Reignite

I got my directory in the mail today. As always I use this as one of the ways to keep an eye on the overall health of the denomination. This is not always an easy thing to do, but it's still worth trying. The preface says that there are 173 Unitarian congregations in Great Britain, which is one up on last year (172). But I can't work out where the new congregation has come from. The breakdown in the preface suggests that the growth is in England (146 congregations compared to last year's 145). When I counted the recognised congregations and unofficial fellowships I also counted 146, but none of those are new, so perhaps last year's numbers were wrong? I'm confused. However, going through the directory, I can see that one congregation has closed in England and one fellowship has been formed in Scotland. Gloucester Unitarians , listed as worshipping with the Quakers once a month in 2011, has disappeared in 2012. Gloucester is a city with a population of 121,000...

OK, let's deal with this idea, presented by the critics of marriage equality, and defenders of "traditional" marriage that same sex marriage "redefines"  marriage. Is this true? What is the nature of this "redefinition"? I think we gain an important insight into this from an interesting story that has just emerged from Australia. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney has added the word "submit" to the vows a wife makes to her husband in the marriage ceremony . In the proposed new wording the minister will ask the woman "Will you honour and submit to him, as the church submits to Christ?' This is justified by the very conservative bishop by explicitly saying that equality between sexes is wrong. Clearly women need to submit to men, according to this bishop. This is the argument for "traditional" marriage. It is about one woman (or more) submitting to a man. It's about women becoming, in some sense, the property of men. ...

Yesterday I was on BBC Radio Manchester as part of a debate on marriage equality. You can listen to the debate here.  It starts at two hours in to the programme, after the 8am news.

H/T Scott Wells ( Boy in the Bands )

This afternoon I am not watching the Diamond Jubilee Pageant. In fact if I didn't have Sunday responsibilities I would be at the republican protests. The idea of a hereditary head of a state seems entirely irrational to me. The idea that somebody should have the job of head of state for life for the simple reason that their parent was also the head of state is, well, just silly. But what offends me most is the language of monarchy. Our language reinforces ideas of hierarchy and class divisions - when we say "your highness" or "your majesty" we are explicitly saying that Elizabeth Windsor is a better human being than the rest of us. As Will Self said in a recent piece I heard , "while our society may pay lip service to equality of opportunity, our fundamental values remain those of inherited wealth and privilege... Yes, deference is the key - and with each bent knee, each ma'am and sir and Your Majesty, we reaffirm that this is the way things are m...

***Spoiler alert*** I'm continuing some theological/philosophical reflections while re-watching the series LOST. One of the recurring themes in LOST is the idea of the "good guys" and the "bad guys." We start the series assuming the survivors (who are the main characters) are the "good guys" and the mysterious "Others" are definitely bad guys. But at the end of series 2 one of the main characters asks the Others, "Who are  you people?" and they answer, in an extremely disturbing way, "We're the good guys." The series develops with a number of different factions appearing, "the people from the freighter" "the DHARMA initiative" as well as divisions among the original survivors. The question remains among all these complicated happenings "who really are the good guys?" I think one of the most significant lines in the series is an episode when Hurley is having a conversation with ...

So the Annual Meetings have ended today. First I need to say that I wasn't there the whole time. Frankly it was very inconvenient and annoying that the meetings were in the week before Easter. We have a Maundy Thursday communion and this year we hosted the ecumenical Good Friday service (today), so there was no way I could be there the whole time. Frankly if I didn't have an official role in the being Chair of Ministry Strategy Group I wouldn't have gone at all. As it was I was there from Monday to Wednesday. So Tim Moore ( starting here ) has got a lot more detail than I have this year. Since I've got back Twitter has also been a good place to keep in touch: #GAUK . The meetings started, as always, with the John Relly Beard Lecture this year by Peter-Owen Jones off of the telly. A lot of people seemed to like what he was saying, but to be honest to me it was a bit of preaching to the choir. It was the kind of talk I would hear at Greenbelt , a basically liberal religi...