Reignite

"We say that revelation is not sealed but we often act as if our purses were." John Clifford, Anniversary Service Sermon, 2003 Unitarians should tithe. Yes I said it. Let me say it again: Unitarians should give away 10% of their income. Sound radical? Crazy? Controversial? If so maybe we should ask ourselves why. Unitarianism is a radical liberal way of being religious. We say what matters is not what you believe but how we live our lives. We've signed up to the Charter of Compassion which speaks about restoring compassion to the centre of religion and morality. Well, what do we think that means? What concretely does it mean to have a faith based on love and compassion? What it means is, amongst other things, is giving. Let me be clear that I'm not saying that people should give 10% of their income to their congregation. Between 1% and 5% I would think is OK. And the rest should be given to other charities and groups. Unitarianism is not an easy religon. It should not...

This blog has always been a place where I have been critical of the Unitarian movement. I've always been acutely aware that the Unitarian movement is in deep trouble and has lost its way in many ways. It has been in decline, and many congregations have been devoid of the Spirit and very inward-looking. So I always try to balance this out when I can when I think I can say something positive. There are in fact many positive things to say. I feel more optimistic about the state of Unitarianism today than I did five years ago. I hope this is not just the effect of me becoming more mainstream within the movement and less of an outsider. I do think real changes have happened, and there are reasons to be cheerful. Here are some of them: 1. Some congregations are growing There are in fact many of our congregations that are growing. Some of our healthiest congregations have grown much more. Some congregations have grown steadily. Some congregations have gone from a tiny number to a healt...

I was never in favour of civil partnerships. Living in Massachusetts in 2004 I saw marriage equality come to that state, and I was very aware of all the debates at that time. In the American conversation civil partnerships were the conservative compromise position. Pro-marriage equality campaingners generally considered them to be based on a doctrine of "separate but equal" which had been rejected as a racial philosophy in America a generation earlier. So I was very ambivalent when civil partnerships came into force in the UK. They certainly provided a lot more rights for same-sex partnerships but they also made it very clear that same-sex partnerships were inferior to different-sex partnerships which could be solemnised as marriages. One of the ways that inferiority was expressed was that civil partnerships had to be, well, civil: i.e. non-religious. There was no way that same-sex couples could affirm their relationship in a religious ceremony. As a person of faith and a que...

OK, I've been writing a lot about statistics lately, and you have to be very cautious about statisitics. There's all kind of ways in which they don't report the full picture of reality. But they are worth keeping an eye on. The UU World has reported that the membership numbers of UUA congregations in the United States have fallen for the third year running. This was reported at the latest UUA Board meeting. First (at the risk of repeating myself) I want to note that membership numbers are reported as a matter of normal business at the UUA Board, whereas I've never seen them discussed in the British Executive Committee minutes. This should be normal practice. As these numbers aren't reported normally in the British Unitarian community I've drawn upon work that other people have done ( here and here ), and this year's (2010) Annual Report to look at what our trends are. Here we go: 2005: 3952 2006: 3754 2007: 3711 2008: 3642 2009: 3658 2010: 3672 Over six y...

The Government has released plans to reform the House of Lords, replacing an entirely unelected chamber with a wholly or partly elected chamber. The plans are that the House of Lords should be either 100% or 80% elected. I don't want to express an opinion about whether it should be 80% or 100%. But if we are going to appoint 20% I want to make sure that that does not include, as a matter of right, 26 Anglican bishops. Of course if some committee decides it wants to appoint any bishops, fine. And to be honest someone like Rowan Williams is probably the kind of person I would want. But we cannot continue to have a constitution that deliberately favours one particular religion and one particular denomination. It should not be the right of 26 Anglican bishops to vote on national legislation. Last year as part of the Power 2010 movement, over 50,000 people wrote emails to those 26 bishops asking them to support a pro-demoncracy reform that would include an elected House of Lords. I do...

A friend of mine from my time in Boston, Christana Wille McKnight, is doing a really interesting ministry and blogging about it here . She's re-starting a church, First Unitarian Church of Norton , Massachusetts. There was a church building, but the congregation went extinct some time ago, and her ministry has been to go in, and see where there is possibility for re-starting the congregation. This seems like a very exciting ministry and might be another model of church planting that will work in Britain. We have a lot of congregations that might be on the verge of closing. Could we put ministers into places where there's a building but no congregation to start something from scratch? I'm watching with interest.

So, I'm going to shift from talking about politics back to church planting now. The Executive Committee have committed to grow the Unitarian community by 20% in five years. How do you achieve that? Do you expect every congregation to grow at 20%? Well if you did then every congregation would have to grow as laid out here by Scott Wells . But the fact is not every congregation well grow at 20%. Obviously some will decline, some will grow, will stay the same. Some will change at a different rate than others. The least we can do is monitor this, to get a sense of what is growing and why. But eventually the Executive Committee are going to have to make an uncomfortable decision. That decision is based on the fact that they cannot give the same support to all congregations and so will have to prioritise those congregations that can benefit most from their support. For my congregation, for example, I wouldn't expect to get a any particular support from the national body. We can (just...