Reignite

OK, I'm wandering into the territory of Beauty Tips for Ministers here, but a couple of recent conversations have brought up the issue of what clergy should wear for protests. I know a number of Ministers who only wear clerical collars for protests. The logic is that it's important to identify as a Minister when you're supporting something society doesn't expect clergy to. So Ministers will wear a collar at gay prides or pro-choice rallies to make this point. Now I could understand this if it you wore a collar going about your general business, and also did during a protest, but I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of wearing clerical wear ONLY for protests. The seems to be something worth exploring. I have said before that I'm not in favour of special titles or clothing for religious leadership, mainly because Jesus explicitly said this was a lot of nonsense. Religious leaders should not need these articial crutches. I have no problem with certain liturgical c...

Posts by a couple of my colleagues have got me thinking. Here Andy posts about the slogan of his church in London : "A church for atheists... and everyone else." And here Danny says "There is no such thing as atheism." How interesting. So do Unitarian churches welcome atheists? To me this is not the significant question. I don't know of any church that would say it wouldn't welcome atheists. If I asked my Anglican neighbours "do you welcome atheists?" they would say, "Of course we do, but we welcome them to enter into a relationship with God." So the question is not "who do you welcome?" but rather "what do you welcome people into?" The invitation goes out to all, but what is it an invitation to ? This is the pressing question to Unitarianism. In many Unitarian circles there's a lot of talk about welcoming all people: people of different beliefs, different sexual orientations, different races, but what are we welco...