Minister’s Page for the NUF Newsletter
    I have changed over the years.    I was brought up in age before the end of Empire.  At my school we thought we were the elite - not just as a school but as a country.   We laughed with disdain at the foreigners and presumed we had the power to both organise and change the world as we saw fit.   We believed that the British Empire was the greatest achievement of civilisation.   Those who rose against us were to be threatened with the gunboat and we would send the troops in.   It took a long slow process of change to see the vanity of those ideas and assumptions.   I have to thank the almost accidental trip into the Unitarian Movement for being an early part of that change.
    Amongst the Unitarians I found people who belonged to a different world.   They were modest characters but strong,  ones who no longer had empire minds.   They had that old Liberal philosophy that cared about the suffering in the world and tried to do something about it.   Equality of the sexes already existed.   They could rub along with anyone from anywhere.   These were people of the new world but who had come from an old tradition.  It was quite a revelation and an honour to rub shoulders with such principled people and they influenced me greatly.  Those Unitarians of old set a new standard in religious thought and practice.
    In this day and age we worry greatly about the diminishing number of Unitarians.     ‘Where will be in ten years time?’ we ask.   And some people think the answer is ‘Gone’!    But I don’t.    As long as there are people who will stand apart from the herd and speak truthfully about the follies of modern life, who have a faith that is rooted in a universal love for the world and its peoples and who actively see in the faces of strangers a brother or a sister then there will always be Unitarians.   If we follow them we shall not be the last, for others will follow us.     As is so often said,  ‘Be the change you want to see.’

With best wishes

tony