Reading week, haven't done much reading yet

Some basics about my life right now.

I'm living in Manchester. I'm attending Unitarian College Manchester which exists in a partnership with four other colleges in the same building: Luther King House.

I have a placement church in the area, which I'm slowly getting to know.

I should be here for two years, then I'll be qualified. That in itself worries me a bit. Every other denomination seems to require much longer to qualify. Unitarians are supposed to do it in three years if they don't have a degree and two years if they do. Is that enough?

Next week I'm taking a one-week course in the theology and practice of ordained ministry. It's actually a very puzzling subject to me. What is a Unitarian theology of ministry? We don't actually get 'ordained' in the (British) Unitarian church. I'm not really sure what ordained means. Why do we need ministers at all? I know some people who believe we don't. Why do we call ministers 'rev'? What do we expect ministers to wear and why? Like many things I don't think Unitarians have a clear idea about these things and I think we should do.

Just some thoughts on a Tuesday evening.

Comments

Swords into Ploughshares

"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4 Palestine Action are doing just this: beating swords into ploughshares i.e. putting weapons out of use. In doing so they are fulfilling this biblical mandate. They are expressing God's peace as expressed in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. God desires that our swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, that we should unlearn war. That the government wants to make this action illegal has to be confronted in the strongest terms. To rush to condemn attacks on weapons but not attacks on children is perverse. To call attacks on weapons terrorism but not attacks on children is perverse. When government comes to such an extreme position - legislating that peace is war, that weapons need more protection than children - then they have fundamentally gone wrong. This is the definitio...

Art Lester

I've just heard the extremely sad and shocking news of the death of Unitarian Minister Art Lester. It shocked me even more as I was emailing him a few days ago as he spontaneously emailed me thanking me for my book and offering to send me a copy of his latest one (pictured above). I already feel like I've missed the opportunity to get to know him better, as he's the kind of person I would really have liked to have been a mentor as he always seemed wise and spiritually rooted, in a mischievous, not-taking-himself-too-seriously way (which is a good sign of spiritual maturity I think). He ended his email with, "I attach a portion of a sermon I’ll be giving at the Paris Fellowship next month. It’s my 29th service over the past 27 years and possibly my last. I wouldn’t normally bore a colleague with my scribbles, but I think you might like this one." I do. I do like this one. And as he now won't deliver this at Paris Fellowship I thought it was worth shar...

Is humanism theologically tolerant?

OK, well this might be controversial, but I feel the need to say it. Is humanist tolerant? Please note I'm not asking about humanism within society. Clearly humanism certainly believes in tolerance within society and I'm forever glad they are often the only people in the media calling for a separation of church and state. No, what I'm talking about is descriptions of Unitarianism like this and adverts like this , discussed at Peacebang here , which say that humanism is one option, Christianity is another, God is one option among many. The trouble is, humanism, by definition is theologically opposed to theism. This is very different from the relationship between Christianity and Buddhism. These two traditions may be vastly different, but Buddhism, by definition , is not opposed to Christianity, and Christianity, by definition , is not opposed to Buddhism. But humanism is consciously defined in opposition to Christianity and theism. So to say that humanism and theism can bot...

Reignite

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