spiritual light for unitarians

Address

The Unitarians have a proud history. A hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, if you had asked a Unitarian what they believed in, they would have said, ‘The Fatherhood of God, The Brotherhood of man, the humanity of Jesus, no devil and twenty shillings in the pound’ They had many fine buildings, a large corpus of intellectual ministers, ample funds and large congregations.

Now there is no core statement of belief which truly reflects what we all truly believe. Most congregations are small and many of the fine buildings have disappeared.- and the congregations with them.

For a religious Movement this is quite depressing. Sometimes we might well think that the end is nigh. That all of us are adrift on some sea of hopelessness and only the dark beckons. A reorganised central headquarters has so far made little difference to our sense of identity.

Many Unitarians face the coming year worried about their future, their buildings, the age profile of their membership and membership generally.

The modern way according to our American cousins in the Unitarian Universalist Movement is for each person to have an elevator speech. To be able to state their beliefs in less than half a minute - the time it takes for an elevator to travel from office to the ground floor. Unitarians are unlikely to have two elevator speeches the same - and that is the nub of our problem.

The days of the Fatherhood of God, the humanity of Jesus and no devil have simply gone away for many Unitarians and they struggle to define exactly what it is that they believe in - though they know they believe in something.

There are many people inside our Movement and many more outside who are looking for something other than the organised religion they grew up with - and they seek spirituality.

Somehow spirituality and religion have become separated from one another.

It is as if the Unitarians as a Movement have wandered into a wilderness. They have left the settled homeland of the old definable faith and moved on - except they are not sure where they are - so they are wandering around. Some want to go home to the fatherhood of God and others are heading for other religious countries hoping to find some sort of safety there - among other faiths such as the Buddhists or the B’Hai. Many are just lost.

In this wilderness, there are others, non Unitarians, who are also lost and when they ask us who we are, and because we are no longer quite sure they sense we are just as lost as they are.

So here we are, leaderless and lost - a shrinking host. What is to be done?

When Louis Mountbatten took charge of the British 14th Army in Burma during the last war, he gathered the troops together and said to them that they called themselves the Forgotten Army. ‘You are not forgotten’ he said ‘because no one has ever heard of you - but they are going to hear of you from now on’

When the Jews were taken into exile in Babylon, the whole race and their religion was in danger of simply disappearing into the Babylonian culture. It was the priests who said that this must not happen. They rallied the people and told them over and over again that they were a special, they were the chosen race - their God was the only God and was superior to all others - so the people, in spite of their suffering became proud of their God, and proud of themselves for being who they were.

How does that help us? We few Unitarians - they say there are less than two thousand of us now?

We can only define ourselves as a Spiritual Movement. Each one of us has our own view of what it means to be a Unitarian. Each one of us who belongs to a church or chapel has a sense of identity within it. Each congregations is different from all the others.

There are national groups who meet together now and again- usually at our centre at Great Hucklow and they have their own newsletters - their own membership, many of them do not even belong to a congregation.

In the National Unitarian Fellowship, we have a membership of just over 250 and not many of them belong to a congregation - it is an organisation for individuals.

The Earth Spirit Network, the Psychical Society, even the Holiday Conference and the Annual Summer School are autonomous groups when they meet.

And yet, whenever do Unitarians meet together they find they have so much in common - there is an attitude about ethics, about ecology, about world poverty, about justice, about human rights that they all share. And often much in common is unspoken - They know their own tribe!

And behind this is a sense of spirituality which is almost unspoken.

I like to think we are all connected by the spiritual light which comes from the symbol of our chalice.

It is a light which has been awakened in each person at some point in their lives and connects them at a higher level than anything they have experienced before.

I was quite influenced by Karen Armstrong’s book, the History of God. After exploring the perceptions of God held by the three main faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, she comes to the conclusion that the best understanding of God comes through a study of the mystical tradition in each of them.
The mystics wrote about the light beyond the darkness - as if there is a greater and ultimate spiritual force behind everything else - even the God we were brought up with

The God that the mystics understood was no mover and shaker of earthquakes and landslides - nor any favourer of particular peoples and races- no director of one person’s fortunes against another's.

To the mystics God is a source of peace and purpose that, once connected with, gives peace and purpose to every individual who feels within its light.

Those who experience that connection are of the world and see it as a whole - as a unity. They are no longer on a small spiritual island but are in the whole world and are part of it. They are above religion even though they can partake in the ordinary ways of religion. They can worship with anyone of any faith because behind all religions is the one invisible God whois the source of spiritual light.

In the Unitarian Movement, I feel that each one of us should be confident about our own spirituality - we should value our uniqueness as individuals, we should feel the power and purpose of that light beyond the darkness.

Such light should give us a vision of how the world should be - where all live in peace, where there is no suffering, no poverty, no loneliness. Where the core of our being is filled with love and filled with joy.

Let our resolution for the coming year be to live in the light.

Amen