The Sunday Assembly and the Unitarians

I conducted a funeral the other week and the family asked if they could have that song from the film ‘Life of Brian’ at the end of the service - ‘Always look on the bright side of life!’.   We obliged of course.

That film when it came out shocked many people.   It was seen as irreverent and blasphemous and that it mocked the Bible story.    I suppose it did - but fast forward to now and the newspapers tell us that so few people read the Bible or know the characters in the New Testament that the film would simply puzzle them.   They couldn’t relate to the events, the people or the times.  How sad for a generation like ours who were brought up on those stories.

Sad too that many churches are struggling to attract younger people to come and hear those stories now.

What has gone wrong ?     They say that one of the reasons is that children are no longer taught RE in schools.   I suppose it is part of the political correctness of the age - if we do nothing then no one can be offended, or there are so many children at school these days with different religions, it becomes impossible to teach them all, so teach none of them.

Of course I disagree with this, I think children should be taught the religion of their culture but they should not be taught that theirs is the only truthful one - that creates divisions and eventually bloodshed and that claim to exclusiveness has been the curse of the ages.

I disagree also because I feel that most human beings do become aware that there is more to life than just living day to day and trying to get rich before we die.   That there is a spiritual side to life.   There is a reason why people help one another; a reason why we feel for the plight of those who are suffering because of wars and forced to flee and become stateless refugees.

Richard Dawkins would argue that it is only our selfish gene at work - that everything we do is to protects ourselves and our children.   If we help the refugee, it will prevent their war spreading to the street we live on.

The atheists have made a lot of ground with these persuasive arguments - and some have been as evangelical in their denunciation of religion and God as any evangelical preacher. 

There have been books and tv programmes extolling atheism - and humanism - that what we are is all that we are, nothing more.

Bur surprise, surprise, what do they offer now - church!    Well it is not called church - it is called the Sunday Assembly.

I was directed to a blog written by a lady who had been to the Unitarian church in one of our cities and found it stimulating but a bit too God focussed for her - so she went off to try the Sunday Assembly - and she loved it.   

She wrote that it had been well advertised and there was a good attendance at the first meeting.   It was held in a Bingo Hall and she had to walk through a room full of fruit machines to the main hall where people were sitting at the bingo tables.   Not very church like.

But it all became church like for her when they were set off singing.  They sang lots of songs - pop songs and folk songs but they were all high tempo.   She said she felt she could let herself go and it lifted her spirits.  When it was over she felt she had had a good experience - that she had been in the company of like minded people and she was happy to go there again.

She wrote: ‘I’d like to be in a community like a church that fosters efforts to reach out and be nice to other people; to attend services that address the emotional and personal in a way that I can connect with; but I have no interest in looking to anything beyond the here and now for inspiration.’
That sounds very much like what we offer.    Do our services address the emotional and personal in a way that we can connect with ?    I hope so!

But what is the difference between what she found there and we offer here?
We too offer friendship too, we too reach out to each other, we also reach out to the community around us and even beyond that, and we too offer singing - perhaps we should have more hymns and make them more upbeat - don’t worry too much about what the words  are saying to us. 
We also offers prayers as well as poems and thoughts from the great writers of the world.
We offer religion as well.   Religion with its bad name and its awful history.   But there is something about religion that is greater than all its weaknesses.

Yes we could offer euphoria if we made some changes and we could do pretty well at it I think.   But one of the comments put on that blog said that these regular meetings of singing and shouting and euphoria tend to fade in the effect they have, and the writer agreed - but hopes it won’t.
I wondered about this and then thought that we talk too easily about our spirits - what is lifted by singing - is it our spirits or is our moods.  Maybe spirit is a catchall word with many different meanings and interpretations.

Let us talk about it as if is were our soul - that very deep part of ourselves - where spirituality has its roots as well as spirit.

It is the soul that is connected to our religion.   Our religious feelings run deeper than simply wanting to be everyones friend and helping others.

The soul is the point of connection between our deep spiritual selves and what is divine - what is greater than ourselves - even if we struggle to find the right words to describe what that greatness is.
I went to a ceremony last month at the newly extended Swaminarayan Temple in Bolton.    They have increased the size of the temple by fifty per cent.  It used to be a Unitarian Chapel but in the end was just five times too big for the small congregation who worshipped there, so they left.

The leader of the world Swaminarayan Group had a massive temple built out in Gujarat where most of the devotees come from.   It was luxurious - as is the revamped temple in Bolton.    The Swami leader gave his reasons for building the temple.

The temple is the place where you come closest to your religion.   It is the place where you can feel the presence of God more than anywhere else.   It is the place where you come to worship and make that connection stronger.   It should have a place in your heart where you respect it and and are devoted to it and what it stands for.

It makes me realise that to be a true follower of our religion we have to accept that it makes demands on us.   It demands that we have a holy place where we worship; it demands that we care for the community who share that place of worship with us; it demands that we care for the wider community; it demands that we try to understand and follow its teachings; it demands that we live our lives worthily of those teachings.  It demands commitment. 

Everyone is different I know, there are many religions where they like to postpone the idea of being happy until after they are dead - but not me.

I love life - in fact I am in love with it.    It lifts my spirits so often - and it saddens me at times.
Bill Darlison in the sermon he has on his blog this month talks about coping with the depths of despair as well as the highs of life. - That there are times when you have a need just to be in that place of worship and be silent in your sadness and feel near to that greatness which touches your soul.   Times when you need to pray.

Life isn’t all highs - there are lows along the way - we all know that.

I suppose what I want is all of that - a place to celebrate the highs and a place to run to when the boat feels that it is going to sink.   I want to be amongst people I like and care for and to know they like me.   I want to feel the strength of that group when I am in the world trying to be a friend there.  I want to feel it gives me a philosophy to follow and values to live by.
If the Sunday Assembly gives all that - well, I hope they prosper - and I hope we do too.