Reignite

A few months ago a report came out about people changing faith in Britain. It provides an important insight into how and why people are leaving or joining faith communities. It feels important to me to see this complex picture. There's a lot of talk about "young people are doing this or that" and I'm always sceptical of such generalisations. Certainly there are trends. Christianity is dropping as an overall trend but within that there are thousands of people who are joining and leaving faith communities and faith positions all the time. Many different things can be true at once.  The report is here . It involved surveying 2774 adults who had self-identified as changing their faith position. And there's plenty to chew on in it. Here is my summary of what I think is interesting. The primary reason for people becoming Christian in modern Britain are: Personal connection with God A sense of purpose A sense of community. Life events associated with becoming Christian N...

I think a lot about Art Lester's anniversary sermon in 2008 , especially since Art died last year.  In it he talks about the problems of the declining Unitarian denomination (that has only declined further since 2008) and asks us a simple question - have we prayed about it? And he suggests that if we haven't prayed about it, and if we have stopped viewing God as someone you can really talk to, then this might point to the very cause of our decline. We are not nourishing the soul.  And so the most important thing we could possibly do - is pray, is to recognise our need for a Higher Power, and invite the Living Presence into our midst.  When I was asked recently on a podcast what's the one thing I would change about Unitarianism I said - "I just want us to pray more." Someone later challenged me - what would it mean to make that happen? How could it happen? I've pondered on that for a few months. And I think how it could happen is to gather those who would like...

 

I've been meaning to write this for a while. I was thinking of it as a new year's post to reflect on 2025. But time has got away from me and we are already well into 2026 now.  The world feels apocalyptic. Even more so now with war spreading in the Middle East. Of course it's easy to exaggerate these kinds of claims. Even generation faces challenges and every generation faces wars. When we consider the meaning of the time we live in we should do so with a sense of historic perspective.  Nevertheless, writing purely personally I feel more a sense of the apocalyptic than ever before. I don't mean that I think "the world is ending" - what I mean is that the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings and insights make more sense to me than ever before.  What has changed for me personally is a sense of the hostility of the world. What I mean is that "the world" feels like it is out to get me, and to get people like me. "The world" is not friendly...

 Here's a podcast interview I've done recently:

  I've just heard the extremely sad and shocking news of the death of Unitarian Minister Art Lester. It shocked me even more as I was emailing him a few days ago as he spontaneously emailed me thanking me for my book and offering to send me a copy of his latest one (pictured above).  I already feel like I've missed the opportunity to get to know him better, as he's the kind of person I would really have liked to have been a mentor as he always seemed wise and spiritually rooted, in a mischievous, not-taking-himself-too-seriously way (which is a good sign of spiritual maturity I think).  He ended his email with, "I attach a portion of a sermon I’ll be giving at the Paris Fellowship next month.  It’s my 29th service over the past 27 years and possibly my last.  I wouldn’t normally bore a colleague with my scribbles, but I think you might like this one."  I do. I do like this one. And as he now won't deliver this at Paris Fellowship I thought it was worth shar...

  "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...

 

 

  (Image from Aloyisius, wikipedia) I'm still very suspicious of the idea of "Pride Month." Intuitively it makes very little sense to me. Pride is a protest, an event when I march through my city (over the years it's been Birmingham, Boston, Manchester, Bolton, Cardiff) and stand up for the rights of LGBT+ people, and for liberation from all forms of oppression. You can't have rights for LGBT+ asylum seekers unless there's immigration justice. LGBT+ people are more likely to suffer homelessness and poverty, and so LGBT+ liberation requires economic justice. A protest is not a season. Liberation doesn't have a season. It either happens on one particular day or it's for every day. "Pride Month" is a commercial capitalist season. It is the way of marking time that suits institutions and corporations. Like secular Christmas, or barbeque season, or pumpkin latte season, it's there to put up a new display and sell a new product. It's there...

Next month I'll be part of a team teaching a new course at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre: Spiritual Wisdom from Liberal Christianity.  I will be speaking of how a "liberal" - generous, broad - understanding of God's love and activity can be the foundation for a radical, inclusive, mystically rooted faith practice.  Here's what Woodbrooke says: This course introduces learners to some of the hidden spiritual treasures of the Liberal Christian tradition. Over the course of five-weeks participants will be invited to learn about inspiring figures and theologies from, or in sympathy with, the Liberal Christian tradition.  You can find out more and book here.

  I was looking forward to reading this book as I've done a couple of Ian Mosby's courses online and because I feel like I'm circling around a contemplative approach to my pioneering as well and so I was interested to be in dialogue with people who are thinking like this. Ian Mosby's contemplative approach makes a lot of sense to me. If evangelism is just about getting people to "come to church" or "give their lives to Jesus" then it's always struck me as rather superficial. So many books I read come with these sorts of assumptions that come only from the Evangelical way of looking at the world. Ian Mosby, from a more contemplative Christian approach rather sees the invitation as entering into deeper relationship with God through contemplative practices. The book is based on PhD research that involved interviewing a lot of "Spiritual but not Religious" people in London. There is a great deal of reflection on what this category of people...

 

  "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Nathanael (John 1:46) I love Christmas carols and have enjoyed singing some this Christmas season, though fewer than when I was in full time church ministry. Obviously as a Unitarian Christian some of the words I think are problematic, but one of the most problematic, said in many ways in different carols and liturgies this season is "he came down to earth from heaven." This is something said again and again at Christmas time - that Jesus is "from heaven." That Jesus' real home is heaven, some otherworldly spiritual place that he temporarily left to live a brief existence some other place, an earthly place where he never really belonged to, because he really belonged in heaven. Heaven is his home. Heaven is where Jesus is from . I disagree. Jesus is not from heaven. Jesus is indigenous. Jesus is from Nazareth, a small town, that even at the time it seems was a rather small, unimportant place. Maybe even a no...

 

 

I'm always a bit suspicious of those people who have SOMETHING WISE to say right in the midst of a historical event. Despite my job being, at times, to say something wise I don't always feel up to it, and I want to hide away in my bed and just be a person rather than one of those WISE PEOPLE who have clever opinions.  Nevertheless I've been reflecting this week on the Trump victory in the States and what it means. What it means for the future, I cannot say, but it is obviously terrifying for the world. My heart goes out especially to trans people in the States as well as the Palestinian people. But I've been thinking about those campaigns and how they landed. Kamala Harris' campaign, and particularly the National Convention which had this message of JOY, seemed at the time to me deeply inappropriate against the backdrop of a genocide. I was listening to a This American Life episode following a Palestinian American at that convention, and how the leadership was tryi...