The Executive Committee's Thoughts

The Executive Committee has spent considerable time reading through the various pieces. This is a summary of phrases that struck the EC as important together with thoughts and comments that came to mind in our discussions.

Our identity

If we are to be a faith that matters to both society and to the individual, we should recognise that we are first and foremost a faith community; social action, whilst part of who we are, is not our primary purpose. Our communities should be places where the imagination can be fed, where our deepest instincts can be satisfied, where our sense of transcendent otherness can be explored. Yet we understand the need for people to be inspired to express their faith practically.

We also see a need to re-establish an identity, a unique spiritual position. No creed does not mean no belief!

We are a reflection of the world's complexity, where the various strands that make up our Unitarian religious perspective, (Christian, Theist, Pagan, Buddhist, Mystic, Agnostic amongst others) are our great strength.

We understand the desire to and the value of sharing our time and our thoughts, not just for an hour
on a Sunday but at other times and in other ways as a means of strengthening our communities.

We recognise the importance of giving something of ourselves for the benefit of our community. We learn about one another, and the more we learn about each other, the stronger the bond is between us.

What is now needed is for us to find new ways of being together and this is where the giving comes in. We need to give our time. We need to be willing to add at least another hour to the time we come together in church, as a church. To build new communities in the future, we are going to have to be prepared to change and move away from the classic Sunday Service.

We aspire to be there for everyone who shares our values, to create a place for everyone, but many of us are happy in our own little comfort zone. We have a long way to go to become an all-inclusive community. This means change - so be prepared to be uncomfortable!

We do social justice and social action because this is inherent in who we are - a deep theological claim is made on each of us within our congregation to hone our communal conscience as well. In truth though, many who feel that they are social activists feel more comfortable paying others to roll their sleeves up and get involved.

We need to consider how we might symbolise our identity and express the essence of who we are through our rituals.

The role of the Minister is to enable the ministry of the congregation. The dynamics within congregations should process moral sensitivity among members in ways that lead to specific commitments to action based on their skills and interests.

What are we going to do in the future?

We do not want to be a proselytizing religion, but we do need to announce our presence; to tell people what we stand for. We should not be worried if people are upset by this. We need to get out, rather than expect people to come in. There is a great opportunity now for outreach using electronic media, recognising that communication is a complex area with new risks if not handled well.

The Internet has reduced the cost of connecting to people and them with us - it has changed the rules! We need to overcome the fear of some of the Internet and get the younger people to help the older generation to embrace the new opportunities. Yet we must keep those who struggle with electronic media as active members of our community.

We are here to minister to the wider community. We should learn to be more adventurous with our resources: Money, buildings and people. They should all be net contributors to our activities. Each of us should establish a covenant with our community to agree what we will give. We need to accept the need for more live giving and make it a reality by asking 'What could we do if we gave more?'

Children and young people should feel part of our supportive community. We should encourage them to speak the truth. They look for alternatives to our "hymn sandwich" culture and we should search for ways to bridge the gap between their ways of expression and traditional / classical expressions, whilst recognising the value that that the 'hymn sandwich' provides for many people.

Leadership can be expressed in many different ways, including servant leadership. Training can help in leadership and we have in some of our congregations people with skills and knowledge of leadership; we have people skilled in working with volunteers and we have people who work in education and training. We need to encourage these people to step forward and help develop others. There are many opportunities for us to develop religious literacy in other communities and through national programmes.

For us to thrive in an increasingly global world, we recognise our interconnectedness to people everywhere, but our focus will remain primarily within the UK. We still have problems understanding who we are and how we wish to be perceived. Although many have a clear idea of who they are as a person, more work needs to be done to develop a shared idea of who we are as a community. This should be far more friendly and accessible than our General Assembly charitable Object.

We must harness our energy by understanding who we are as communities and what we can offer to the world outside. It begins with opening our eyes and ears, by taking a good look around us and by listening to the voices of inspiration both near and far. This will include using all forms of media, including social media. This is likely to attract new people and new money but will make our communities more lively and creative in any case.

A Reflection Of The World's Complexity Bound Together By Our Many Different Views

Being a Weaver

A Persian poet wrote 'Broad is the carpet God has spread and beautiful are its colours'. A Persian carpet is durable because of the long, arduous weaving process where the tough warp and weft hold together hundreds of woollen and silken knots that create its pattern, provide its richness of colour, its depth of texture and make of it one whole. The imperfections are woven into the design; sometimes an imperfection is deliberately created and the fringes around the edges will wear in time because they are unsupported by the weft and the knots.

Some years ago, I remember calling it 'ballast for the soul'. It was an awareness of the strength that comes from the many varied strands that make up our Unitarian religious perspective; Christian, Theist, Pagan, Buddhist, Mystic, Agnostic amongst others - none of these strands in any way a weakness, or a fatal flaw at the heart of our Unitarian religious identity, but a hard won strength borne out of the struggle to bear witness to religious differences in a complex world, a struggle not to capitulate to any one view, however persuasively argued.

Of course, the struggle goes on. Some strands seem to shine more brightly at certain times; a pattern emerges that feels the right one to follow but then life experience moves us in a different direction, a new perspective opens up and we go on weaving the path and the pattern that gives life meaning at that time.

Maybe here the analogy breaks down because, unlike the carpet that might adorn our homes, there isn't a finished product. We just go on creating it, all the time connected and strengthened by the process and by the people who accompany us on the journey. And because our lives are messy and complex and nothing is ever fixed like a Grecian urn or a Persian carpet, we find our truth in the process and that is good enough.

Rev. Margaret Kirk

A Spiritual Feast For Each Person To Bring And Share Ideas And Experience

In order for us to fully engage with one another and be able to achieve this spiritual feast of ideas and experience we will have to be willing to 'give ourselves' in new ways which may feel alien to how we have related to church before. We may even have to review what we presently perceive worship to be.

Our time in communion with one another is extremely brief these days. At present, worship in most of our Unitarian communities, consists of an hour long service and then a cup of tea with a biscuit and off home. The time we give to listening to a service is 1 hour, but the time after the service rarely lasts more than 30 minutes, with individuals floating off as soon as cups are emptied. During this brief commune we may discuss the previous week, the week ahead, where we're going on our holidays and other snippets of our lives. What we don't tend to do is converse, as a group, about the worship that has taken place, the life of the church, our spiritual goals, needs or expectations. Strangely, these important areas of being 'church' are now, more often than not, left to church committees and councils to discuss behind closed doors, as if the rest of the community are programmed not to 'think' on such subjects.

Historically, the most bonding ritual known to humanity is the sharing of food and that is still the case. When sitting at a meal, there is a common purpose, to be nourished, and our distractions are limited. The people sitting around us are able to spend time in conversation with us. We learn about one another and the more we learn about each other, the stronger the bond is between us. Time is given to one another, in the preparation and the sharing. It is a wonderfully spiritual way of 'being together'. The ancients realised this and it became part of their spiritual ritual. Even Christianity, at its beginning, consisted of reading from the Gospel followed by a meal together. Both worship and communion were as important as one another. For us, it is the intended 'being together' which has diminished. In order to get that back, we may need to find new ways of coming together as a community, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a cooked meal.

It could be said that our chapels and churches hold events where we are able to socialise more intently with each other and the wider community, but do we discuss our hopes and dreams, our theologies and beliefs, the worship we've just experienced and our own takes on the subject, or do we place our concentration on the event at hand? Filling in the answers to the quiz, dancing with one another, watching and putting on plays together, days out, jumble sales, fairs and all the other events we host are wonderful and socially nourishing, but it is difficult to cultivate the community when there is the distraction of something else going on.

What is needed is for us to find ways of being together and this is where the 'giving' comes in. We need to give our time. We need to be willing to add at least another hour to the time we come together in church, as a church. This can be done in a multitude of ways; the sharing of food, a group discussion, an after worship presentation, or even, if space or pew-dynamics dictate, split into smaller groups each week to have set topic discussions (although it would be important to rotate these groups so that we don't establish cliques or give allowance to avoidances). Each church would need to find what works for them, what cultivates them as a community.

In order for our communities to be able to fully engage in a spiritual feast of sharing ideas and experience, we need to give ourselves and our time, and give it to one another. Sixty minutes is not much to ask of each other if we want to share the feast.

Rev. Shammy Webster
 

A Promoter of Social Justice for All, Listening and Responding To The Needs Of Others

Social Action, Social Justice: Open the Door!

Religious scholar Prof. Charlie Hallisey tells this story about what it means to live a religious - and thus, compassionate life. He writes, "There was a Protestant village in France during the Second World War that got involved, at great risk to themselves, in protecting Jewish refugees. The people who participated were extremely inarticulate when asked why they did what they did. They said, 'Someone knocks on the door, you open it. You don't think about it. You open the door.' How did they become so good? They said, 'I don't feel so good. I didn't decide to do anything. I just opened the door.'

It is a striking illustration. I have only one problem with this "parable of the open door" and that is with the idea that the villagers, "...didn't decide to do anything." I disagree; I think they did decide to do something. They decided to live a religious life in religious community. Unlike many in today's rapidly secularizing world, the French villagers were guided not simply by their own personal spiritual promptings. They lived in covenanted community: that is to say, their individual spiritual journeys were tempered in the flame of group devotion and reflection and emerged on the other side stronger and more purposeful than if they had gone it alone. It was in no small part this communal religious life that made their actions during the Holocaust seem almost second-nature. Of course we will open the door. How could we do any other?

It seems to me that we Unitarians and Free Christians sometimes stumble when facing similar, if far less stark, decisions. Our community ought to remind us - if it is to deserve both the title "religious" and "community" to open our doors, again and again, even when it is not comfortable to do so, even when we have other things that fill up our church calendars, even when we are small or primarily elderly or under-resourced or whatever it is that keeps us stuck in our own safe, small house. We speak a great deal about freedom of conscience; being a Unitarian/Free Christian also means that a deep theological claim is made on each one of us within our congregations to hone our communal conscience as well. "Slavery is bad. Stigmatising immigrants—not allowed. Loving our neighbours, even ones we don't quite understand or struggle to appreciate—that is good." We may differ on who or what makes this deeper claim on our souls, our minds and hearts: God or our basic humanity or some other universal impulse we sense deep within. Where I would hope we would not differ is in agreeing that it is within the sanctuary and support of our chapel "home" where that community conscience is made flesh. Doing social action as individuals is important and honourable; thinking that it supplants or makes up for justice-making congregations is to misunderstand why liberal religious congregations exist in the first place.

There is good news out there as well of course. Some have been quite keen to poke our heads out (together) and welcome in the larger world. Send a Child to Hucklow is in its 60th year of providing holidays to disadvantaged children; the Penal Affairs Panel and its work continues to remind us of our commitment to treating even the most outcast with humanity and basic dignity, and within the GA and the outside world we have collectively taken a stand on gay/lesbian/bi and transgender dignity and equal marriage rights.

I like to think that SimpleGifts: Unitarian Centre for Social Action (for which I work) is a part of this ongoing effort as well, both at the community centre in East London and through "The Road Ahead" congregational coaching programme to help chapels become more effective, creative and collaborative places in which to act on their communal conscience.

We at SimpleGifts are working hard to help congregations and our movement to think larger thoughts, to move together in common pilgrimage towards a more peaceful, more just, more compassionate UK and, ultimately, world. Of course we are not alone in this effort. All the same, many agree that the collective "we" can be rather tentative when it comes to taking common action.

"The Road Ahead" coaching programme is only one suggestion for becoming more dynamic and proactive from being a group adept at making motions (which undoubtedly have their place) to actually moving as a group in order to make the change we hope to see in our hurting, hopeful world. If we cannot or will not do that, then in my view we neither deserve to be called "religious" nor a real "community."

On the other hand, we have made common cause in the past, and there is no reason why we can't "up our game" again in future. It is my hope that social action/social justice making will no longer be a sideline within the Unitarian/Free Christian tradition, but instead a cornerstone of the engaged liberal religious life in 2015 and beyond. Here we are, still together, unwilling to be either museum curators or religious patients on life support. We live together, you and I, in a safe and welcoming house. Before us is the door, and the knock, and the need. Why not open it together?

Rev. Rob Gregson
Director SimpleGifts Unitarian Centre for Social Action

There For Everyone

What do you expect from a church or chapel? Over the years two people have given me an insight into what they expected and found.

Bertha Lee was a retired teacher living in the village of Stoke Row near Henley and she belonged to a small congregation in Reading but her roots were at Todmorden In Yorkshire. Bertha had many friends including the Maharajah of Benares (who had built a well in the village) and Muir Mathieson the composer and conductor but it was some lesser-known people that Bertha valued more than any others. One day she gave me a treasured photograph of her beloved church in Todmorden and on the back were thirty-six signatures. On giving me the photo her expectations of a church were made clear, "The church is where we find our real selves, it brings out the best in us". That's what Bertha expected, found and helped to create, a place where people could find their real selves without any pretensions, status or creed.

The second person was the Reverend Dudley Richards who in his later years kept asking the question, "What is the church?" In one conversation I reminded Dudley that when I was eighteen years of age he had given me the answer. He then described the church as, "The beloved community" and until he died well over ninety years of age Dudley belonged to our beloved community in Oxford with some members visiting him in his nursing home every week.

The answers given by those two people still sum up for me what a church should be and one of Dudley's favourite passages of scripture was Romans Chapter twelve which describes the ideal Christian as a person who uses his or her talents to the best of their ability, shares those gifts with the wider community and rejects all evil. Such people should, "rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep".

The ideal church should be for everyone with people living in harmony, never being conceited and living in peace. They should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty and provide hospitality. Similar thoughts appear in many scriptures of the world and Dudley who was a fine scholar knew that.

If we follow the advice of my two old friends and that from the author of Romans chapter twelve then we will create a place for everyone.

However I add two provisos. I don't want people telling me that I am wrong and that they have the only truth! Nor do I want people who only take, without giving something of themselves.

Only together can we create a beloved community where people can find their real selves, a place that will bring out the best in people. 

Rev Peter Hewis

Be Understood By The Public

It's not much fun being ignored by society and it's not much fun being misunderstood either; yet indifference and incomprehension have been the predominant Unitarian experience over many decades. This problem needs to be approached from a wider perspective.

The story of Britain over the last century is, in part, a dispiriting tale of the loss of faith in institutions of all kinds (the NHS being a possible exception) - and Churches have suffered at least as seriously as the rest. It is in this context that the word "Unitarian" today is likely to be met with blank looks or shrugs of the shoulders.

The challenge to communicate better is unarguable. But who are the 'public' by whom Unitarians in Britain should wish to be understood? It must surely be people living in Britain primarily - as this is the constituency that the General Assembly and its constituent congregations, fellowships, District Associations and Affiliated Societies serve.

There is a further stage required here, however, because to aim to be understood by the public is not as helpful as identifying particular 'publics' that might be interested in us. A communications strategy whose target audience is 'everybody' can more or less be said to be aimed at nobody! If multinationals with hundreds of thousands of pounds available to spend on advertising find it not only advantageous but essential to target their message to particular audiences (broken down by age/gender/income etc) this must be all the more true of organisations with limited resources. We ought to pick our publics! To give one example, it may be that setting up groups at universities is not so daunting a task but it's still essential to 'get the pitch right'.

Yet what does it mean for a religious community to BE 'understood'?

Success might be when a great number appreciate both our progressive values and our open tradition. Anything less and it may seem that there is nothing distinctive about us. We are not equivalent to a branch of the United Nations Association (UNA), worthy though that body is - we ARE religious. We must offer transformative and inclusive community that deepens a personal faith that is both human in its focus and open-minded to that which is beyond our understanding. Significantly, the General Assembly Object, though by no means perfect, is much underrated. If a Unitarian reads it again only to remind herself how unsatisfactory she found it first time round at least it can further a personal thought process about core principles and inclusive spirituality!

We want the 'public' to know that we are distinct - offering the milieu of a freethinking community that nevertheless values archetypal human story - how we make sense of our own lives within the panorama of a wider human drama that eternally resonates with Christian, humanistic and other themes such as love, redemption, equality, forgiveness, discovery of one's own potential and the healing power of being truly present to one another

This 'being understood' business is not primarily a matter of institutional survival; frankly, the continuing value of an institution cannot be assumed from its mere continuation up to today. Churches - including our churches - close their doors partly because they have stopped meeting a need. We need to be honest about that.

Instead of aiming at survival for no very clear purpose, a genuine Unitarian process of seeking to be understood assumes implicitly that there IS a coherent, worthwhile, transformative 'we' that can BE understood - that we collectively ARE coherent. Yet can we truly claim to be coherent? How do we justify such a claim? Similarly, can we currently say that we even understand our essence as a faith community in order to be able to present it to others? From my perspective, values and tradition both matter.

We can bemoan that we are less well understood than the Quakers, for example, but this is a direct consequence of our historically chosen view of religious freedom which has stressed individual conscience above all else. This has much to commend it but without a balancing commitment to learn from and be bound by ties of community - by the old Puritan idea of covenant in fact - we will not be able to give Unitarian collective vision and action the priority it deserves, preferring to operate by an implicit consumerist view of our personal religious involvement whereby anyone can duck out whenever they're not getting their own way.

It is in painstakingly exploring the human implications of making a reality of inclusive community shaped in conversation with our shared values - not infrequently laying aside personal preference and trusting instead at times to the common will - that we will have a stronger message to proclaim and, more importantly, live out. In this way we become at last worthy of being understood and gaining acceptance and influence beyond the church doors. Nothing is more essential if we are to make our contribution as Unitarian communities to the healing of the world.

[Note: The next phrase from the Manchester event speaks of connecting to people "everywhere" but can we recognise this as engaging across Britain with more imaginative and braver outreach
- NOT seeking to raise our profile abroad! Similarly the notion to "Tell the world we're here" could be problematic if understood to mean we can and should commit resources of time, effort and money in communicating here, there and everywhere].

Rev. Matthew Smith.

A Service to the Community

An important aspect of our Unitarian identity is what we can offer, what we can offer not only to our own community, but the local and wider communities, of which we are a part.

This is something that perhaps we take for granted, we all nod in agreement; and then proceed to find reasons why we aren't doing anything!

We are too busy with repairing our roof/ struggling to fund our minister/ trying to find new members, but fail to see that many of these problems can be resolved, at least in part, by being more outward looking.

We have a lot to offer, if we would just let it be known to those outwith our congregations. We offer an environment where people can explore their spiritual beliefs within a caring, inclusive, outward looking community; a solid base from which people can explore their own spirituality.

As well as providing our own children with somewhere they can develop, flourish and grow, we can offer young people from our wider communities the same opportunities, those opportunities of regeneration, for the next generation.

How do we do this, how do we provide this 'service to the community'?

We do this by being amongst them, being with them, by being a spiritual home in a secular society. And if they find it difficult to see themselves in our churches, we must provide opportunities for them to see, experience and understand what we are all about, by our activities outwith our Churches.

We can do this in many ways, we can provide amenities for people to meet together with genuine connection, encouraging the use of our buildings by like-minded groups, Amnesty International, Fair Trade, and Mindfulness groups, groups open to all, not exclusively church members.

We can be with people at the important times of their lives, providing rites of passage ceremonies which reflect their needs, their situation, and their beliefs. But it doesn't stop there, we need to be willing and able to continue that involvement, as required, following on from these life changing events. To be seen to be willing to provide somewhere people can find their pathway in an open and dynamic community, and enable them to face life with confidence.

We can welcome, and act as advocates, for people who are marginalised within society, the poor, the homeless, differently abled, LGBT and refugee communities. Those with lifestyles which differ from the mainstream, sex-workers, or members of the travelling communities.

We can use our non-creedal foundations to facilitate discussions between other religious groups, especially those whose faith has become synonymous with fundamentalism, providing a multi¬faith venue in each town.

We should be prepared to take advantage of all opportunities which come our way, to ensure that Unitarianism is something that everybody has heard about, knows about, is there for everyone, and understood by the public. We should respond to letters and articles in newspapers, on the radio, or social media, to speak out against unfair taxes, divisive policies, and government decisions, national or local.

It is the responsibility of all Unitarians to let people know that we are;

a Faith for today, 

a Faith that matters,

a place for roots to grow and wings to fly!

Joan Cook