Reignite

Unitarian numbers time again as the new Annual Report is now out. Here's the number: 3095 Unitarian members reported. This number is down, but only slightly from last year's 3,179. Only 84 people down. Here's how the numbers have gone over the last 11 years: 2005: 3952 2006: 3754 2007: 3711 2008: 3642 2009: 3658 2010: 3672 2011: 3560 2012: 3468 2013: 3384 2014: 3179 2015: 3095

A dervish was asked why he worshipped God through dance. "Because," he replied, "to worship God means to die to self; dancing kills the self. When the self dies all problems die with it. Where the self is not, Love is, God is." Art by Shafique Farooqi (www.artween.com/Artists/Shafique-Farooqi/Theme/Spiritual-Dance-7)

This is the kind of occasional post I write, keeping an eye on the numbers of the Unitarian community in Britain. The latest Directory lists 166 congregations. It takes a keen eye to see which ones have died, but I reckon than we can count 4 congregations as having closed down in the last two years. Horwich have been small and slowly closing down for a number of years. I think this is also true of Worthing. Halliwell Road Free Church Bolton closed down last year, and the remaining congregation have now joined with my community. This has been a very positive experience and seemed like a sensible move. Newington Green and Islington have now formally merged, having been acting as one community (New Unity) for several years. This is not a sign of decline, but in fact quite healthy growth the last few years. So that's where we are in 2015/2016. I looked through the Directory carefully to think about what the future will hold. From what I know of congregations, here's my pr...

OK, so this blogpost is very overdue. I've been meaning to write a post about an experience I had in the summer and have not got around to it before now. While on holiday in the summer I found myself in London on a Sunday. I was faced with the usual question of a Sunday: do I go to church? Do I just ignore the fact that it's Sunday and get on with the day? Or do I seek out a Unitarian church? Or some other church. Anglican? Quaker? Maybe a nice cathedral. What I decided to do was find the biggest, Evangelical megachurch I could and go along. I did a quick bit of research and decided to go to Hillsong. I thought to myself if they're very successful there are always things to learn. Plus I'm just really fascinated, in a religious studies sort of way, with this kind of thing. The church meets in one of London's West End theatres and so it was very easy to find coming straight out of the tube and finding it in front of me. It's worth reflecting when we obsess...

Something I've been working on. . All are welcome at a Unitarian Theology Conference at Cross St Chapel, Manchester, on Saturday 21st May, 2016, 10.30 for 11 am start. Details are on poster below.  Fuller details also in text below. Unitarian Theology Conference, Cross Street Chapel, Manchester Saturday 21st May 2016. 10.30 for 11am to 5pm "Do Unitarians need Theology?" Stephen Lingwood Response by Dr Melanie Prideaux Lunch (please bring your own, or sandwich bars nearby). "The Spirit in Unitarian and Judaeo-Christian Thought" Rev Jo James KEYNOTE ADDRESS "Towards a Unitarian Theology for the Twenty-First Century" Rev Dr David Steers. Panel Discussion: Revs Sarah Tinker, Sheena Gabriel and Lewis Connolly. Opening and closing devotions, as well as time for Q + A. The conference is supported by The Hibbert Trust. Further information contact Rev Jim Corrigall.

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...