Reignite

I admit that I don't really get news from very traditional sources - usually things like Ekklesia, the Daily Show, Radio 1, and sometimes Radio 4. But how the hell did I miss that a gay man was attacked and killed in Trafalgar Square in central London in a homophobic attack? Have I just been watching the Simpsons rather than the 6 o' clock news and missed it or has this been under-reported? It was only when I was looking at the new Lesbian and Gay Chrisrian Movement website that I heard about this. There's a vigil happening in London, almost as I type this. So I'll virtually stand in solitaridy against hate crimes.

'I went to see a sage in Jerusalem, because I was attracted to someone in yeshiva. I told him I was attracted to men and women. He said, "My dear one, you have twice the power of love. Use it carefully."' Rabbi Steven Greenberg I heard Rabbi Greenberg, an openly gay rabbi, a number of years ago at Harvard University at an evening about "Gays and God" ( the video is here , but the quality is not very good). I wrote the phrase down that night, as I thought it was a lovely little quote to begin talking about bisexual theology. I wanted to share this here because I've just submitted an article about bisexual theology, and at the last minute decided to get rid of that quote, as it didn't really fit in with the overall direction of the article. But it's a damn good quote, so if I wasn't going to use it in the article, I wanted to share it here.

For the first time since I became a Unitarian 7 years ago I'm not ashamed of my religious communty's website. It was pretty bad, then they launched a "new" one a few years ago - which was basically the old one, but coloured purple. Now due to the persistence of a few dedicated volunteers we finally have a website that looks better, is more easily navigable, and is more appealing to newcomers. It has the text of Cliff Reed's "Unitarian, What's That?" which is still the best literature for a basic overview of Unitarianism and is excellently written. And it also has videos describing Unitarianism too. Not massively high-tech, just up to the basic standard it should be: clear, pleasant to look at, and useful. Thank the Lord! www.unitarian.org.uk

A few weeks ago I asked the following question to the Executive Committee: How does the Executive Committee intend to objectively measure numerical growth? I ask this question as I am not aware of any publicly available figure for the number of Unitarians in Britain, other than the electoral role number for the Executive elections. But why should this number be only available as a by-product of elections? Shouldn't the number be published every year at the Annual Meetings? This is what happens in the UUA, and as a result I can easily find that the number of UU adult members is 164,656 . I can also go on the UUA website and find the membership numbers for individual congregations (see here for example) Such information is public and easily available. Can such information not be available here too? I understand the difficulties of getting those accurate numbers but if an objective is not measurable then what is the point of it? If growth is an objective it should be measurable. ...

After a pilot scheme last summer, a period of review, volunteer recruitment, and fund-raising the Nite Cafe has relaunched as "Bolton Street Angels" and the "Safe Space Cafe." The Safe Space Cafe is based in Bank Street Unitarian Chapel, and is the home to Street Angels, which are groups of volunteers who go out on the streets to chat to and help out anyone enjoying Bolton's nightlife. Street Angels operate Saturday nights between 10pm and 3am. An article appears in the Bolton News here . There was also an interview at BBC Radio Manchester, and you can listen to that here for another few days (push the time forward to about 0.44). Still in need of more volunteers, get in touch if you're local.

Once again the Unitarians marched in Manchester Pride. And it's good to see the faith contingent in Pride getting bigger and more organised. Here's a good report from Changing Attitudes . Let's hope this just keeps getting bigger and better.

I've been considering starting some kind of YouTube ministry, or, if you like, video blogging. A couple of things got me thinking about this. One is the Unitarian video that I recorded at the Annual Meetings this year, that is now on YouTube. The other thing is doing a few "Thought for the Day" things on a local community radio station, that I could easily do to a camera. I was thinking about doing a few short videos with those, plus I'm talking to someone in my congregation about recording a few sermons, though I'm unsure how the sound quality would come out. Anyway, watch this space.