Equal Rights, Equal Respect

Unitarians have always campaigned for civil and religious liberty, at first for themselves, and simultaneously and subsequently for other oppressed minorities. We believe that every person is deserving of respect and that every person should have equal access to opportunities in life. Therefore we are firmly opposed to oppression and discrimination on the grounds of gender, age, sexual orientation, race, religion or any other arbitrary grounds.

 This fundamental belief in the importance of civil and religious liberty has inspired Unitarians to become involved with a variety of social and political issues over the centuries: the abolition of slavery, better conditions for factory workers, universal education, equal rights for women (for example, we were the first denomination in Britain to have a female minister, Gertrude von Petzold, in 1904), and more recently, equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Our leaflet, Where We Stand: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People and the Unitarian & Free Christian Churches, explains that the Unitarian and Free Christian commitment to equality in the UK is long-standing and wide-ranging; individuals and congregations have always been involved in different areas of social reform. For example, as long ago as 1977, the General Assembly passed a resolution: "That the ministry of the denomination be open to all regardless of sex, race, colour, or sexual orientation, and expresses an abhorrence of discrimination solely on the basis of sexual orientation." 

Most recently, together with the Quakers and the Liberal Jews, we have been prominent in the successful campaign for equal marriage - that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to be married in church or chapel on exactly the same basis as heterosexual couples, because we believe that marriage should be about two people committing to love and care for each other for the rest of their lives, rather than on the ability to procreate.

Our concern for the socially-disadvantaged and oppressed has also led many individual Unitarians to work with various different pressure groups such as Amnesty International, Shelter, women's groups and others. This is what walking the talk is about.

Keep It Simple

Henry David Thoreau was an American Transcendentalist and friend of leading 19^th century Unitarian theologian Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is perhaps most well known for his book Walden, or Life in the Woods, in which he describes the results of a two-year experiment in simple living. In July 1845, he moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of 14 acres that Emerson had bought, a mile and a half from his family home. A quote from the book explains what he was trying to do:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” 

Simplicity is a different way of looking at the world, of appreciating our blessings and being grateful for the wonders and joys of everyday life, and I think that this is what Thoreau was getting at. For we live in a world of wonders. Computers, especially the Internet, have transformed our lives. It is salutary to think that my  little iPod has more technological whammy in it than the computers used to support the Apollo 11 mission forty years ago! And my faithful sat-nav guides me on all my journeys; a small machine that somehow links up with satellites up in space, and knows exactly where my car is on the planet’s surface. It really is amazing.

But the shadow side is there too. Technology has enabled many evils as well as many benefits: the surveillance of everyone, everyday via CCTV; climate change caused by acid rain and holes in the ozone layer – the list goes on. And all this technology doesn’t seem to have made us any happier or given us fuller, more meaningful lives. So perhaps we need to look at an alternative way of living, one which doesn't come with such a high price-tag.

The Quakers have Simplicity as one of their testimonies. As they explain on their website: "Simplicity involves constantly challenging the way we live and what our true needs are, and especially how our own standard of living is sometimes achieved at the expense of others. It means standing aside from the fuelling of wants and manufacturing of new desires.” 

This is a very different approach to life. Closely linked to Enoughism, it involves taking life as it comes, with thankfulness, appreciating what we have, and not always wanting more. Most importantly, it involves being aware, all the time, of the marvels around us, whether they are people or places or things. And also being aware of the resources and people who have been instrumental in enabling us to have these marvels. And making judgements, as to whether this or that material possession is worth the cost. And whether we, as individuals, can live with what it costs others to provide it for us.

I’m not saying that we can do all this all at once; it is the work of a lifetime. But just being aware of this different approach to life may make a difference; it may help us to realise that the world is a pretty amazing place, and to count our blessings and recognise the wonders with which we are surrounded. And to have the insight to realise that actually, we don’t need the latest gadget / thingummy that is being plugged as a “must-have” in the media. Enoughness is good.

At the time I was writing this, I broke for lunch at this point. So I ate my lunch mindfully, thinking about the food I was eating – where it had come from, all the different people and resources involved in bringing it to my plate, what it tasted like, and gave thanks. I didn’t read as I ate, which is my usual practice, but concentrated on the act of eating. And it made the food taste nicer! I really appreciated the simple meal. When I got back to the computer, my lovely Lord of the Rings screensaver was working away, and I took the time to wonder at its beauty, and at the technology that made it possible.

May we all remember to count our blessings, and realise how very rich we are, and like Thoreau, realise that “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” 

Peace Within

For me, there are two main aspects to peace: the quest for inner peace; and a striving towards peace in the world.

image by Karen Heidi Rees

The first can sound a bit like an advertising slogan: 'Inner peace and how to find it.' I have come to realise in recent years that inner peace is one of the most difficult things to obtain, and yet harder to hold on to. And I'm not the only one by a long way. Go into any bookshop, and look in the Mind and Spirit section. You will find the shelves groaning with titles like The Little Book of Calm or Chicken Soup for the Soul or De-stress Your Life in 30 Days (I made the last one up, but I'm sure that such a title exists). And there are DVDs you can buy to teach yourself yoga or pilates to regain control of your life. 

But as a Quakerly-inclined Unitarian, I believe that there has to be a God-element as well. I love the words of our Unitarian hymn (by John Andrew Storey):

"I sent my soul some truth to win; / my soul returned these words to tell: / 'Look not beyond, but turn within, / For I myself am heaven and hell.

And as my thoughts were gently led, / half-held beliefs were seen as true; / I heard, as new, words Jesus said: / 'My friend, God's kingdom lies in you.

Now though I labour, as I must / to build the kingdom yet to be, / I know my hopes will turn to dust, / if first it is not built in me."

How can we attain inner peace in the hurly-burly of everyday life? Most of us spend our lives rushing around from one task to the next - work, shopping, looking after the children, housework, laundry, socialising - the list is endless. People find it more and more difficult to relax, and to attain inner peace, because they've forgotten how to stop.

But we're not supposed to be like this. Every person needs to have some time to centre down, to be at peace, to recharge their emotional and spiritual batteries. I believe that one of the most important of God's creations is the Sabbath - a time to rest, to re-group, and come back to our everyday lives refreshed. One reason why my faith is so important to me is that it has taught me that there is another way of living your life, even if I don't follow it all (or even most of) the time.

There are times when being busy, busy, busy just gets too much. The thought crosses your mind "Stop the world! I want to get off!" But it won't stop, so you have to consciously make the effort to schedule some time to step off the treadmill. It may take a little creative selfishness to realise that you are quite entitled to do this, and quite a bit of planning to reschedule your activities, and find a free time-slot, but it can be done. It doesn't have to be a long time, this 'Me-time', even ten minutes can be enough (depending on what you are doing) it just needs to be regular and consistent.

What you do in your me-time will depend on you. Many people find that meditation works for them - sitting in silence, following their breath, and emptying their minds. I have some prayer beads which I made at Summer School a few years ago, and they really help me to focus, and to let everyday life go.

Prayer can also lead to a deep sense of inner peace. I have friends who do this, and I am sure that it helps them to see more clearly and live their lives more serenely. Many people find that listening to a piece of really beautiful music can whirl their minds away, and they come back to earth with a bump at the end of the record. Reading something inspirational may also help - this is something I do a lot, to remind myself of what I'm supposed to be doing, and to regain my perspective.

Physical exercise is also a good way of achieving inner peace. I know that sounds weird, because flogging up and down a swimming pool or playing a game of football may seem the complete opposite of peaceful. But certain forms of exercise really do help you to relax and centre down. Yoga is an obvious one - the fact that you have to concentrate on your breathing clears the mind wonderfully. Personally speaking, I find that going for a gentle run is one of the best stress-busters in the world. If you're not pushing yourself too hard, and can get into an even rhythm, running can be very cathartic.

Going for a walk is another good method of relaxing and centring down. Again, the rhythm of your strides can be soothing, and if you start to pay attention to what you are seeing around you, there is beauty almost everywhere - whether it's a mountain, a star, a sparkling stream, or the bark of a tree, the ever-changing sea, or the architecture of a particular building. Many people find that a spot of gardening, or doing a craft that you love, can have the same effect, if you do it in the right frame of mind.

All these things can bring you, in Sidney Lovett's words, "wisdom and patience and solace, and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world."

The Sovereign Importance of Compassion

The Sovereign Importance of  Compassion

The Golden Rule lies at the heart of all religions. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone followed it! If every person genuinely tried to behave to the rest of humankind with a concern and care for how they would feel. As it says in the Charter for Compassion:

“Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creature, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.” 

 For me, increasingly, the central importance of the Golden Rule is at the heart of my own system of thought and belief, my own theology. Whether we follow the positive imperative of Jesus: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.”, or the negative imperative of Confucius: “What you do not want done to you, do not do to others”, the message is the same.

The Charter for Compassion invites us to “restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion, to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate, to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures, to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity, to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.”

If we want to make our religion more compassionate, it is we that have to do it - we who have to be the change we want to see in the world. We have to take responsibility for our own traditions. It is no good waiting for "them" to do something - even if "them" is the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, which is a partner organisation of the Charter for Compassion. It is us, the individual congregations, the individual people in those congregations, who need to take responsibility ourselves - to become activists *where we are*. We need to work hard, to think outside the box, to grapple with difficulties. There are no simple blanket solutions.

If we are to embrace the Golden Rule, we need to start here, where we are. Let us ask ourselves the questions

• Have I shown mutual respect and goodwill to my friends and neighbours?
• Have I practiced constructive tolerance and openness towards the sincerely-held beliefs of others?
• Am I doing as I would be done by?
• Am I doing my best to avoid giving pain to others?

 As Unitarians, there are things that we can all do to bring compassion into the heart of our denomination, from the small acts of kindness we do to each other and in the wider world, to supporting social justice issues that promote tolerance, inclusivity, and peace. And supporting them by doing something practical, not just giving a donation and forgetting about it. We can set up engagement groups to discuss Armstrong’s book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life; we can preach about compassion from the pulpit, and most importantly, we can strive to follow the Golden Rule ourselves, and lead by example. If we can encourage and support our congregations to do the same, I do believe that we could make a real difference to the world we live in, for the better. 

Learning from Others

One of the lovely things about being a Unitarian is that we can respect the spiritual and religious journeys of members of many religious traditions, and also receive inspiration from them. Because of the undogmatic nature of Unitarianism, we believe that all human beings are spiritual beings; and all are able to have a relationship with the Divine Other, which some may call God, some Allah, some Brahma, some Lord, some Spirit of Life, some Ultimate Reality - the list goes on.

The changing nature of the beliefs and values of Unitarians, particularly over the last half century or so,  has been detailed in Vernon Marshall's book The Larger View: Unitarians and World Religions, which I commend to you as a fascinating read. In it he writes: "modern Unitarianism in Britain is a movement that is based on principles, rather than on theology. It acknowledges its origins in liberal Christianity, and respects them, but now affirms the right of its individual members to find their own religious position."

Of course this includes finding inspiration from the writings and teachings of other religious traditions, both Christian and non-Christian. Many people within our movement today are attracted to (among others) Buddhism, Taoism, Paganism and Sufism. I find particular inspiration from Quaker writings and wisdom, from Taoism, and from the poetry of Hafiz and Rumi.

This interest is not just confined to private study; readings in Unitarian worship services will often include something from another religious tradition, because the worship leader finds that it is the most appropriate way of saying what they want to say. And other elements from many different religious traditions have crept into Unitarian worship - meditation, the use of some Pagan rituals, Dances of Universal Peace, Taizé chanting and so on.

This has added immeasurably to the richness and variety of Unitarian worship. And Unitarians are also much involved in inter-faith work: the World Congress of Faiths and the International Association for Religious Freedom both have prominent Unitarian members, and many congregations and ministers are involved in inter-faith work at a local level, working with adherents of other religions to foster compassion and tolerance where they are.

It is my firm belief that learning about and engaging with other religious traditions is an important part of the practice of compassion, so that we may understand others' spiritual and religious practices, rather than fearing them. This will have the dual effect of deepening our own Unitarian faith and practice, and also of enabling us to stand up for inter-religious tolerance, compassion and understanding, in our conflicted world.

The Bible and Unitarians

When I started the Worship Studies Course (a training course for Unitarian lay preachers), my knowledge of the Bible was very superficial - I knew most of the dear old stories that we learn at our mothers' knees, and was reasonably familiar with the four canonical Gospels. And I knew that an awful lot of good advice was squirreled away in it - advice by which countless Jews and Christians had live their lives. But my knowledge of the Hebrew Bible was, as I say, limited to the famous stories - Daniel in the Lion's Den; Moses and the Ten Commandments; Joseph and his Coat of Many Colours and so on - you can fill in the rest.

At the beginning of the Biblical Studies module, I realised that I was going to have to do quite a bit of reading. What I hadn't realised was how fascinating I was going to find it - there is just so much in the Bible. To know it well must be a life's study. My first shock was how readable a modern version can be - I have a New Revised Standard Version. My second shock was how much I didn't know - for example, in the famous story of David and Goliath, I had never appreciated that the stone David threw only stunned Goliath, and he finished him off by cutting his head off!

This exciting experience of revelation and discovery must be like that experienced by people in the 16th century CE when the first Bibles became widely available in English, due to the spread of printing (up until then, the Church had made sure that they were only written in Latin and Greek, and were hence 'closed books' to all but the highly-educated. Before these brave pioneers (William Tyndale in 1526 and Miles Coverdale in 1535) published their translations of the New Testament and the entire Bible, only those with Latin or Greek (in effect the clergy) could read the Bible, and ordinary people had to believe what they were told.Why do I say "brave pioneers"? Well, the Church was desperately afraid that if people could read the Bible for themselves, they might distort or misinterpret its message (thinking for themselves, shock, horror!). So Tyndale was burned at the stake for heresy.

Then, following the English Reformation in the 1530s, King Henry VIII ordered that copies of a new translation, The Great Bible, be placed in every church, in 1539. This was the first "authorised version" of the Bible in English. The revolution had begun. After a brief period of suppression during Queen Mary's reign, bishops of the Church of England produced The Bishops' Bible in 1568, which was followed most famously by The King James Bible in 1611, which is now known as The Authorised Version. Although there have been many other translations since, the Authorised Version is certainly the edition that has influenced so much of English literature, and the edition whose language most people are most familiar with.

The printing press enabled more books to be published in the vernacular, which in turn led to a sort of virtuous circle: the more books that were available, the more people were likely to be able to learn to read, and hence educate themselves. Unitarianism is a most unusual faith, in that it evolved simultaneously in many countries at about the same time. People in many lands were studying their Bibles, and, finding no evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity (which had been accepted as Christian doctrine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and further confirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE). So they rejected it, going back to their Bibles to find out what the earliest Christians had believed.

It is worth realising that our progressive, questioning faith is built upon the blood of some brave men, who died in defence of their beliefs that the doctrine of the Trinity was a mistake - for example, Michael Servetus in 1553 (who was burnt at the stake in Geneva under the influence of John Calvin); Francis David, the pioneer of Unitarianism in Transylvania, who insisted that prayer could only be offered to God and not through Jesus, and who died in prison in 1579; and our own John Biddle, who died of a disease caught while in prison for his beliefs, in 1662.

So the Bible had a vital role to play in Unitarian thinking and history, from the denomination's earliest days. Today, the Bible is one of the many sources of wisdom available to us, and used by us in our spiritual quests. Cliff Reed puts it like this in Unitarian? What's That? "Unitarians see the Bible as the record of a people's long struggle to understand themselves, their world and their God. In it the writers describe and interpret the spiritual dimension of their existence and their history ... Where we find in scripture a source of sustaining and abiding truth, it can be said to be a source of divine wisdom."

Sacred Words

This quotation from Stephen Lingwood's The Unitarian Life summarises neatly the Unitarian attitude to sacred texts:

"We can pay attention to a cloud of witnesses from many different countries around the world and many different times in history. We can delve deep into the traditions of our spiritual ancestors and listen to their voices. In doing so, we can create a 'living scripture': a loose, dynamic collection of texts which bring together essential insights from the past and present of our movement."

In our worship and our devotions, we are not limited to readings from a particular sacred text - we are free to create our own 'living scripture' of readings that will speak to our condition and that of our congregations. 

Der lesende Klosterschuler - the reading monk

Every Unitarian will have different books which inspire them, which speak to their condition and influence their lives. The Bible used to be our primary source of inspiration and revelation, and for some Unitarians, it still is. But times have also moved on. At a recent conference of the Ministerial Old Students' Association at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, Sister Benedicta Ward, Supernumerary Fellow & Dean of Degrees at the College and a member of the Anglican religious community of the Sisters of the Love of God, led a session on Devotional Literature, which she described as "written words that help us give ourselves over to the Divine."

She had asked those present to bring a book with them, which had helped in their own spiritual journeys. The choices (from current, retired and aspiring Unitarian ministers) were fascinating:

• The Benedictine Rule
• The works of UU minister Forest Church
• A Year of Grace, compiled by Victor Gollancz
• Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from East and West
• The Great Companions
• Writings by Julian of Norwich
• The prayers of James Martineau and Harry Lismer Short
• Guide to Walking Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh
• In the Holy Quiet of This Hour by Richard S. Gilbert
• Poetry by R.S. Thomas
• The Psalms
• The Sacred Space -scriptural readings & reflections on them by Irish Jesuits
• Quaker Advices and Queries
• The works of Henri Nouwen
• The Shaking of the Foundations by Paul Tillich
• New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
• On Praying the Psalms by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• The Language of the Heart by A. Powell Davies

Quite a mixed selection. Many of the titles put forward "rang bells" with other folk. Sr. Benedicta explained that devotional reading was a very different exercise from reading to analyse and dissect a text. The important thing is to be still and to learn to listen to what the Divine is telling you through the medium of the text. This approach may be too mystical for many Unitarians, but most of the ministers present seemed to resonate with it.