Unitarian Decline and Renewal

27 May 2004

I've stopped going to a Unitarian church and currently go on occasions to Barton Anglicans. It seems my mother has stopped going now too.

It turned its back on change, people left, and I stayed for a long time, and then there was a removal of a minister (which I won't go into here but it is a factor) and it is a process where the place just wants to self destruct. It can't go on like it has and yet it does. I am now developing my theology down a different road, and have basically given up trying to promote the pluralist argument where I felt the Unitarians had a unique possibility. I read The Inquirers about the GA and all that about the Administration Commission and whatever it was, and it seems the answer to this chronic decline is to inhabit a deeper look into administration. It was a case of shuffling the deckchairs.

17 Jun 2004

Karen Armstrong was recently quoted as regarding herself as a failure in her writing career as she has been in others. Her writing however is often very insightful and undogmatic. She has a very good measure of what religious traditions are about. It is to her writing that I am listening. I am also reading a believer in Islam who has looked at the history of reform and who found himself in a difficult position with Islamic leaders in advocating reform and renewal (Fazlur Rahman who died in 1988).

Because she is not coming at the subject from the inside Karen Armstrong takes what happened at the Ka'bah in Makkah before Islam and after; a little buried within the text is what amounts to a counterfactual survey and "what if?" situation of *no* Muhammad. I am listening and typing notes (not verbatim but rapid summarising), and then editing it all around to bring out what I think is the real story. The argument she makes must be absolutely right, that Muhammad wanted a faith of equality and not doctrinal change; he wanted the long term ethical survival of the Quraysh. He wanted continuation of what the Jews and Christians had, and he used the local tale of Abraham coming into Arabia, and Muhammad himself receiving the Qur'an, to have that one revelation for these people. The Pagan activities of the Ka'bah became Islamic (and focussed on Abraham, Hagar and Ismael) and initially prayers faced Jerusalem. When he realised that Jews and Christians were divided, and when most Jews scoffed at Qur'anic interpretations of their myths, prayers turned to the Ka'bah instead. Islam then was fully the faith to put right what had gone wrong in previous faiths.

I just think that her point that Allah, The God, was already in vogue, and that there were Pagan Gods and practices, needs stating more clearly. There was a form of Arabian Hinduism. Without Islam, however, the Quraysh tribe would not have produced an equalitarian ethic that runs through the Qur'an.

I bought a Qur'an on Wednesday; my existing copy was one in date order of the Surahs whereas, after the opening one, they are in reverse size order in the actual Qur'an.

The fascinating (for me) part of the Fazlur Rahman book I can understand (it is a struggle - very demanding for an outsider) is his programme for change: tajid or renewal and itihad, or independent thinking. The umma or community of Islam was once pretty much its ulema or leadership, but the active ulema shrunk to cliques. Since the European renaissance took back intellectual leadership in society to the West, Islam has had a shrinking leadership and become intellectually moribund. It once led the way: maths, science, art. It now has a huge chip on its shoulder: we can link terrorism to this position as well as the practical matter of Western capitalism and troops running around the Middle East, and the sore of Israel's dominance over Palestinians.

You may ask what is the relevance of this here. Well there is an interfaith relevance of being informed; but also Unitarians (like any group) can do with a good dose of tajid and itihad. Rahman saw that intellectual renewal had to precede renewal of the faith, and that it had to be ethically sound on the lines of the Qur'an. It meant cliques losing power and an end to power games, and the ulema should move back towards active consensus in the community. So Unitarians need their own intellectual renewal. I was looking at The Inquirer and thinking that the book relating Unitarian perspectives to social issues (the intellectual and ethical together) might be a fruitful course to pursue, on these Islamic renewal lines.

25 Jun 2004

I should explain a little more my remark about should have stayed in the Church of England [in the 1980s]. I have long thought this, even before the Object business.

People misundestand me if they think I am opposed to Christianity: clearly I am not, and for a long time I have maintained the view that Unitarians have been literalist regarding creeds whereas Anglicans and others have been relaxed about them. The tradition is bigger, the theological possibilities wider.

What created difficulty with Christianity in Unitarianism is that it is often the location of conservative attitudes about what the denomination does. The very same (or similar) beliefs in the Church of England can lead to someone being liberal and radical in outlook whereas in Unitarianism these Christians want to stop change and evolution. Furthermore, the Christianity of Unitarianism has been an issue of practices and maintenance often without supportative theology, other than the thin and mistaken theology that somehow Unitarianism is the religion of Jesus whereas others have a religion about Jesus.

Unitarianism has the chance and possibility of real change, and it has changed in the past. But it is now neither in one place nor the other regarding identity or identities, with now this Object clause that confuses the structure and confuses the plurality that is the potential of the Unitarian movement (and with it would have been the location for me to be active).

There are some real bigots in the Church of England of the like not seen in Unitarianism, but there are also very progressive people in the Church of England too who go as far as and further than Unitarianism. It has a breadth not seen in Unitarianism. Of course it may split, but that split may remove the most intolerant as it did the most traditionalist types when women were ordained priests.

The real difference is the intellectual resource in the Church of England. There really is no sustained thinking in Unitarianism any more, with only rare glimpses of light from some recent books. The content of much Unitarian writing is almost random in quality. I have looked at titles of Essex Hall lectures and some content, and they have become pretty insignificant.

Where is the engagement of postmodernity and plurality in the context of creedlessness, for example, applied to religious activity? I have seen one chapter and it was not of a high standard. Its purpose seemed to be to explain the basics to people unfamiliar. A fine purpose, but it leaves work undone. Without an intellectual basis of operation, there is no depth of claim.

It comes back to what I wrote a little while back: as with Fazlur Rahman, change is run by a combination of tajid or renewal and itihad, or independent thinking, and the intellectual work comes first as a grounding for all else. Otherwise there are directionless congregations yet dealing with ideas and giving messages which satisfy at one level but will not stand the test of rigorous application. Many of the ideas expressed in sermons have been open to instant challenge on matters often of absence of information, and misrepresentation, or at least suggest these absences, and I have found so much frustrating, which is why I miss nothing by not attending any more.

Now of course sermons and the like are poor tests of care to argument and information in any denomination, but at least there is somewhere else to go for the reading that corrects misassumptions or weak arguments - when there is a theological tradition or three to back up the ordinary. In Unitarianism this does not exist. The congregations are it, and the assumptions stand and fall there.

It is in this sense, never mind the structures, that the Unitarian denomination is dying. I hope that George Chryssides can made a difference, come from the URC. What is needed, however, is a closely argued theology of plurality that works from the Unitarian bipolar streams and relates to contemporary culture. Without it the logic of creedlessness in a society that is free to believe what it likes is lost. That is when people cannot see the point, why to gather.

4 Sep 2004

The one person in an academic position who has given substance to writing about Unitarianism as a participant has voted with his feet. The news that George Chryssides has joined in with an Anglican church and being part of a new informal gathering instead of an existing Unitarian congregation speaks volumes about Unitarian local practices. Congregations - more than his - have lost the plot and show a gap between publicity (pluralistic and progressive) and reality (conservative attitudes, unresponsive to cultural change and fixing religious expression). Not all congregations deserve to stay open, and perhaps (as has been discussed here before) there needs to be a different way of organising. There are different liberal and radical groups around the country and the Unitarians might be one such, for the purposes of doing some free thinking religious practice, and certainly free from the current General Assembly constitutional confusion. Such people can practice in a variety of places: a Buddhist group, a liberal synagogue or a church progressive in its attitudes, but add a liberal group in an additional complex of personal identity based around circles of dialogue. My view is with so many congregations plodding on downwards in such an unresponsive and sclerotic way, it is not a case of asking what can be done to stop decline but instead asking what is Unitarianism for and can it be organised more effectively to realise its progressive potential.

Meanwhile I too am reading and writing in the context of postmodern radical theology, contributing to a Christian discussion board website called Surefish.co.uk (another way to meet and constitute community) and attend an Anglican church (though not every week as yet). To me this Unitarian denomination as it has become has to almost die before something more vigorous and flexible and thinking can come about. It may have some of the same people but should then attract religious liberals crying out for a gathering of those with progressive attitudes. I now add the central structure to the congregations as part of the problem rather than the solution.

As I have said before I envisage online activity, and gatherings in what remains of Unitarian "plant", and a funds supported small ministry of educators and trainers towards other people doing ministry tasks together. Such a community could attract people who attend elsewhere or nowhere else, and work with the idea of difference, dialogue and thinking. George Chryssides' move can only be to the good.