or our own lives. Mighty causes are calling us—the freeing of women, the training of children, the putting down of hate and murder and poverty—all these and more. But they call with voices that mean work and sacrifices and death. … 
Grant us … the spirit of Esther, that we say: I will go unto the King and if I perish, I perish."

DuBois was himself an agnostic, in fact some of his biographers have described him as virtually atheist. 

His later life was a far cry from his Congregationalist background.  He went so far as to decline to lead public prayer when so invited.  He was ardently opposed to religion being taught in public schools. 

In his work he wrote beautifully and with genuine passion, and yet when he wrote he drew on the images of his childhood and a shared cultural story, a shared spiritual history, despite having left certain aspects of faith behind.

How we understand shared story and tradition needn’t be a barrier between us, nor cut us off from something that has meant a great deal to many over the years.  W. E. B. DuBois still found meaning in the tale of Esther, possibly because he identified with her having being racialised as a member of a group regarded as second-class citizens but also who, through good fortune, had been put in a position of influence and safety, despite living with her people in exile.  And DuBois was still touched by the drama of the Crucifixion.

As he wrote, and spoke in public, that shared tradition of stories and imagery crossed the chasm between his beliefs and the beliefs of many he was addressing.

This may ring true for many of us in Unitarianism.  We who come together with our different and often changing beliefs can share stories and imagery; we can share inspiration and consolation; we can share the passion of our faith.  The historical tradition in which we find ourselves need not be a barrier: it can be a bridge. 

After our chalice had been lit, there were hymns from YouTube, which we could sing along with.  And, as is the Didymus tradition, we held a period of silence in which to recall privately what we hold to be of ultimate value, and to reflect on how our recent behaviour had matched up to the values we privately profess. 

As well as music and silence, as usual we had two readings, but for once they comprised one long passage split into two.  The passage was taken from the Bible, the First Book of Kings, chapter 19 verses 3-16.  

In the first section of the reading (up to verse 9), we find Elijah on the run from the authorities.  He has just worked an incredible miracle, one of those truly ‘glory days’ moments.  But how quickly the tide turned again, and now is he alone, in fear for his life, and weary unto death with it all. 

This short reading brings other moments in the Bible to mind.  Moses leading the people in the desert, Jonah under the tree hiding from his ministry, Jesus going into the wilderness and later in the olive garden.  And running through all these moments, these narratives and images, there is a yearning for better days, days when not feeling so alone, so burdened, so overwhelmed.  All of us, and all communities, think back to times where the seats around us were fuller and people did more together, agreed on more; when that call to make things better was something we seemed to share.  This sense of dejection and of currently living in poorer times is something perhaps many of us will be able to relate to, to some degree.

Yet can we not all recall those balm-filled moments where just for a time we have felt refreshed, revived, lightened?  Perhaps it was a sunset after a long day; perhaps the wind in the trees when our thoughts were far away; or a phrase in a book we were reading; the scent of incense in an old church we had stopped in; or the half-smile of someone, just when we needed it.

In the second part of the passage we find God asking,

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Twice God says this to our protagonist, and the words are filled with warmth and with a little sorrow.  They are like the words of a parent finding their adult child weeping in the kitchen of their marriage home; or on visiting them in the big city, where they went for a new high-powered job, and finding them on edge and lacking sleep.  There is no accusation in the tone, there is no sense of disappointment, nor of surprise.  What is asked here is not a question looking for an answer, not really.  It is a gentle reminder, a being one-with-the-other, and showing them again who they are.

In times of sadness, of weariness, of disheartenment, our vision can narrow to only what we don’t have, what we can’t do, what we are not and wish that we were.  It can be as if our whole being becomes defined by our lack, by our loss, by our sorrow, by our pain.  It is not easy, nor always possible, to pull ourselves out of this. 

May there always be someone to hand at times like this to ask us:

“What are you doing here?”

May there be a friend, a ‘still, small voice’, to reach out to us and remind us of who we are, to help us look up and beyond where we find ourselves. 

May we ask ourselves often and without accusation or disappointment:

“What are you doing here?”

And may we be watchful in those around us, and those we meet along the way, for when we can be that ‘still, small voice’ that asks:

“What are you doing here?”

Today is only a moment in our stories, perhaps not even a chapter.  What are we doing here?  Perhaps it’s time to turn the page?