Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by Andrew C. Kennedy
We come to love a church,
the traditions, the history,
and especially the people associated with it.
And through these people,
young and old,
known and unknown,
we reach out —
Both backward into history
and forward into the future —
To link together the generations
in this imperfect, but blessed community
of memory and hope.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point.) words by Yvonne Aburrow
We gather here within these walls
Hallowed by the community
that has gathered here over the centuries.
Countless hands have tended the flame of fellowship
and countless more will keep the light burning.
As we light the chalice flame today
Let us not hide our light under a bushel
but be a beacon of hope to all around us.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us as we gather for worship,
Each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
Even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
In this world in which Covid has not yet gone away,
And the clouds of war and climate change hover.
May we keep in touch however we can,
And help each other however we may.
Help us to be grateful for the freedoms we have
and to respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
Who are grieving, lost, alone,
Suffering in any way, Amen
Reading from The Unitarians: A Short History by Leonard Smith
The overlapping functions of the Book Society, the Unitarian Fund and the Civil Rights Association led to a movement for their amalgamation… to form the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. By the strangest of coincidences its inaugural meeting was held on 26th May 1825, the very same day as that of the American Unitarian Association in Boston.
The British and Foreign Unitarian Association had four classes of membership: District Associations, Congregations and Fellowship Funds, Individual and Honorary members. The initial success was not sustained, partly due to the emergence of two divergent strains within Unitarianism: the one zealous for the advance of Unitarianism on doctrinal lines and the other holding on to the hope of a more broadly-based liberal church eschewing the use of the name Unitarian in the titles of the chapels…. Nevertheless, the British and Foreign Unitarian Association remained the principal feature of a developing Unitarian denomination.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
May we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
And may our shortcomings be forgiven,
As we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
The inspiration and guidance to do right,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
And receive whatever life brings,
With courage and trust. Amen
Reading from The Unitarians: A Short History by Leonard Smith
The establishment of Unitarian denominational identity, over the looser and unorganized association of congregations that was characteristic of the movement up to the end of the 18th century, was completed in two stages: first by the formation of the National Conference of Unitarian, Liberal Christian, Free Christian, Presbyterian and other Non-Subscribing Congregations, in 1882, then by the establishment of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in 1928.
The National Conference resulted partly from the failure of James Martineau’s short-lived Free Christian Union. It was a triennial gathering [and] the constituency of the National Conference remained exactly the same as the churches listed in the British & Foreign Unitarian Association’s Essex Hall Year Book.
The formation of the General Assembly in 1928 resulted mainly from increasing tensions between the National Conference and the British & Foreign Unitarian Association…. There was a winding-down of the clash between the ‘old’ Unitarians and the Martineau supporters. Annual meetings were first held at Manchester in 1929….
After the formation of the General Assembly, the British & Foreign Unitarian Association (an incorporated body since 1915) continued to be the official legal arm of the Assembly and today acts as Custodian Trustee for several Unitarian congregations and trusts, although some of this work is now done by District Associations, who have registered themselves as incorporated bodies.
Prayer by Linda Haggerstone
O Spirit of the ages, who transcends all time and space,
We are pilgrims on the path of love,
Seeking light and warmth to carry us on our journey.
Like our ancestors before us,
We ask for your strength and your guidance,
Your protection and your care,
As we walk along this day.
O Spirit of the ages,
Know that our hearts are uplifted
And our burdens are eased by your presence.
For this, we thank you.
Amen.
Reading from Unitarian Universalist Roots – Ancient and Modern by Jeremy Taylor, 1997.
The “Golden Thread” of Religious Freedom
Whatever the complex of reasons, these earliest Unitarians failed to persuade their co-religionists that God was/is/will always be a single, changeless Unity and not a Trinity. When they subsequently refused to accept the spiritual, economic, and political authority of the majority of Constantine’s “orthodox” bishops, they were branded as “heretics” and expelled from the newly formed “Holy Church of Rome”. Immediately thereafter, when (metaphorically speaking) they gathered on the front steps, one step ahead of the angry crowd with torches (that has been pursuing them/us ever since), they made the unhappy discovery that having come to a clear agreement on what there was not sufficient justification in scripture to believe, they then found it impossible to come to the corresponding agreement on what there was sufficient justification in scripture to believe – (their interpretations and convictions were simply too diverse and varied) – and so they were forced, somewhat reluctantly and unhappily, to the conclusion that has characterized the movement ever since: “There shall be no creed – the community of the faithful shall be bound together by other means than credal statement.”
The “Golden Thread” of Individual Conscience
This rejection of the legitimacy of any external theological authority in general, and the whole idea of “creed” in particular, was in effect an affirmation of the absolute primacy of individual (preferably well-educated) conscience in all matters of religion and religious belief. This affirmation of the absolute primacy of individual conscience runs as the proverbial and clearly visible “golden thread” through the history of Unitarianism from then to now… It is also worth noting that while our “unitarian” forbears may have been “wrong” about the symbolic resonance and archetypal truth of “The Trinity”, the gift of spiritual freedom and independent, responsible, creative agency that they bequeathed to us (with their martyred blood) out of that “error” is, in my view, worth far more than any affirmation of the “Trinity” could have been, then or now …!
Time of Stillness and Reflection words by Wayne Arnason
We join together now in a time of meditation or prayer, spoken at first and then for a time in the peace that silence brings.
As we enter into silence we remember the many connections that sustain and uplift us through this religious community. We remember those who preceded us, whose contributions built a free faith, who built this home for its practice.
We remember those around us, whose continuing care in thought and deed is an ongoing blessing in our lives, keeping the dream of free religion alive in our time.
We remember those who will follow us, the children presently in our care and those not yet come to light, who will inherit the work of our hands and hearts.
In the silence now, we sit surrounded by these many connections, visible and invisible, that remind us every day that we are not alone.
[silence]
Peace be with us, and with all under the sun.
Musical Interlude I Due Fiumi by Ludovico Einaudi
Address The B&FUA is 200!
Today, on the day before the 200th Anniversary of the formation of the British & Foreign Unitarian Association on 26th May 1825, I’d like to explore the place of history in the Unitarian movement today – is it important? Or doesn’t it matter? I think the answer is both – our history is important in so far as it gives us a heritage to stand on and roots to grow from, but it is less important to our particular movement than to other denominations. I’ll come back to that idea in a bit.
So first of all, is the history of the Unitarian movement “the key to its meaning”, to quote Alexander Gordon, one time Principal of Unitarian College Manchester and author of the seminal Heads of English Unitarian History? A testimonial on the History Matters website, from Cheryl Deeping of North Yorkshire, sums up my view on this question quite neatly. She says: “History is important as it allows us to understand our past so that we can better understand our future. We cannot just exist in the present with no thought as to where we have come from or where we are going. It is the key to understanding human nature.”
Of course it is quite possible to be a Unitarian without any knowledge of our history whatsoever. I think that most Unitarians would agree that it is what you believe and how you behave now that matters, not your knowledge of the past. And yet, and yet. My own personal belief is that a knowledge of our history, of the Unitarians of the past and their spiritual struggles, can deepen and reinforce our own faith, and, in a strange kind of way, give us something to stand on while we undertake our own spiritual quests. It could be argued that few present day Unitarians lose a lot of sleep over whether Jesus was the divine Son of God or not, but the reasons why our ancestors thought as they do are still important and relevant to us.
Let me repeat part of my final reading, from Jeremy Taylor’s Unitarian Universalist Roots – Ancient and Modern, to explain why this is so. “This rejection of the legitimacy of any external theological authority in general, and the whole idea of “creed” in particular, was in effect an affirmation of the absolute primacy of individual (preferably well-educated) conscience in all matters of religion and religious belief. This affirmation of the absolute primacy of individual conscience runs as the proverbial and clearly visible “golden thread” through the history of Unitarianism from then to now.”
The knowledge that this is so, makes me proud to be a Unitarian, proud to stand on their shoulders, and proud of them, the Unitarians of the past, who fought for freedom of conscience and made it possible for us to worship openly and in peace.
I also think that learning something about Unitarian history can be both informative and absorbing. It certainly added depth to my own faith to learn a little about the differences between Arianism (the belief that God the Father is supreme and Christ subordinate) and Socinianism (which argued that Christianity was all about following Jesus’ example as the road to salvation), about what is meant by Rational Dissent (that religion is primarily to be determined by reason) and Transcendentalism (which asserted that religion was essentially a matter of emotion and feeling, rather than to be determined intellectually). I’ve found it fascinating that all these different theological views and debates have been held by Unitarians and their forebears at various times, and have all contributed to the broad church that is Unitarianism today.
I mentioned earlier that I believe that a knowledge of our history is less important to our particular movement than to other denominations and faiths. Let me explain why. To other faiths, their history is fundamental – what they should believe and how they should act is laid down by their scriptures and their churches (and I use that word in its broadest sense). Authority, to most religions, is a mixture of church, scripture and tradition. Unitarian minister and author Cliff Reed explains the Unitarian approach very clearly in his little book Unitarian? What’s That?:
“It is often the case that a religious organisation, whatever its size, vests spiritual authority in a holy book, a creed or confession of faith, in a hierarchical structure or priestly caste, or in some charismatic leader or authority figure. … Unitarians believe that the seat of religious authority lies within oneself. … The Unitarian approach is, therefore, to recognise that each person is his or her own final authority in matters of faith. Our liberal religious ethos grants full individual freedom in this regard. … To be a Unitarian is to take responsibility for one’s own faith. It is to value the intuitions of oneself and others. It is to test one’s beliefs against reason and conscience. It is to afford others the same right to be honest with their own inner authority as one claims for oneself.”
This is quite something, in my view. Learning about all the different elements of the Unitarian faith in the past has made me realise how lucky we Unitarians are to have a faith based on the primacy of individual conscience. I cannot think of another denomination or religion that allows its members such freedom of thought. And I think it is important to realise, and be grateful for, the fact that were it not for the struggles of Unitarians in the past, we would not have this precious freedom of belief today.
It needs nurturing and developing too. In recent years, divisions within our small movement (particularly between those who call themselves Unitarian Christians and others) have grieved me greatly. It seems to me totally wrong that Unitarians, of all people, should be out of harmony with each other on matters of individual belief. The soul and centre of the Unitarian faith is, and must continue to be, what Jeremy Taylor calls the “golden thread of the absolute primacy of individual conscience.” Unitarians of the past did not fight for this precious freedom for it to be undermined by petty faction fighting.
The Unitarian movement in Britain today is pitifully small, and getting smaller all the time. My own small congregation in Northampton has just a handful of members, most of whom are in middle age or older. Yet in its heyday in the 19th century, there were three Sunday services with an average attendance of 200, a library, a Sunday school and lots of other pastoral and social activities. How have we got from there to here? And our situation in Northampton is far from unique.
I wonder whether the present day lack of historical roots is a contributory factor to our decline. When I became an active Unitarian at the age of 18 (I am a birthright one, but was not brought up as such) I read as much as I could about the denomination, principally Alfred Hall’s marvellous Beliefs of a Unitarian and Philip Hewett’s On Being a Unitarian. From these (and particularly from Hall’s book) I learned something of our origins. The more I read, the more I realised I had “come home” and that this was where I belonged. To that extent, I think that some knowledge of our Unitarian roots helped to strengthen and deepen my faith. Perhaps if our history were more widely known, we could attract new spiritual seekers into the denomination.
But it is what we do now, as individuals, as congregations and as a denomination, that will determine whether we survive or go under. There has been a lot of doom and gloom in our denomination in recent times, partly triggered by Peter Hughes’s now notorious address ‘Should we call time on Unitarianism?’, which was published in The Inquirer in April 2004, but continuing since. In it he spoke of “the imminent demise” of the movement, because of the small number of members, and because the things that Unitarianism stood for – freedom, reason and tolerance – “do not belong exclusively to us.”
He argued that liberal religion is alive and well within the more orthodox denominations, and that therefore there is no longer the need for the Unitarian witness. The address caused such a stir that it was even reported in The Times, whose reporter Ruth Gledhill summed up the situation like this: “Now that it is no longer illegal to embrace a non-Trinitarian belief, and many churches turn a blind eye to “believers” who have liberal views on traditional doctrines, there is not the demand for the Unitarian movement that there was.”
What do spiritual seekers find in our churches and chapels? Twenty years ago, Michael Dadson wrote (only too truly I fear) that “while we continue to offer that [the Unitarian message] only through the medium of a conventional ‘church’-based entity, with all the traditional behaviours and the traditional trappings, then we will not see significant recruitment of new members; nor will we be able to retain those who do show enough interest to come along and find out about us.”
I hope that the Sustainability Audits we have recently undertaken in the Midlands will help us to come up with new ideas to spread our wonderful faith, and continue the work started all those years ago.
Happy Anniversary, B&FUA!
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we learn from our history,
and also come up with new ideas,
to spread our wonderful, inspirational faith.
May we return to our everyday world refreshed,
May we share the love we feel,
May we look out for each other,
And may we keep up our hearts,
Now and in the days to come,
Amen
Postlude Melodia Africana II by Ludovico Einaudi