Faith, community, church

We all come to church for different reasons.    It is not always for religion.  I remember one of the ladies in my Chape saying quite honestly that she didn't really listen to what I said on a Sunday morning.  She thought about the refreshments afterwards and how many cups and biscuits to put out.    

She was the third or fourth generation of her family to attend that church and she loved it because she belonged to it and always had done.  She was the one I relied on for planning,  maintenance and decoration.   It was the belonging that was important to her.   The truth is she was a bit wary of anyone new turning up.

Others do  come to church because they are on a religious quest.  They have a faith which is deep rooted but have not always found their way properly into it.     They might have gone to a church but what they heard or told how they have to live seemed to conflict with what they instinctively felt.  

Consequently they either leave their church or simply compromise, paying lip service but not truly engaged.     Quite often these spiritual seekers come to us, the Unitarians, that is if they can find us.   Sometimes they stay and sometimes they move on.

Having a faith is personal.    Talk about it or try to share it with someone and you will find it is the best way to scare them off.    I think there is a form of denial of the religious instinct.    If someone asks me what I do for a living and I say that I am a minister, it usually gets a reaction, usually negative.

They suddenly think they are in the presence of a different being - as if they should behave differently, not speak openly anymore.   Often they start to answer a question which hasn't been asked, as if I have said, Why don't you go to church?   

They usually say something like they don't need church, they find their religion in the great outdoors or they say, religion has ruined the world, which is true of course, or they don't like to discuss religion or politics.   Then of course that is exactly what they do like to do.   They want to talk about religion, because it is a deep question that people do want to talk about.    

As the old Moody and Sanky hymns said, religion is an anchor in your life.    And how without a spiritual anchor, your life really can drift.

Many years ago I went to a happy clappy service.   It was quite exhilarating.  The music was good, most people there really were happy and were on a high.   It was a strange mix.  They said they had found Jesus.   Jesus answered all the questions in their life, they said and sang.  They only had to follow.    

What put me off was the disdain they had for the rest of the world.  Yes they had a zeal to convert everyone they met, but unless you were converted there was no pity for you.   It seemed a high energy high end exclusive club.  I thought they were blinded by it.  It wasn't for me.

It made me think of Walter Raussenbauch one of the leaders in the social Christian movement.  He went to New York in the depression of the 1930s and set up soup kitchens in the streets.  His faith was in service to humanity. He noted those other missionaries going around with Bibles in hand, and, as he put it, pathetically trying to save souls.  I liked Walter Raussenbauch when I read about him.

Church is about community, about that feeling of belonging.  In my early days I had a couple of goes at joining churches.  The fact was I was lonely.  Living alone in London I found very difficult.  There was not the natural northern hospitality and easy chat I was used to.   Talk to someone in a pub who looked just as lonely as I felt and you were rebuffed.   Strange the world of loneliness.

I suppose that was also part of the culture of the churches I tried.   They either took no notice of you so you felt you had intruded on a private club or they came gushing over you and frightened you off.  Maybe I should have stayed and played myself in but the worship itself didn't speak to me.  

When I had my ministry I used to say to people who came along out of the blue.  Give us a go for three weeks and then decide.   

I suppose I had been guilty of not doing that.  And I suppose I was looking for community more than anything else.

In the end I joined the TA and found what I was looking for, a real community of friendship, adventure, physical activity and good pay.   

Funnily enough it was in the TA that I began to find the answer to my religious quest.  I had joined a TA regiment that had an added take on soldiering.  Yes they were a military organisation but they had a sort of golden rule.   They said to us, The only discipline here is self discipline.  If you break the rules you do get thrown out but you have let yourself down.     

So I felt religion is like that, you have a set of values and you try to live by them.   You might see yourself as a soldier of God as the Jesuits did, but you keep to those values by your own self discipline.  

I am a fan of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.   He had been a soldier but was seriously wounded in a battle.   As he recovered he had a lot of time to think.   He said religion should be out in the world, not in the monastery.   

First You find your way to knowing God through the spiritual exercises.     The spiritual exercises are an intense course of self discovery by prayer, meditation and discussion, usually over a three week period.    Those who completed the spiritual exercises  could become a Jesuit  and thereafter they were loyal to the Society of Jesus and worked for good in the world.   

They did and still do much good work especially in education but they caused controversy.  They swore allegiance to the Pope but wouldn't be part of the church structure, refusing to acknowledge the authority of the bishops.  They were a sort of paraspiritual religious organisation.

    But I had a problem with all  Roman Catholicism, actually I have it with most of the Christian teaching.   I was asked to conduct the funeral of a man who had been christened a Unitarian.  When I saw the family, they said, actually they were all catholic so could I make the funeral as catholic as possible.   So I read it up.   There was an awful lot about being released from sin and hoping to be forgiven at last.  I cut those bits.

    I realised that by definition I am not a Christian.   Not in the Christian sense.   That was a great release, I could sort myself out and not bend the knee to teachings which didn't feel right.

     The first followers of Jesus were called people of the way, and I thought that was what I was.

    You might abandon the Christian church with all its doctrines but you should not abandon those teachings from the sermon on the mount, nor seek for the meaning in those parables and miracles.   

    Because they teach a way of life, which to me is as it should be.     And it is always positive, it is about letting your light shine in the world, be who you are.   And it is about personal prayer.  And it is about community.  Twelve quite different people going around together.

       I suppose it is a paradox.   You find your own understanding of faith. And it is personal, but you are better in a group, a community, a congregation.   

     It is why when I found the Unitarians I never left.   I like the community.   I meet like minded people in every congregation I visit and on the national scene.    

What I personally believe is my business, it doesn't matter to anyone else if I say I am a pagan gnostic, I can explore that in my worship and thinking and as well as have it challenged without being forced to give it up.

I know we Unitarians sometimes get it wrong.  We can be testy and unfeeling sometimes and prejudiced,  but the underlying trend is good.   It is easy to default, hard to stick to your principles.  

One of my friends stood up in the pub one day and announced he was going to Australia on the £10 scheme.   We all went to Waterloo station to see him off.  One of the guys insisted on reading a poem to him it at the barrier.  It was by Robert Service and the last line of every verse was, it is dead easy to die, it is going on living that's hard.  I don't know if he ever remembered that line, but I did.

    Where I go on my preaching travels I feel that connection to a community that cares for one another, looks out for one another when bad times come, and cares too about the suffering outside its gates, and it is based on a spiritual something that doesn't have to be declared.  

We spend a lot of time trying to define who we are and what we stand for.  To me it is easy.  We are a community of free spirits seeking the meaning of God.  

Those who stay with us find their own place on the way of life.   It reminds me of my old regiment that the spiritual values are those of self discipline, and of the Jesuits who say religion is best practiced out in the world not just in the cloister,  and my lovely friend in Bolton to whom the chapel itself was everything.