3,468

The Annual Report is out. And for the first time it includes the total number of members of Unitarian churches in Britain.

The number is 3468.

This number is both small and declining. It's down from 3560 last year. That's a down 92 people, 2.5% in one year. And a drop of 7.5% in the last five years.

The membership numbers are not a completely accurate count of Unitarians. One congregation, for example, seems to have failed to report membership numbers this year. The number of Unitarians is probably a bit more than this. But the overall direction is what's most important.

Here are the numbers over the last few years:

2005: 3952

2006: 3754

2007: 3711

2008: 3642

2009: 3658

2010: 3672

2011: 3560

2012: 3468

Of course this only tells some of the story. Not every congregation is declining. In fact looking at the numbers 38 congregations are in fact growing, 78 are static and 50 have declined in the last year.

It would be more meaningful to look at those numbers over five years, rather than one year. And then ask the questions of what growing congregations have in common and what declining congregations have in common.

This is the sort of empirical work that needs doing.

Are Christians being persecuted? No.

Yesterday saw what was, I think, a pretty sensible ruling from the European Court of Human Rights on the "Christian discrimination" cases. It seems reasonable that people should be able to express their faith, but in a way that is moderated by other issues, such as health and safety. If I say my faith means I have to constantly juggle knives doesn't mean I should be able to do that while being a nursery teacher.

Of course some Christian conservatives have been pushing this agenda as part of a "Christian persecution" narrative that bares no relation to reality, but seems to fit with their worldview. It is, though, a bit of an insult to people in other parts of the world who are genuinely persecuted for their beliefs.

The attitude, I think, comes from a place of entitlement and privilege. Take the case of a registrar who does not want to perform civil partnerships. Even if you accept the idea that civil partnerships are incompatible with Christian faith (which I don't) I think you have to accept the reality that doing civil partnerships is a core duty of a registrar. You can't expect to continue to be a registrar while not doing civil partnerships.

In the early days of Christianity this issue related a lot more to soldiers who became Christian. Killing was seen as incompatible with Christian faith (and there's a lot more Biblical warrant for this position than opposing same sex relationships and wearing jewellery). So becoming a Christian involved putting down the sword and refusing to kill. But, as carrying a sword and killing is part of the core duties of being a soldier, it was necessary to conclude that being a soldier was incompatible with Christian faith. This was something that had to be accepted. They couldn't demand that they continue to be employed as a soldier while refusing to go to war. The two could not go together, and so you had to choose one or the other.

I basically still agree with this position. Being a soldier would be against my religious principles, so I choose not to be a soldier.

If you consider being a registrar as incompatible with your faith, then I think you have to accept that and accept the consequences. You can't demand that the job works around you to uphold your principles. If the job is against your principles, then don't have the job.

What depresses me is that solemnising and counselling relationships is seen as what is wholly incompatible with Christian faith. And yet no one seems to think too deeply about jobs based on the accumulation of wealth, the exploitation of others, or violence as being against Christian principles. How do we get so far away from the way of Jesus?

"Sharp fall in young ministers"?

That was not the headline yesterday.

The headline yesterday was "Sharp fall in young police officers." And it was about the freeze in police recruitment which has meant, not surprisingly, that there are a lot fewer police officers under 26.

What interests me is the assumptions behind this investigation. The assumption is that this is notable, if not regrettable, that we have fewer young police officers.

Some people will often say "aren't police officers looking young?" as they will often say to me "aren't you rather young to be a minister?" And yet it seems to be seen as a good thing to have young police officers.

My question to the Unitarian community is: when did we see a headline that said, "Sharp fall in young ministers"? There very clearly has been a fall in young ministers, perhaps not sharp, but nevertheless significant. When did anyone notice this? When did anyone think this was worth noticing or regretting?

The evidence is that younger ministers are vital to the health and growth of a denomination. And yet when have we noticed this fall, taking stock of it, analysed it and decided to do something about it? When have we decided to actively recruit younger people to the ministry?

We haven't, and I think it's time we did.

"Respectability" is overrated

This follows on from my last two posts, in a similar, but slightly different tact.

As well as moving away from a language about "values" and "diversity" I think what the Unitarian community really needs to do is move away from the pursuit of "respectability."

Now we don't talk a lot about "respectability" but I think it nevertheless remains a strong undercurrent in our culture.

Again these thoughts are emerging partly out of my study of Unitarian history in Britain. Even since the Great Ejection of 1662 we have been, for the most part "reluctant dissenters." Unlike more radical groups like Baptists and Quakers who took a more principled non-conformist stand, English Presbyterians had a deep desire to remain part of the mainstream, to be an alternative parish church and to work hard to be as respectable and mainstream as the Anglicans.

For a while in the early days of Unitarianism there was a more deliberately radical, sectarian and strident approach. The obvious example is Joseph Priestley, an open radical who supported the American and French revolutions and had his house and church burnt down by a conservative mob in Birmingham.

But the undercurrent of Presbyterian respectability remained strong. Unitarian theology made us marginal, but we were hardly at the margins of society in terms of class, wealth or influence, for the most part. Unitarians campaigned for civil rights, but it was for the right to press ourselves further into the respectable centre of society that we truly wanted. We wanted to be councillors, members of Parliament, we wanted to go to Oxford and Cambridge. The push was not to deconstruct Anglican privilege, but to get in on it.

Do you know where I think we went wrong? I think it was the Dissenters' Chapel Act of 1844. You see there was a lot of legal wrangling over property. Unitarians were in chapels that were originally Presbyterian, and someone asked the question of whether we were legally entitled to them any more. The Dissenters' Chapel Act confirmed that we were, and so we remained.

I think this was the worst thing that could have happened to us. We remained in our old Presbyterian chapels and kept on the path of comfort and respectability. But what if we hadn't? What if there had been a Second Great Ejection in the 1840s when all Unitarians had to leave their churches?

I think such a traumatic experience would have cemented our identity as radical non-conformists. I think we would have embraced the name "Unitarian" with stubborn pride. I think we would have realised that faith and integrity is costly. I think we would have had to dig in our pockets to pay to build new churches.

In short we would have injected into Unitarianism: identity, generosity, radicalism, and a shared experience and story. In short, everything that we need, but don't have in our culture.

But that didn't happen. We continued into Victorian respectability with people like James Martineau pushing us there (I have a lot of time for Martineau on some things, and not on others).

But is this history still relevant? I believe it is, and shows up in a number of ways.

One is ecumenism. When you look at why Unitarians want to be involved in Christian ecumenical bodies I believe it is rarely because of a deep belief in wanting to work with other brothers and sisters in Christ. It is usually because we want to be "respectable" and "mainstream." We wanted to prove we're more respectable than Jehovah's Witnesses. We're not a weird cult, we're a proper church.

It also comes out with things like wearing clerical dog-collars. I know I am in disagreement with lots of colleagues on this one. But I believe wearing (Anglican/Catholic) clerical wear, even at things like Pride parades, in an expression of wanting to appear "mainstream" and "respectable" to the general populace.

Also in issues like faith schools. In some circumstances we have been happy to go along with a system that discriminates against others as long as it accepts us as Christians.

It also shows up when we seem so happy to get a Unitarian representative at Remembrance at the Cenotaph. Or when one goes to a tea party at Buckingham Palace.

It also shows up in the "claiming" of historical figures to be Unitarian. "These people were Unitarian!" we say: Isaac Newton (no); Thomas Jefferson (not really); Charles Dickens (briefly, at best); Charles Darwin (in childhood at best); Florence Nightingale (no). Do we claim these people because they contributed to our faith and theology? No. We claim them because we're saying "If four US Presidents were Unitarians, we must be OK, right?"

Even our posters say "Eminent Unitarians." Eminent? Eminent? Is that what matters to us, eminence?

So what is wrong with respectability anyway? My answer is shaped, primarily, by my commitment to the way of Jesus. Jesus' teaching and ministry is always pushing to the margins: marginal people, marginal places. The one time we went to the capital city they killed him. Jesus understood that if you truly follow the way of God, the way of truth and integrity, you're likely to come against opposition because the structures of our society are shaped by the sins of sexism, racism, elitism and greed.

When we pursue respectability, when our eyes are fixed on the centre and elite of society, we become subtly manipulated by those structures. Why was it two respectable religious figures walked past the bleeding man on the side of the road? Because their respectability blinded them to the suffering. Why did a Samaritan help the bleeding man? Because his ethnic and religious marginal status, helped him to open his eyes and his heart to the suffering of another.

Embracing marginality increases our capacity for compassion. It also increases our ability for prophetic challenge to the powers that be.

It also increases the effectiveness of our ministry. Our impact is likely to be increased by having a distinct identity that goes against the flow of mainstream society.

It also shapes the nature of our mission. Instead of desperately bending over backwards to prove our acceptability to the world, our witness is shaped by living provocatively, controversially even. Yet our (pro)vocation is for the purpose of offering hope to the world, especially to those on the margins.

If we accept that we are a weird, distinct, marginal minority that offers a distinct religious path and hope to the hopeless, then we have a chance of making a difference in this world.

But if we push ourselves to the mainstream, I think eventually we'll just dissipate into an ineffective blandness that does nothing to challenge the injustices of our world.

"Values" are overrated

This is the second of my "heretical" Unitarian thoughts.

I think what might be the most unhelpful of the orthodoxies of modern Unitarianism is that what really matters is "values."

As we have become more doctrinally diverse we have seen "values" as the only thing that can unite us. So we can agree on nothing religious, so we decide we will just agree on basically liberal values of tolerance, gay rights, the environment, etc. We have begun to think this is what matters most in our religious community.

You can see this in the language that has been coming out of the leadership of the American UUs recently. This statement from UUA President Peter Morales has caused a lot of discussion. In it he notes some interesting points including the fact that a lot more people in America identify as UU than actually go to congregations, and a lot of people who grew up in UU congregations don't continue to attend as adults. This, in a sense, is the inevitable consequence of defining Unitarianism in terms of values. People have got the values, so they no longer see the need for congregations. You don't really need a congregation to maintain your liberal values, except, perhaps, in a very conservative environment.

I'm not entirely clear what "congregations and beyond" means but it is interesting to note this concluding statement, "The central conviction driving this proposal is that our core values appeal to far more people than are attracted to (or likely to be attracted to) our congregations." (emphasis added). There is also a lot of talk about the increasing number of "nones" in America i.e. those who are not affiliated to any religion. The argument seems to be that these "nones" share the values of Unitarianism therefore this is a great opportunity to appeal to the "nones" and to attract them to Unitarianism. Peter Morales has said "they are us."

I like and respect Peter Morales, but I think there's a mistake in the thinking here. Here in the UK there are many more "nones" than in the US. The majority of the "nones" share the values of Unitarianism. Indeed I'd say that a good proportion of the British public share the values of Unitarianism, and yet British Unitarianism continues to decline. Why is this?

Because (if you'll excuse the sexist language) man does not live by values alone. Although people want a religion that does connect with their values, values are not the "product" that they want to buy (if you'll excuse the marketing language). What actually transforms people religiously are stories, rituals and practices, not values and principles.

That's why I think its a mistake when we think in Britain that what we really need are "principles" like the seven principles of the UUA. We don't need principles; we need stories. No religion is built on principles alone, they're primarily built on stories. The life of Moses, the life of Jesus, the life of Mohammad, the life of the Buddha, the myriad stories of Hinduism, these are the real building blocks of a religion. That and practices: communion, confession, meditation, prayer, worship, devotion, study.

There is nothing wrong with trying to reach out to the "nones." Indeed I would agree it is missionally vital. But I think talk of values is not going to do that. "Come here to hang out with people who share you values" is not an attractive invitation, because it doesn't offer anything.

More powerful is "come here to find liberation from your fears" "come here to find a deeper joy" "come here to find salvation" "come here to find God" and even "come here to have your values challenged, to be freed from the sin of your materialism, narrow-mindedness, anger and selfishness and re-orientate your values to a radical way of compassion, peace, non-violence, simplicity and love."

In other words evangelism should not be "come here to remain the same" but "come here to be changed." And yes, this might put some people off, but the religious path is a challenging one of personal growth, but that path must be our ultimate goal, otherwise, what's the point in what we're doing anyway? And even if you are measuring by a purely pragmatic church-growth outcome, the evidence is that the "come here and be changed" message does attract a lot more people than the "come here to remain the same."

Sharing the basic values of the liberal majority is a helpful bridge to our outreach. But it's not enough on its own. We also need to show what is distinct about the religious path, about belonging to a Unitarian community as opposed to not belonging to anything. We need to offer religious practices, rituals and stories that create human meaning and transformation. Until we do that, I don't believe the "nones" are going to be bashing our doors down to come and share in our values.

"Diversity" is overrated

I've had some "heretical" thoughts knocking around in my head recently. I think it's time I said some of them.

Of course Unitarians claim we embrace heresy, but we have plenty of orthodoxies, some of which may not be helpful, some of which may need challenging.

One orthodoxy is "what we're really all about is diversity" - or as the GA website puts it:

"Unitarianism is an open-minded and individualistic approach to faith that gives scope for a very wide range of beliefs and doubts.

Religious freedom for each individual is at the heart of Unitarianism. Everyone has the right to search for meaning in life and reach their own conclusions.

Unitarians see diversity and pluralism as valuable rather than threatening. They want faith to be broad, inclusive, and tolerant. Unitarianism can therefore include people who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Pagan and Atheist."

Unitarians want to be "broad, inclusive, and tolerant." And who can possibly object to that? Well no one. And that's sort of my point. If you're doing something no one objects to, you're doing something wrong.

Let me back up a bit and explain what I mean. A lot of these thoughts I'm having are coming from the current reading I'm doing about British Unitarian history. One of the striking things about Unitarianism, is that it's always really struggled to be an "ism." It has struggled to be a "something."

Unitarianism, as opposed to say Quakerism or Methodism, isn't really a proper religious movement with a clear beginning and a clear founder. It can seem like a sort of vague movement of liberalism within Protestant churches.

One understanding of Unitarianism is that it starts with a sort of attitude or approach. As Celia Parker Woolley said:

"Unitarianism is not so much an organized system of religious belief as a religious movement. It is more a method of thought than an outcome... The inevitable conclusion… is that this ideal church must rest on the broadest possible basis of fellowship, welcoming to its communion all thoughtful, truth-seeking minds."

Although that quote comes from nineteenth century American Unitarianism, it can be applied to the eighteenth century English Presbyterianism that became Unitarian.

The key point is that the churches wanted "the broadest possible fellowship." This was this approach of the eighteenth century Prebyterians: they wanted to be broad and liberal, welcoming all: Calvinist, Armenian, orthodox and Arian. They simply wanted to be "Christians dissenting from the Church of England" and many of them weren't too bothered about dissenting, and would have rejoined the established church if it would have them back.

This was a "catholic" or "comprehensive" spirit that sought to include all Christians, or at least all Protestants. This freedom allowed some to come to a doctrinally Unitarian position, and the Unitarian movement slowly emerged. But soon enough some people began to get twitchy about the word "Unitarian" - wasn't that too narrow a name? Isn't it too sectarian? Shouldn't we be more broad, inclusive and tolerant than that?

Some people began to argue for the term "Free Christian" instead, that seemed much more broad to them. But then even that seemed too narrow to some, and some began to argue for the broadest possible theism. And then some saw that as too narrow, wishing to include all people of faith. And then to include humanism and atheism too. This can be seen in a couple of congregations in the General Assembly who are officially not "Unitarian" but "those who do not wish to be designated."

That would certainly have surprised eighteenth century Presbyterians, and yet in a way it was the inevitable outcome of the liberal "catholic" approach they wanted.

And this is the way we tell the Unitarian story: of becoming broader and broader in doctrines, until we are... well, what are we?

We begin to include everything, everyone. We sort of dissipate out into a wispy thing floating away on the breeze.

But there is a problem with this liberal story of becoming broader and broader on matters of doctrine. The problem is we cease to be a religion. We cease to do what religions do: which is to offer hope, meaning, transformational experiences of the numinous, wisdom, ritual, stories and a solution to the problem of human existence. We reduce such things to personal beliefs, that people are free to hold, but that we as a community must remain staunchly neutral about.

But if we as a community remain staunchly neutral on matters of faith, then there is really no point in the community. We may be a pleasant social club, an effective political lobbying organisation, or a worthy social service organisation, but we are not a religious community, we are not a church.

And we become so broad, so inclusive that our walls are entirely porous: people can float in and float out of our community happily enough without it mattering very much. And so they do. Because if the community is staunchly neutral on religion, then it really makes no difference if you belong to the community or not.

If "diversity" is a terminal value; if "diversity" is the heart of Unitarianism then this is where we end up.

The conclusion, I would argue, is that a faith needs a beating heart, needs a centre, needs a foundation. I continue to be a Unitarian because I believe that we have one. And it's not "diversity."

You see I think there is more to the Unitarian story than simply becoming broader and broader in our beliefs. That's not how I see us. That's only the beginning of the story.

Yes, we have sought the freedom to pursue religious truth, but what I'm interested in is what we've actually found in that pursuit. Because I believe we have found some things. I see a collection of religious seekers, trying to work out what's really important in religion, laying aside one thing after the other: creeds, Bible, doctrine, to get to something that's beneath all of those things.

I see a number of religious seekers: Servetus, Emerson, David, de Benneville, Martineau, Socinus, who have independently come to see a similar understanding.

Broadly speaking, this understanding is that we are all embraced by the same Oneness, a mystical, benevolent reality, and yet we "see through a glass, darkly" and so human language stumbles when it tries to describe this Oneness. But that doesn't matter a great deal. What does matter is that we live more fully into this Oneness through a deepening spiritual practice and a justice-seeking practice of creating one human family.

So to say that "Unitarianism is an individualistic approach to faith" is fundamentally wrong. Unitarianism is much more fundamentally a globalistic and universalistic approach to faith.

We are seeking to be universal: to embrace oneness. This is not the same thing as being religiously neutral. It does require standing in one place, and that does exclude other possible positions. We are a religion and that does exclude a purely materialistic understanding of the world. Our religion calls us to encounter Love, and that does exclude belief in a wrathful god. We encounter religious reality in the here and now, immanently present, and that does exclude belief in one particular exclusive revelation, or a religion that points us to another world or another time. Our religion honours the mind, and that does exclude religion that shuts down the mind and reason. We are a religion that practices worship, and that excludes a religion of purely words and thinking. We are a religion that sees justice-making as central, and that does exclude being a religion that withdraws from the world.

And yet philosophically it does allow for a broad approach that can include theism, panentheism, pantheism and religious naturalism/humanism. But that's not the most important thing. It's incidental. Diversity is not a terminal value. Diversity is, at best, an instrumental value. It allows us to do all those other things, but actually we could without being diverse. Diversity may in fact be value-neutral. It's certainly not the beating heart of what we're all about.

I've gone on too long in this blogpost, but broadly I want to say we need to move away from this language of diversity and pluralism in talking about what's important to us. What's really important is Oneness, prayer, Love, Presence, opening the mind, and justice. It's these words that we need to use, and, more importantly live.

173 congregations?

I got my directory in the mail today.

As always I use this as one of the ways to keep an eye on the overall health of the denomination. This is not always an easy thing to do, but it's still worth trying.

The preface says that there are 173 Unitarian congregations in Great Britain, which is one up on last year (172). But I can't work out where the new congregation has come from. The breakdown in the preface suggests that the growth is in England (146 congregations compared to last year's 145). When I counted the recognised congregations and unofficial fellowships I also counted 146, but none of those are new, so perhaps last year's numbers were wrong? I'm confused.

However, going through the directory, I can see that one congregation has closed in England and one fellowship has been formed in Scotland. Gloucester Unitarians, listed as worshipping with the Quakers once a month in 2011, has disappeared in 2012. Gloucester is a city with a population of 121,000. 

Forth Valley Unitarian Fellowship is new. They are meeting in members homes, but do have a decent website.

So, overall numbers of congregation are steady or steadily declining. I do wonder though, how long numbers of members can continue to decline before we see numbers of congregations declining rapidly. I wouldn't be surprised if one year we see ten congregations dying. But some research does suggest that small congregations can be surprisingly resilient.

"Redefining" marriage

OK, let's deal with this idea, presented by the critics of marriage equality, and defenders of "traditional" marriage that same sex marriage "redefines"  marriage.

Is this true? What is the nature of this "redefinition"?

I think we gain an important insight into this from an interesting story that has just emerged from Australia. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney has added the word "submit" to the vows a wife makes to her husband in the marriage ceremony. In the proposed new wording the minister will ask the woman "Will you honour and submit to him, as the church submits to Christ?'

This is justified by the very conservative bishop by explicitly saying that equality between sexes is wrong. Clearly women need to submit to men, according to this bishop.

This is the argument for "traditional" marriage. It is about one woman (or more) submitting to a man. It's about women becoming, in some sense, the property of men.

In this understanding of marriage obviously same sex marriage makes no sense, because there can be no submission. In same sex marriage there cannot be a power differences between sexes, so there cannot be "traditional" marriage.

So when people talk about the "redefinition" of marriage I say, yes, we are talking about a redefinition, but for most of us, this redefinition has already happened. The redefinition is about understanding marriage as a partnership between equals. The redefinition happens when we consider women equal to men.

So the redefinition happens when we consider marriage a partnership of equals.

If you understand marriage as being a partnership between equals, then same sex marriage makes sense. Two men and two women can be just as much a partnership of equals as a woman and a man.

But if you consider marriage to be about men having authority over women, then same sex marriage will never make sense, because there can be no power differential between the two people based on sex.

This is why I believe same sex marriage as the potential to redeem and renew marriage, by confirming it as a partnership of equals, by purging it of its sexist undertones for everyone.

I once heard someone, I think it was Gene Robinson, say these words, and I believe they really apply here:

"Homophobia is just one small room in the mansion of sexism."

Same sex marriage debate on BBC Radio Manchester

Yesterday I was on BBC Radio Manchester as part of a debate on marriage equality.

You can listen to the debate here. It starts at two hours in to the programme, after the 8am news.

A Parable for Small Congregations

H/T Scott Wells (Boy in the Bands)