Not Postliberal and Not Pluralist

This is a series of emails sent to the National Unitarian Fellowship illustrating the subject that Unitarianism is neither defined according to a faith stance nor is it plural, and became locked into confusion rather than any identity.

6 Mar 2004
For a long time Unitarianism, by bipolar arrangements and arguments, has worked within Christianity and liberalised it. However, from especially the high point of the 1960s, this path seemed to lead to an end of the road humanism. It then created a chance to rebuild in a multifaith way - content from traditions, chosen a la carte. This seems a credible individualist and creedless alternative to mainstream churches where the old Unitarian level of liberal Christianity had become available (along with more sectarian versions). If you want liberal Christianity, it is all around. Yet the a la carte without boundaries does mean lack of depth and missing the subtleties of meaning: it really demands individual work in selecting from the menu and not misinterpreting what is raided from elsewhere.
Then the GA under contemporary bipolar pressure - the Christian pole - finally accepted the upholding the liberal Christian tradition subclause into its revised Object. So why not actually do this then? The answer is because many in the Unitarian constituency have rejected Christianity, because there is a home elsewhere for the Christian tradition of the liberal variety.
So now we have Unitarianism in a complete mess. TM's approach is very valid. Let's call it postliberal. Let the denomination teach one tradition, learn it, absorb it, and criticise it, but stick to it to be members of the club. Fine, but this is no longer a special offering from the once free evolving Unitarians.
Or let it develop the freedom further that it has always had, evolving into new exploratory territories where indeed there is no one tradition to reject. Everything is built from the bottom.
My criticism is Unitarianism does not do this either. It does not know what it wants, or where it is going, and at the same time its institutions high and low are imploding. I believe that the freedom argument, the evolutionary argument, is lost, but the postliberal position has not been taken up.
If it is taken up, it is available elsewhere, and if it is not taken up, then there is random anarchy. Now I like a spot of anarchy to stir the blood, but identity is necessary, and my argument used to be identity through a challenging, subversive, market place of ideas and ritual forms, a social gospel of difference living together.
As for the universalism that is often championed here, this is not really an option because actually its package is another form of religious humanist minimalism, and has the same difficulty experienced by the Unitarianism arrived at in the 1960s. As soon as you add religion and ritual again, you are into the difficult stuff that the universalists want to strip away. "Spirituality" is minimalism.
Here we are. It either goes for postliberalism, a new approach for Unitarianism of promoting a tradition taught with boundaries for the hell of it, never mind the arguments that minimalised it (as practised by the mainstream liberals and radicals with their liturgies of tradition), or it goes for postmodernism which is a pluralist, critical, a market place of ideas and forms, where people show that difference is no barrier to sharing.
The other option of course is to close, which no one does deliberately. It just comes.

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Sun, 7 Mar 2004
This morning I went to the Unitarian church for a service for the first time in many months. It was because DS was performing. You may be aware that he is 91 but put it across in a good voice (with sharing some of his service with a Hull church member and a reading from another)... It is well thought through and constructed, and represented a thoughtful examination of having difference and common practical aims...
Then in the evening I finally made the effort to go to the next town's Anglican church rather than the one thirty seconds' walk away. Sorry, but as a total package it is so much more rewarding than the Unitarian fare. It is the quality of the ambience and its art - the richness of the symbolism and its more striking reciprocity. The orthopraxy out of the liturgy does work... Perhaps faith, to some extent, is a postliberal entity, to be a path of sorts. There is no objective basis by which to choose one path or another, but there is a question of effectiveness once within.
I truly wish the Unitarian institution could make up its mind. It really does have a social gospel about freedom and unlimited variety of different people in one place. It can also choose to be a moderate expression of one religion. Many mainstream churches and its people now are interested in what makes for expressions of God, like the trimurti in Hinduism, or paths of dedication and faith, like the Buddhist's commitment to Dharma, and then providing a liturgical pathway of its own traditions (and it is plural). They look for a more at the centre of its drama of the Hebrew Bible - on its own terms as well as all that followed. Yet Christian doctrine is presented as its own resource too. Can not the Unitarians examine and use more readily and in openness the huge resources of the many religions and philosophies? Can it rediscover richness?

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Sun, 7 Mar 2004
The [postliberal] theology is worked out by George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, SPCK 1984, and it did for general belief what Hans Frei did for the Bible. The basic idea is that without any objective reference, for this is not available, we immerse ourselves in the drama of the text as in a self-contained play. Hans Frei's reasoning, if I have it quite right, is this: that Karl Barth in his neo-Calvinist theology, had a remote and revelatory God who makes itself known to us, but cannot be found otherwise and certainly not in culture or the world, and in that absence there is no objectivity within this world. In order to participate, therefore, we become involved in the Biblical encounters as they meet us, and this is beyond or unaffected by all the biblical criticism of which we are all aware. That meeting is not in the world and its objectivity-subjectivity but in the dramatic encounter. In effect what Lindbeck does is argue the same for orthodoxy: he generates an ecumenical orthopraxy from an orthodoxy (if such an ecumenical position exists - it may be each Church has its own). These are the linguistic resources and then they are performed, realising a community bound to them. It is a path open to the Unitarians, following on from its Object, but it needs to know what liberal Christianity means as a non-objective package. It would have to be a combination of Martineau's highbrow Christianity and Emerson's transcendentalism, I think, and only a little of the apparent "rationality" of Priestley (who is otherwise far too supernatural).

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Wed, 10 Mar 2004
How is Unitarianism to be defined? It can be defined by being pluralist, that here is a place where people meet together for religious reflective activity with differences and with no intention of creating agreement, except that which may form voluntarily. This is a social gospel because the population is diverse and needs to be able to tolerate one another. This open ended, faiths using as a resource, education without boundaries, approach is one definition.
Another definition is to have the postliberal arrangement, where agreement is sought within a generally wide but clear boundary, upholding a tradition. People enter into its drama and form a community defined by joint participation and education in the drama and one faith (even only a tradition or two within).
The problem with Unitarianism is that it has a definition like the latter situation, and many chapels behave as to have general agreement, but it also wants perfect ulimited freedom. This is the mess: it is neither pluralism nor agreement. Therefore it must be closer to anarchy and randomness.

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11 Mar 2004
I make allowance for an organisation, but it was the organisation not the Charity Commission which decided to "uphold" a tradition rather than "remember" it. Defintion can be found in plurality, and it can explain this. It can also be found by having a boundary based approach. That is fine, but I suggest the organisation is doing neither, which is quite strange.

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Sun, 13 Jun 2004
Anyway, cannot Unitarianism be regarded as a movement, an identity of sorts from surveying what it does and how it forms something of identity? The contentious Object clause is one source, and it was never as such required by the Charity Commission. The proposal was the biblical word "remember" the liberal Christian tradition but it became "uphold". The people who wanted the change knew what they were doing, and indeed the whole thing received large support. It is not just a Charity Commission piece of compulsion to produce and ignore.
I have nothing against a decision to uphold as such, if this is what people expect to be done, except of course that issued only in 2001 many insist that it can be ignored by choice:
We, the constituent congregations, affiliated societies and individual members, uniting... it says and goes through clauses of freedom and yet adds this very specific requirement.
It does stand as a definition overall. I can imagine a creed of 325 CE coming under some strain these days, but from 2001 this is a very rapid rate of decline in wholehearted acceptance.
As for the histories, they are discussed as a whole, and need no Object or clauses to do it: they show the two tendencies of Unitarianism by which local congregations have been understood, and the evolution of those tendencies. Just as the Church of England has roughly speaking evangelical, Anglo-Catholic and Liberal tendencies, so the Unitarians have had biblical denominationalist alongside individualist Free Christian which evolved into liberal Christian alongside universalist-pluralist. Individual congregations can be tracked moving between these categories: I have done it for Hull. World Unitarianism is also analysed as to whether it is Anglo-American or central European in character. It is arguable, for example, that the 2001 Object shows some shift towards the central European tradition for having a statement of identity. It could benefit from having more of a central European structure of authority.

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Mon, 14 Jun 2004
Yes well the God bit is another objection, but there is a difference. God means what you want it to mean. It has been through the theological diversifier. God may be just what you find to be most important. The worship of God can therefore be religious practice. It does exclude by those who want to avoid the language, and excludes those who disagree with the preacher who tells you than God is a creative spirit etc. (though that is also very elastic: usually the preacher defines terms). Something more specific is intended by the upholding of liberal Christian, unless, of course, Christian also becomes whatever you want it to mean. It probably does, realistically or non-realistically, but it does assume the privileged use of a tradition to get there.
I can get there this way. I went to an Anglican service on Sunday evening. The preacher followed the readings and spoke on Abram and Lot being like Jesus and the disciples at Gethsemane (he was a little unclear - Lot and the disciples made easy choices). And then there were prayers including one to Israel Palestine (as it was called). So I said to the preacher afterwards, in "the myth" the Godly choice as opposed to the easy choice of Abram was Canaan, and he was promised all the land. Is this not a very damaging myth given Israel Palestine today. I think this chap was delighted that anyone had commented on what he had said, and replied it can be interpreted in so many ways. So one route there. There are several, and more than several.

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June ? 2004
I do not want someone else to define my beliefs for me. The question is which collective organisation I shall channel (at least some of) my beliefs through and learn some of my beliefs from.
Shall it be an organisation that states that everyone is free to be free regarding doctrine and at the same time states that the organisation upholds one tradition? This seems to me is an organisation that isn't sure whether it affiliates on the grounds of prescription or pluralism. It lacks identity, even a pluralist identity. Perhaps I am wrong about this; perhaps it is so postmodern it even collapses a pluralistic identity by adding a stated internal contradiction.
Shall it be one that decides to have an identity in terms of a tradition and then gives a level (if uncertain) of freedom around that (this is not the Unitarian position, nor prescriptively the Anglo-American Unitarian tradition)?
I have seen people come into the [Unitarian] church and subsequently leave because they have disturbed the status quo. It happened for different reasons, but all of them involved a perceived threat of change. The result now is a homogeneous church certainly, but one much smaller that has a short existence ahead of it without the change that could have been introduced on different occasions and gradually. Soon there will be a need for radical change. Who knows how often the publicity has suggested one thing and the reality has demonstrated another. It is not what beliefs get adopted, but rather it is the flexibility of a congregation to change, which often means a loss of what is comfortable and a loss of power.
...I would be looking for how a definition given of being Unitarian leads to social action. The difficulty with individualism is that it leads to a whole bandwidth of social opnions, from the most right wing libertarian to socialist support of the individual.
Unitarians I know have supported the death penalty as well as opposed it. They have supported corporal punishment as well as opposed it. The question then is what difference Unitarianism makes other than allowing anything anyone likes...

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Sat, 26 Jun 2004
Statements that are credal do not exclude the unmentioned. What they do is prevent the opposite or the implicated competitor.
If you take the Christian creed it does not disallow aspects of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, except where its statements contradict those of other credos, such as how God is mapped out.
The Christian creed does directly disallow saying We do NOT believe in God, for example.
Equally a statement to "uphold the liberal Christian tradition" does not prevent upholding other traditions and was not intended to do this. However, it is intended to avoid NOT upholding the liberal Christian tradition -otherwise why have it there?
It is not a statement of source identity (where we come from) but one of future activity (what shall be done). This is what is wrong with it. This is why it confuses and contradicts statements about freedom from doctrinal restriction. It is a credal statement in the middle of statements disallowing credal statements.
There is no way around this: it is either pointless verbage or it is credal regarding present-future activity.

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Sat, 17 Jul 2004
No one is saying "ditch" anything, and a statement about Christian roots is not in itself objectionable. If this Object clause carries the force that G suggests, then Unitarianism may as well merge with the United Reformed Church or similar, or seek some associate status. The value of the Unitarian Church could have been, and should be, not trying to maintain any privileges regarding traditions, but each person, free from any doctrine and prescribed belief, preferring to meet and worship with people who are different rather than those who are similar. For out of this comes creativity and newness, and also out of this is a social gospel that the world of difference can learn to live with itself.
G's approach would be fine were it not for statements galore about freedom from doctrine and freedom to believe along with a statement about upholding one particular tradition as it goes into the future. This is muddle. It gives the excuse to chapel cliques who, seeing expressions of freedom, remind members about the propriety of certain beliefs rather than the evolution of faith.

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Wed, 11 Aug 2004: letter sent to The Inquirer, reproduced
As now an ex-Unitarian it still saddens me to read that the new GA President, Dawn Buckle, can write (From the Presidents Desk, The Inquirer, August 7 2004), "I urge people to use our Object". This Object and its clause upholding one particular tradition encapsulated the national reasons (there were local ones) why finally I left this denomination. I am sure it prevents people joining. The one thing that this denomination had to offer was an equality of religious traditions, and variations, based on individuals coming together in difference and showing the world it could live and work with difference. It had a unique social gospel of dialogue within. Paul Travis recently put the alternative very well when he wrote (What is Unitarianism? - A Response, The Inquirer, July 24 2004), "although these good people (a Muslim, Jew, Hindu and Sikh) are just as 'modern' and 'inclusive' as anyone within Unitarianism, there remains one vital difference: they retain their particular faith tradition." Quite so, and what is more, each one has a full access to and a full facing of the tradition within. In other words, if Unitarianism wants to be a postliberal Christian denomination, then others do it much better and perhaps it ought to be more like them. However, it has not even made this decision. It combines new a statement about upholding one religious tradition with older statements about religious freedom and individuality. People then say both: "If you don't like the upholding statement, ignore it, as there is no compulsion", and, "I urge people to use it". It is a totally unsustainable non-position, a nonsense, and anyone reading the whole Object would rightly regard it as ridiculous in its basic contradiction. But perhaps it is accurate to the muddle that Unitarianism has become. Whatever, its requirement to uphold (keep going) one privileged tradition is throwing away the treasure of unbridled and unrestricted freedom of stated thought and action in worship; it is casting aside the long established and hard won right to evolutionary change wherever it may lead.

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Sun, 5 Sep 2004
The C of E is still trinitarian. It is, and uses this continuing term. But look at what people mean by it? Sometimes it means no more than God is a communal entity, and even that might be a myth for our own community. It can also mean what it used to mean, at some point. But the C of E does more than this. It retains the whole Christian tradition as a resource, and much of that people approach critically and even selectively. There is much in the way of critical realism and even non-realism.
The Unitarian body often behaves as if, having removed what it does not believe, it continues to believe what it says in a highly realist way. Sometimes this is qualified. People speak in services of creative spirit of God, and are often highly realist about this. It is a risk of having an evolutionary approach to faith and belief. Now the Unitarians are also committed to upholding the liberal Christian tradition. Or at least this is what some say: others say it does not matter what the GA says. I assume the positive interpretation means saying and doing Christian things in services, and interpreting them liberally, or perhaps it means doing liberal Christian things. I am actually very puzzled as to what this does mean, as I know of no one liberal Christian tradition (the liberal Christian tradition). I do not know what it is to be orthodox about the liberal Christian tradition, or quite how it means being heterodox about the Christian tradition, or when being heterodox about the Christian tradition means ceasing to be liberal Christian and becoming humanist (say) which, obviously, is beyond the cut off point.
Religious traditions are as rafts; they are more to do with orthopraxy than orthodoxy (doing it right, think from the doing). When I go to an Anglican church, I work with its tradition, but I think with the full insights of contemporary theology.
There was an alternative approach: that of evolving faith and individualism within - excellent for a postmodern approach to religion without walls, even I dare say a universalist approach to religion across the board, and critical engagements without limit. The Unitarians panicked, introduced identity through tradition (of some sort), congregations then legitimately could freeze what they were doing, and people continued to leave.
The publicity people respond to is progressive, evolving and individualist; the reality people reject and walk away from is the moribund chapel with all its suggestions of realist belief, and its pale imitation of those places that operate according to orthopraxy around a tradition.
...It is the people in charge who want to retain possession, and this is lethal when joined with the Object (but obviously lethal enough without even the Object coming into it). The trinitarian Anglican church has many checks and balances, and has an integrated liberality of control, but the separated liberalism of the Unitarian Church leads to little cliques who can ignore everyone else and who do freeze what people are doing and what people say. In the Church of England the tradition sets the boundaries that people regularly push, break and invert, and in the Unitarian Church small cliques of people set the boundaries which lead to relief when dissidents leave.

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9 Sep 2004
What the Charity Commission has done in the past is expected a religious charity to include the word God (despite Buddhism), otherwise the angle to go for is education. A clause about Christianity, liberal or otherwise, is irrelevant. People who do say that the upholding clause is about the Charity Commission are misleading - this was Unitarian in source.
The Christian creeds imply personal attachment to a Christian community that has defined itself by beliefs and hope from a resurrection perspective - died, rose, will come again - for which these statements require forms of interpretation (explanation only so far) although there is continuity expected. The Unitarian creed refers to "the" liberal Christian tradition where the task it to keep it going. It is also a statement of identity but it puzzles me as to whether there was ever a liberal Christian tradition. There might have been a critical tradition to the credal one, or even a parasitical one by negative attachment, or an evolving one. Someone has mentioned Baxter, but he was no liberal, as none of the Puritans were (some had a parish mentality but they were not liberals, definitely not unitarians - small u). The liberal Christian tradition might be the materialism and miracle believing of Priestley and crowd, or is it Martineau's romantic individualism that could attach to any faith (he did not like the implications of his own ideas)? If it is this religion of Jesus stuff, with God, no devil and twenty shillings in the pound, then that is twee and misleading.

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19 Sep 2004
I'd like to examine precisely what Martineau did write. We know he wrote liturgically in a rather conservative way, and that indeed he was by temperament conservative. But he did rather undermine himself. We know also that he favoured individual conscience as the seat of authority. There is nothing particularly Christian about individual conscience being the seat of authority. However, more interesting, he wrote against the particularity of the Christian gospel narrative and in favour of the universality and centredness of theism. This is where the theology comes in. He is to be contrasted with the later Karl Barth and subsequent post-liberal theolgians like Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, who do indeed uphold the Christian tradition (taking account of liberal scholarship, but who reject liberalism as a method), who all focus on the centrality of the biblical narrative and a rejection of theism as a source of our objectivty. So in a very real (and realist) way, Martineau upheld the contact between culture and God - theism - but rejected Christianity except as one indicator of the all important theism. So Martineau can be regarded as post-Christian, and certainly he undermined the centrality of Christ who is sustained only by biblical narrative and Church traditions.
Martineau can be regarded as one last ditch hope to retain objectivity in religion through the maintenance of theism and the culture-theism link. However, his individuality approach undermines this. Therefore his pluralism (by individuals) does itself break down into postmodernism (allowing for the failure of realised rationality through disinterested argument), just as Karl Barth's method of the biblical interface by a far distant unknowable God breaks down into postliberal postmodernism (nothing upholds truth - the drama of biblical narrative is just that).
What Unitarianism does by upholding, blah blah, is delude people that there is this sort of liberal, objective, Christian thing still available. Theologically it has all gone by. Priestley, I hope, no one would want to uphold, in the sense that this materialist upheld miracles and all sorts of literalisms. He is much the older school.
On another list... another correspondent in the discussion pointed out how a member of the Unitarian Christian Association was hoping to take Unitarianism back to its Christian roots and do so against the "destruction" of others. So all that this written down upholding clause does is give encouragement to such backwoods people, and add to the increasing contradictions of this movement. Some of us, who want liberality and theology to go with it, find that we have to leave all Unitarian congregational activity and criticise the GA for adopting this backwards looking stance. The denomination locally and nationally seems determined to press the self destruct button, and this is where the destruction is to be found.

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24 Sep 2004
What put me off pursuing Christianity within Unitarianism was the conservatism and agenda that went with the faction, the agenda of restriction in services and even in theology. It is just as difficult to pursue non-realism with Christianity in the Unitarians as in other churches, because of the insistence of one God understood in liberal-realist terms. Also there is the insistence that Jesus Christ (emphasis on title) is purely human. I take his humanity for granted, but of course if Jesus suggests a way and life of something more lofty and ideal, then he may be considered something part of that ideal as a theological reflection. That begins to challenge the insistence on being purely human... This is dealing at the level of the theologial narrative: many a Unitarian Christian will find this too relativist.
Roughly speaking, Unitarians have thrown away what they do not believe, and kept what they do, and thus when the Unitarian Christian says stop this before it all vanishes, there is a battle over realism. But the Anglican (for one) has always faced mountains of traditional material, much of which is handled as a theological resource and identity, and somewhere there is a non-realist approach to tradition. It might just be "sits at the right hand of the father" - no one takes that literally surely - but it might be "maker of heaven and earth" which is also capable of being a figurative statement. It is this way, when handling a tradition, that perversely a Unitarian can be less tolerant.
My way of doing this was to say there should be no restrictions on belief and practice within the Unitarian setting. All traditions are in essence "text" and open to preconceived reading and to critical deconstruction, whether Christian, Pagan, Eastern or Humanist (the broad strands in the Unitarians/Unitarian Universalists). All liturgies are creative play towards submission and exchange (giving something of yourself in exchange for something higher, interacting with others and God if you like).
On the Surefish I engage theologically with many and some have a more usual belief pattern, exclusive and absorbed within their faith. I find much of it supernatural and magical, but it is open to examination, and assert my right to examine it. I assert my right to say faith is trust examined through the material. But it is postliberal in that the tradition is set, as the liturgy is set, and the tradition is pushed. It is not the Unitarian approach, which I have valued and which clearly is visible (or it is my approach which should have had better placing in the Unitarian setting, but I ended up completely frustrated). At the point where I say, this tradition is meaningless or less meaningful than say the Buddhist, is the point where I would leave. But it is not the case, though Buddhism in particular provides important comparative material that develops the Christian view.
Now when it comes to Unitarians, we see a willingness among Unitarian Christians to meet with Sikhs, Muslims and Jews, and this is fine. But note the caveat. They must be met without, and the friendliness to them and indeed to mainstream Christians is not matched by friendliness to Sikhs, Muslims, Jews and especially Pagans and Humanists within. The UCA agenda is to ethnically cleanse the opposition within, to become defined, and only then engage with people of other faiths. This seems to me to be pointless: this can be done in a far more tolerant approach within the other churches. So why do they do it?
They do it because a) they value an historical tradition of Unitarianism but not the evolutionary tradition after it, and b) because they are temperamentally conservative. They cannot be liberal in sentiment, which they would have to be, in a church where their Christianity would be liberal and so would the attitude. Though they have arrived at a liberal Christianity, they want to be conservative with it, and so they rough up and annoy those liberal in belief and sentiment within the same denomination. And they do not just want to rough up, they want a "final solution" to the faction fighting on their terms.
Yet this disenfranchises so many. There are many in between Unitarians, Pagans, Christians, Easterns and Humanists, who have nowhere else to go, and who do not want to become second class in another Christian denomination. This is why the Unitarian pluralist position is so valuable, the Object clause so wrong for its false encouragements, and why the UCA is in for destruction - not the others who only want to search and mix and match.

 

Adrian Worsfold