Thinking about Unitarianism

My position

I have no formal links with Unitarianism; I attend from time to time the Hull Unitarian Church which is not an enjoyable experience. I go almost from a sense of duty, and a declining one. The spirituality of the Anglican church over the road from here is more me, though the words are several stages removed from what I think. This is a dilemma that is not new, but the words at the Unitarian church have also moved away from me. And when I take a service, it is clear that I am speaking to no one who thinks like me or near.

Poststructuralism and Liberalism

To some extent, it amounts to the same thing either to suspend final judgement on the post structuralist position and to use it, or to be a completely convinced user of it. I like my cake and eating it, so I am convinced of it in religion but not in some other spheres, but go on using it. There are different results by using falsifiability in science which is unavailable in the arts or religion.

There is no way definitions can be imposed. There should be a renewed emphasis on thinking things through, and trying to identify past traditions that can be applied in pluralist times. I do this by taking an historic sweep of a Presbyterian creedless tradition and seeing every position undermined in time. This position is now also in space: it is Baudrillardian religion. I preached it, and it is where what is of value appears, is used, and can disappear rapidly. It intersperses with worship because worship is about symbolism. So in a pluralist setting the value of a symbol can rise and fall, disappear as soon as it appears. It is a simulacra.

No one can find available criteria for some orientation of steady value. It cannot be imposed. All we can do is sit around and discuss, or do some worship and see what happened. We suck and see.

Definitions do exist in Baudrilliardian religion, but they are only around for a limited time and limited in place. To some extent the postmodern thing can't avoid being a kind of metanarrative definition, even one that denies them. But all logic in good religion comes to a kind of paradox in the end.

It's not that there are symbols that Unitarians value. Rather, there is a rising and falling of such symbols, an individual presentation to the group, a group trying them out.

A later one is the Flower Communion, which seems to run better than a Eucharist, and then someone recently mentioned a Chocolate Communion. I don't know what she was thinking of but you never know what meanings might be presented. It could be quite interesting. So this is an example of sucking and seeing. Sucking chocolate, in this case.

(This reference to chocolate is a joke. KT in England wanted a text of a "chocolate communion". I'd never heard of it before. I just saw the connection between that and suck it and see.)

Liberalism a problem in Unitarianism

I'm not sure all three - a liberal constitution, liberal view of Christianity, and a liberal attitude to all faiths - do always work together. It is a matter of primary orientation, so some people who are liberal about Christianity are illiberal regarding their rejection of insights or happy ignorance from other faiths. Or in order to maintain liberal Christianity they have to be illiberal constitutionally ("We're not having that preacher here again"). Equally there are people who reject Christianity and yet seem liberal about faiths.

In groups authority tends to come in somewhere and in Unitarianism the congregation can be something of a tyranny. No one can guarantee that a congregation will meet the creedless condition of openness. Unitarian College seemed to be able to tell the GA (higher up) what to do in my case and some others, given the liberalism of the structure

What alternative is there in a pluralistic setting? Who other than the low level collective is going to impose conditions, and on what definition?

People speak of pluralism and creedlessness in Unitarianism, but they either do not understand or do not like the implications. You are the latter. The result tends to be a return to definitions, which suddenly become conservative.

The Object, by the way, was an awful piece of doctrinal play to satisfy the Charity Commission. It would have had a nice line to "remember" the liberal Christian tradition, which was clever biblically and left a lot of free space, but the conservatives demanded "uphold" which is credal. And then an over-enthusiastic President thought this Object could be incorporated into worship via an Invocation. It was an attempt to define the movement by belief. You, Neville, will have to decide what belief you have, or doctrines, which should stick around. They reckon the Object has about 20 years life in it. I think it is out of life already.

But it is a strategy for definition, if the movement now decides it is impossible to be creedless. Which it may be. So is peer review. How would that work then? It wouldn't because there is no intellectual element in Unitarianism any more, it is simply a movement (?) of congregations. I discovered this some time ago when I wanted to combine miistry and thinking things through, but they said there was no place for me, partly due to views they labelled as "humanist" too. Unitarianism still tends to be intelligent on an ad hoc basis, though it varies, but it is definitely not intellectual. It is more historical that theological, more past than present and not future.

Why attend in a Unitarian setting?

I mean it's hoped that a Unitarian Buddhist and a Unitarian Christian differ from the Buddhist and Christian on the basis that each attends a Unitarian setting and each benefits from the company and expression of the other, and presumably they reject the exclusivity of being in their own groups. Otherwise there is no other basis for the label and they may as well be in their other groups.

A person becomes Unitarian in my scheme because they a) change their mind too much for stability inside an institution that has some belief principle of attachment, b) are in some transition which means they have fallen from some belief institution and/ or c) they prefer to be with people of widely differing views who would challenge the basis of their own views.

Philip Hewett wrote some good points in On Being a Unitarian (1968) which was revised as The Unitarian Way. They both contained a caricature of Christianity, which few observe, but the material on congregations and searching within them was quite good, and did move from a belief basis of congregating.

I mean the beliefs of people in a Unitarian church are going to be on the fringes of other institutions or because they want to engage with people of different views. This is why they tend to be liberal Christian, humanist but religious, Eastern but Western minded and Pagan but not very superstitious. But there is no need to say that these traditions are to be "upheld" or indeed list them, because also you can get liberal Jews and potentially critical Muslims. This is not the point. The point is that the model should allow them to gather together and work with difference.

A person wants to be a Unitarian because nothing elsewhere is going to give the space to search. Of course this means Unitarianism has to give that space, and often it does not because people want to define it in terms of beliefs.

Creedlessness and the Object

[Note, the Object was designed for the Charity Commission and gives Unitarianism a religious identity for charitable purposes: thus a creedless body commits and accepts affiliations to itself, the General Assembly, to the Worship of God, several phrases regarding religious freedom, and to "uphold the liberal Christian tradition", a controversial clause that whilst recognising the origins of the denomination commits the General Assembly to maintaining it (or does it?)]

People have doctrines, but the body doesn't, not as a whole. It's not just a matter of time but in pluralism space. It used to be time because the general religious culture had a clearer identity which a creedless body reflected, but not now.

I would have thought that a unity based on a clear recognition of difference was quite a hard thing to do, the shallowness comes in trying to define it in belief terms. That's why that Object (of the General Assembly, which contains elements like "Uphold the liberal Christian tradition") is such a mess especially when it becomes an Invocation in worship, an agreement that isn't there from an Object that was a political botch.

In itself this should not be a problem with a pluralistic outlook, but this outlook is not shared, and this new Object (which is for the General Asembly only, incidentally, though its definition ripples out) has again moved the scene from me and undermines my argument, and also causes a certain amount of confusion among the people in the congregation. So in a sense the definition that does exist in the Object is not intended for the movement as a whole but it is being used this way by some people and seems to have this effect.

Nor is it likely that this Object will improve the level of acceptability among other Christian churches who reject the membership of Unitarians unlike Quakers in ecumenical bodies (there are local exceptions) for historical reasons of acrimony.

So the whole thing is a disaster, in my opinion.

It is still possible to be descriptive rather than presecriptive ("uphold the liberal Christian tradition") to help outsiders know where something is at, whilst being clear about the pluralistic space.

Creedlessness as a social gospel

All others try to define a point of agreement and Unitarianism doesn't, or fails if it does. Therefore its creedlessness reflects the religious culture and it is a microcosm of the religious culture and the need for society to work together even across wide differences. There are no other principles.

To me the method is obvious: pluralism in action in a microcosm. Do people understand it? I don't think so because they always shy away, and in a panic produce something like that Invocation.

Creedlessness prevents the usual apologetic

Unitarianism simply won't work on trying to find a basis of philosophical agreement, NOR I might add apologetics of the usual kinds.

No prejudged position

I don't know if Unitarian officials have any moral authority to pronounce. Like when they select trainees for the ministry, their only decision should be whether the person has what seems to be a practiced spiritual life and whether he has the skills to do the job of working with people and expressing religious ideas to facilitate that.

I don't think we ever get off the relativistic problem - even relating it to social consequences is about basing on the sociology of knowledge.

The alternative

The alternative is the Anglican view - everyone practice one or some range of liturgies, have a few implications of belief and inherited doctrines and traditions, and a variety of interpretations, and then freedom to agree and disagree. But do Unitarians want to be Anglicans? There are of course Unitarian traditions and a lot of ghosts that keep popping up, and they provide resources, but there is no authority of use in these. They can all be overturned in an instant and it is still Unitarian. That is the creedless implication without boundaries.

Why is Unitarianism religious if plural?

Here is the difference between Unitarianism and Sea of Faith or the Department of Religious Studies.

Sea of Faith, with a slight non-realist push, but open and liberal, does not provide regular settings for doing worship. It is about discussion and sometimes action. Departments of Religious Studies are about education. Unitarianism provides places for doing worship, and is the core function, as well as providing subsidiary functions.It is creedless.
I actually think the model of the shaman who goes out on a search is a very useful prophetic as well as priestly view of ministry in a body where there can be no definitions imposed. There are only resources around, inherited and appearing, which can be picked up and used and discarded.

Unitarianism as Troeltsch's Mysticism

The Roy Wallis category of Cult follows on from Troeltsch's often missed third category of institutional individualism, Mysticism. Both Mysticism and Cult are awkward labels.

In this sociological sense cult is quite a neutral term. Troeltsch is clear that individualism as in Mysticism is one of the characteristics of Protestantism, just as is Church and Sect. So he has ideal types of each tendency. There is much Mysticism in this sense to be found in Church and Sect, and the combinations.

So that Unitarianism has this property I think is "normal", and the issue for me then is how it looks in poststructural times and why it becomes so easy to be conservative and ad hoc in authority in such a setting. I want the denomination to be liberal and not conservative, and to suggest structural ways in which that is preserved.

Intellectualise within Unitarianism

Intellectualising is necessary! I think it is right to have a framework of understanding about what one is doing. And I think too few people have that. So there needs to be an understanding about what constitutes creedless worship in a pluralist setting.

Unitarianism and institutional adaptation

There are all sorts of parallels between a psychiatric hospital and an institution like a church, not least the way people acquire to themselves the inner workings of it as an institution and negotiating between one another.

Absence of leadership

Who are these Unitarian leaders? Who has authority? What statements are going to define beliefs in the absence of creeds? How can authority above impede on congregational sovereignty? What practices in terms of worship are legitimate?

Unitarianism and the future

It is possible numbers would rise rapidly, but very unlikely. At the moment the top-heavy age range and the continuation of a (in my opinion) stale Protestant style is offputting, it is neither a well known Christianity nor an experimental flavour, like when meditation groups meeting can attract seekers and searchers. It is just stuck, and it is this combination of sclerotic presentation and harsh religious culture which is underlining decline.