So, about me and my recent history. I am a young British Unitarian living right now in Stoke-on-Trent. I grew up in the English Midlands, particularly Walsall. My father is an Anglican priest and I grew up in the Church of England. During my time at the University of Birmingham while studying geology and biology I became a Unitarian, though I was still involved in a few Anglican and Quaker things. I began attending New Meeting Church pretty regularly during my last year in Birmingham. After Birmingham I switched tracks in my education and decided to study theology. I attended Boston University School of Theology in the USA where I graduated after two years last June with a Master of Theological Studies degree. While in Boston I worshipped at First Church Boston. Now I'm back in the UK, looking for a job and a place to live and seriously considering becoming a Unitarian minister. I might apply in the next month. I love my faith but I know that it has to change. We need a revival, a new missionary push for us to survive. That is the reason for the name of this blog. The process that needs to happen is a reignition of our faith so that we can become a force for good in this nation and this world. This blog will be a platform for radical thinking to bring about a new era of Unitarianism in the British Isles.
"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4 Palestine Action are doing just this: beating swords into ploughshares i.e. putting weapons out of use. In doing so they are fulfilling this biblical mandate. They are expressing God's peace as expressed in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. God desires that our swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, that we should unlearn war. That the government wants to make this action illegal has to be confronted in the strongest terms. To rush to condemn attacks on weapons but not attacks on children is perverse. To call attacks on weapons terrorism but not attacks on children is perverse. When government comes to such an extreme position - legislating that peace is war, that weapons need more protection than children - then they have fundamentally gone wrong. This is the definitio...
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As a U.S. citizen (I almost said "American", but I'm trying to be correct) I visit Northampton once a year and try to visit the Northampton Unitarians for a service. All dozen or so of them.
A couple of years ago, someone there told me that there's a potential division between the Christian Unitarians and everyeone else. It struck me that, if that happens, there's not going to be much left of the Unitarian church in England. And that would be a sad thing.
Not much as far as I can see. . .