Reignite

View of stream by my home taken today. You wouldn't believe I live just outside Bolton town centre would you?

So I'm musing more about the theology of creedlessness in Unitarianism. Sorry if this kind of thing bores you. Here's a realisation I came to during my dissertation last year, that I think is worth sharing, if not preaching evangelically. I may begin to bang this drum more in the future. Unitarianism is creedless: there is no written creed that members or minister are asked to sign up to. But what does it mean to be creedless? This is often the way we speak about being creedless, we use words and phrases such as: "theologically diverse" "supported in your individual search for truth and meaning" "each individual is encouraged to find their own beliefs" "many beliefs, one faith" "free to discern our beliefs" "celebrate diverse beliefs" Here's my insight. This is not non-creedalism. This is what I would call credo-ism. ( credo = I believe). Creedalism is the belief that all individuals within a community should sig...

This isn't very contemporary, because this TV programme was on a number of months ago, but I'm just watching on 4 OD. It's annoying the hell out of me, so I can't resist blogging as I'm watching it. The programme is called Make Me a Christian and features George Hargreaves and three other Christian ministers trying to convert about a dozen non-Christians in Leeds. Charlie Brooker is right in saying "in the true oversimplified TV-conflict tradition, it's a clash of absurd extremities." It's conservative Christians vs a number of Leeds folks including a bisexual woman, a lap-dancer club manager who practices witchcraft, a big tatooed man, and other people made out to be cartoonish stereotypes. They start at York Minister (where of course there's a statue of Constantine) with George saying "this is a Christian country" which straight away turns me off. The first introduction to Christianity is communion in York Minister, which doesn...

Just wanted to share our new sign outside of chapel. I'm dead happy with it. We're just steadily working to get ourselves noticed...

I'm reading Bryan Stone's Evangelism After Christendom . It's bloody good. Reading it really makes me regret that I didn't take his course (based on the book when he was writting it) when I was studying at Boston University. I easily could have done. Anyway, as I say, it's really good, and really readable, which I can't say about most things I read, when I'm usually skipping ahead to think, "only six more pages till the end of the chapter, come on, you can do it." But this one I'm gobbling up with joy, so much sane and good stuff, as well as some stuff that challenges me. Here's one quote that I'm thinking about at the moment. "[It] is highly doubtful that any religious faith, Christian or otherwise, can bracket or relativize the cognitive dimensions of belief and commitment as easily as [James] Adams [in his book So You Can't Stand Evangelism? ] does. While faith is certainly a matter of loyalty rather than mere belief (in the...