So, about me and my recent history. I am a young British Unitarian living right now in Stoke-on-Trent. I grew up in the English Midlands, particularly Walsall. My father is an Anglican priest and I grew up in the Church of England. During my time at the University of Birmingham while studying geology and biology I became a Unitarian, though I was still involved in a few Anglican and Quaker things. I began attending New Meeting Church pretty regularly during my last year in Birmingham. After Birmingham I switched tracks in my education and decided to study theology. I attended Boston University School of Theology in the USA where I graduated after two years last June with a Master of Theological Studies degree. While in Boston I worshipped at First Church Boston. Now I'm back in the UK, looking for a job and a place to live and seriously considering becoming a Unitarian minister. I might apply in the next month. I love my faith but I know that it has to change. We need a revival, a new missionary push for us to survive. That is the reason for the name of this blog. The process that needs to happen is a reignition of our faith so that we can become a force for good in this nation and this world. This blog will be a platform for radical thinking to bring about a new era of Unitarianism in the British Isles.
When I started this blog nearly 4 years and nearly 300 posts ago one of the labels I used for it/me was "radical." Perhaps I used it a little unreflectively. Recently I've been pondering what radical means. A couple of things have made me think of this. Firstly this blog series from my friend Jeremy, which explores a distinction between "radical progressives" and "rational progressives." There is also this definition of radical, liberal and conservative from Terry Eagleton quoted at Young Anabaptist Radicals : “Radicals are those who believe that things are extremely bad with us, but they could feasibly be much improved. Conservatives believe that things are pretty bad, but that’s just the way the human animal is. And liberals believe that there’s a little bit of good and bad in all of us.” What interests me is finding a way to express the tension I feel sometimes between myself and the wider Unitarian movement. One way to express this is to say I tend
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As a U.S. citizen (I almost said "American", but I'm trying to be correct) I visit Northampton once a year and try to visit the Northampton Unitarians for a service. All dozen or so of them.
A couple of years ago, someone there told me that there's a potential division between the Christian Unitarians and everyeone else. It struck me that, if that happens, there's not going to be much left of the Unitarian church in England. And that would be a sad thing.
Not much as far as I can see. . .