Reignite

Happy birthday to this blog! Well OK, Reignite 's birthday was in August. I did mean to note this at the time but I was on holiday, and then the busyness of September hit etc etc. The fact that the tenth anniversary of this blog went by quietly is pretty typical of the nature of this blog at the moment. It's true that I don't have the time to blog as much as I used to. And I also have a lot more outlets for my writing in various publications as a part of my ministry, which I didn't have in 2005 when I started . But it's also true that this blog has always remained a bit homespun and low-key, so there didn't seem to be a need to make a big thing about it. I try to keep it simple, and for example have never updated the format of the blog, which probably means it looks a bit old-fashioned now. But I like to let the writing speak for itself. Although my writing here gets very patchy nowadays I have no plans to stop the blog. I still find it a useful format for b...

Unitarians have a problem with pluralism. We think of ourselves as cool pluralists, and constantly tell ourselves we are all about pluralism - that our congregations are full of religious diversity. "We are very diverse people!" we shout ad nauseam. But I want to argue that we're not actually true pluralists. We're not true pluralists but imperial pluralists. An often unexamined theology we espouse is that we are building a "religion of religions" - that us (and us alone) offers the possibilities for all religions to come together "under one roof." What we fail to see is how imperialist this is. We expect all religions to come together on our terms and under our auspices. It looks something like this: Unitarianism is the holder of religious diversity in this model. But can you not see that this gives Unitarianism a privileged place? We are the ones in charge. We are the ones who create the context into which all of the world's religiou...

I am responding (admittedly probably too late - apologies for that) to the Unitarian conversations started by the Executive Committee on "Vision" following a Vision Day last year. Of course this day (as these things always do) ended with a lot of words that are now being reflected upon. But I think the first phrase is in some ways the only thing that matters: "We want to be... a faith that matters."  In fact, I would say this is still too wordy. The challenge is that "we need to be a faith." That's it, simply being a faith. If we're not engaged in the things of faith: prayer, God, soul, forgiveness, theology, then we're not really being a faith and everything else is just window-dressing. But this leads me to another really important point. It it not the Executive Committee's job to nurture faith in Unitarianism. In fact it's not the Executive's job to do most of the things suggested in the Vision document. What we're ...

I occasionally feel the need to write about politics on this blog. There are a lot of people more qualified than me to talk about this of course, and they do. And there's all kinds of things I'd want to say that others can say better than me about politics and the election, and there's not a lot of use repeating it. But I've found myself shouting at the radio and TV a bit recently so I have felt the need to express these thoughts. I'm thinking a bit about the Labour leadership election. I've heard some of the leadership candidates speaking and got so frustrated by the lack of any inspiring vision that I felt the need to think more deeply about this. What I haven't heard from many of the leadership contenders is the sense that winning elections is not an end in itself, but the means to an end. There's a lot of talk about "we have to do this and that to win elections" - but my question comes back to "why?" Why does the Labour Party...

In recent years I've found myself identifying more and more as a Unitarian Anabaptist. This is increasingly feeling like the path for me. But I don't want to plough a lonely furrow on this path, but rather I want to connect with others who might be open to this approach. So I'm interested in connecting with others who would like to explore what it might mean to follow a Unitarian Anabaptist spiritual path. What do I mean by Unitarian Anabaptist? Well, by Unitarian I mean a commitment to spiritual oneness, the unfolding nature of truth, inclusion and pluralism. By Anabaptist I mean a commitment to radical equality, peace, simplicity and discipleship. This conversation would be inspired by the historic extinct Unitarian Anabaptist movement in Poland as well as the recent resurgence of interest from contemporary (UK and Ireland) Christians in Anabaptism, exemplified by the Anabaptist Network . I would like a conversation that would explore what it might mean to g...

The joke goes something like this: A Unitarian finds a fork in the road. One sign points to "Heaven" while the other points to "A discussion about heaven." The Unitarian follows the path to "A discussion about heaven." There's a lot of truth in that joke. In fact I think the situation is sort of worse than that. I would categorise the Unitarian situation as more like this: A Unitarian finds a fork in the road. One sign points to "an orgasm" while the other points to "A discussion about orgasms." The Unitarian follows the path to "A discussion about orgasms." The problem with our religious life, most significantly about our worship life, is that we believe we are worshipping by having a discussion about worship, or praying by saying clever things about prayer. It is as ridiculous as believing you are having an orgasm by attending a three hour lecture about orgasms. The two do not compare. We gather, sing songs, li...

This is sort of obvious when you say it out loud: Churches are not immortal. Churches (I mean local congregations) do not live forever. Why would they? Nothing lasts forever. And yet we often act and talk like churches should be immortal, and that if they die it is an unqualified disaster. Of course a church, like a person, dying prematurely is a tragedy. But a church, like a person, dying after a good long life may just be a fact of life. Sad, most certainly, but also in the natural order of things. And we can respond to this death with sorrow but also with gratitude. But how often do we deny this reality? How often do we assume that a church can live forever or that it should? How often do we think of church that is something somehow ancient and eternal? How often do we think our priority should be ensuring that churches live forever? Sometimes churches can be saved. Sometimes not. They just die. It's not actually death that should worry us. It's reproduction. I...