How Reason made me a Unitarian.
Unitarians have recently celebrated the Great Ejection of 1662.   We celebrate the fact that many Church of England clergy lost their livings all those years ago because they were not prepared to accept the reintroduction of the Book of Common Prayer.
They lost their livings and their livelihoods on a matter of principle.   At the time they were still called Christians.   They still believed in God and scriptures and in Jesus as Son of God.     
The point of principle was the authority that came with the Book of Common Prayer.    It reintroduced the hierarchy of Bishops - and the authority of Bishops over the clergy and the congregations.   It reestablished the authority of the King as head of the church - the king with the divine right to rule.
The re introduction of the Book of Common Prayer ended the Presbyterian system of church government where the local ministry of elders made the decisions about their church.
The Book of Common Prayer set into stone the organisation, authority and form of worship of the Anglican church.
If you are an Anglican now, you can go to church on Sunday, reaffirm your faith by reciting the creed in the Book of Common Prayer; you can acknowledge your errors and shortcomings by reciting the confession in the Book of Common Prayer, and you can follow the readings for the day, acknowledge the prayers of the day - for the Queen, the clergy, the government and all the people.
There is something very comforting about the regular ritual of reciting prayers and following familiar words week in and week out.
It gets a bit tricky when you start to doubt the words you are saying, or the words you are hearing.       In the old days, if you said you didn’t believe it, they said you would go to Hell - and no doubt help you on your way with the taste of the fire it promised.
The ejected clergy were able eventually to set up their own churches and slowly but surely instead of the dogmatic authority of the Book of Common Prayer, they had the freedom of ‘reason’.    They could discuss their Bible and what it meant; they could challenge the accepted beliefs.
And they did.   None though went as far as the Unitarians.   For them the age of reason celebrated the individual and they accepted that religion, like beauty, lay in the eye of the beholder.
We Unitarians have ended up in a very strange place.
We are a church without an identity - or rather we are a religion which has neither founding prophet nor philosophy, nor scripture, nor creed, nor sacred rites - such as eucharist or baptism, nor promise of paradise, nor recognised leader.  All that define a religion.  
We come to worship on a Sunday because we came out of the Sunday worshipping Christian tradition - that is why we still have hymns and prayers.
As a Denomination we are in decline as are many other denominations.  As a Movement we are stalled.   We talk incessantly about the need for growth - apart from one or two lights shining, most is darkness.
Those who do attend our churches are reasonably happy there.   Our churches and our chapels are places of comfort - there is a feeling of community, there is a feeling of friendship; there is a feeling of being valued - if you are sick or in trouble, people here are prepared to help you.   It is a congregation of Good Samaritans.   And we keep saying, ‘But no one is joining’.   And we ask ourselves why, and we don’t know the answers.
If we don’t offer a creed and we don’t offer confession and we don’t offer born again faith and Sunday exuberance, what do we offer?
I asked this question of myself.
Why have I stayed with this Unitarian religion for more than thirty years?
I can remember my first time at a Unitarian Chapel.   I had not gone on a voluntary basis, but I was so impressed with the service.    It was a sermon which has nothing to do with belief, or guilt, or confession, even God or Jesus - but it was about hope.   It was about a belief in change.
How to change the world is to change yourself.
From then on I stuck with the Unitarians - and sat through some pretty dull lifeless services sometimes - and through some brilliant ones.   I have to name the best ever was at the Unitarian Universalist GA at Nashville.   The preacher, Dr Marilin Sewell had that huge congregation applauding and cheering all through her sermon - because it was a sermon that inspired hope and change.
How to change the world is to change yourself.
I started my Unitarian journey as a public school boy Christian - that is all I had known - and I had shut a door on it rather than dumping it and running away.
At the Unitarian college I was confronted with neo paganism and humanism as part of this Unitarianism, at the University of Manchester a complete deconstruction of the Christian literature I had been brought up with and an introduction to the religions of the world - notably, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Zoroastrianism.   Fascinating.   I learnt about meditation too.
Out of all this I began to construct a new religious house for myself.   And I realised too that my new religious house might not appeal to many members of the congregation that I served.
I built my religious house from bits and pieces of what had fallen down and what I had found new.
From Christianity I have kept the Gnostic idea that the whole universe, including me, has been created by a divine energy.   I allude to it as light - we all have that light within us - when we switch it on, our understanding of life and our interconnectedness is so much stronger.   With the light off, we tend to be selfish and deluded about life.
From Buddhism I learned about meditation and controlling the ego.   If I could do it properly I would be in that Tulsa Heaven now - but I am still here.
From Zoroastrianism I learned about respect for all life and the world we inhabit - and I learnt too how much it had influenced Judaism and Christianity and gave them the idea of a Messiah.
From Hindusim I learnt about respect for life and all deities - and how stimulating and joyful that religion is.   And how all people are as human as I am.
And from the Pagans I learned that there is still value in the old religions - about there being more to life than just what we see.
So I have ended up with a religious cocktail.    A set of values to live by and be inspired by.    I suppose it is a living creed.   I don’t have to say it but I do have to be aware of it - just as I have to be aware of what I have done wrong or falling short on.     And just confessing and saying sorry is not enough - the wrong has to be put right.
I was watching Richard Dawkins in a programme saying that reason and a sense of empathy are the great gifts that we have in order make a more moral world - not that he said gifts - we are hard wired with reason and empathy genetically.
But without any proof at all I still believe in an after life.    I still believe that things happen that we can’t explain but seem to be the result of something mysterious.   What Jung called synchronicity.   You just have to say, ‘it must have been the gods; or maybe it was my Guardian angel’.   Don’t try to rationalise it - just keep them all happy.
The old God I grew up with is dead - but long live the new God of Light and Love and all the mysteries outside the world of time.    I give thanks to them all and enjoy their company.
I don’t suppose that helps anyone who is looking for something in their lives - which we suppose they are if they come through our Unitarian doors.
I suppose we can say, we offer you nothing but friendship, support, a community to belong to and the opportunity to be just who you are.   We show you that we have a set of values to live by - and it is our releigion.  We welcome the sad as well as the joyful - we are looking to be a joyful congregation.
We accept there is a spiritual side to life - some connection to be made.
Our churches in America are growing - because they accept you for who you are, you don’t have to be the same.   It doesn’t matter if you are different.
We don’t mind who you worship because we are not sure ourselves who or what we worship.
From time to time preachers come long and challenge us to think about our religion - or someone devises a course we can do.
We connect with something either within ourselves or without that makes sense of life -
The great ejection gave us Unitarians religious freedom - but it should be seen as  a responsible freedom.
And if we want to change the world we have to change ourselves first.