What is the Spirit saying to the Churches?
A Summer School Theme Talk Published in Why are We Here? Lindsey Press, London 2022
What is the spirit saying to the churches’… a talk to the annual Hucklow Unitarian Summer School 23rd August 2021 offered online from Mill Hill Chapel Leeds.
“The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us…” [1]
We must all have had some sense of wishing to make a new start out of the chaos of pandemic, to build back better, adjust to a new normal, to re-order things in a more equitable and fair way. And yet this felt sense that “The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux …” is worth considering with care.
The quote above is actually taken from a speech by Tony Blair at the outset of the Afghan war… and as Naomi Klein has persuasively argued in ‘Shock Doctrine’,[2] chaos can be a tool of manipulation in the hands of the powerful. We should look closely at the dismantling of ‘our NHS’ during pandemic even while it was being applauded from the front doorsteps of No. 10 Downing Street, and we should take care before we assume that we are in a state of positive change from which boundless possibility must inevitably emerge. We might be aware instead that this is a dangerous place and a hazardous time. Not all of the ideas and trends which are emerging now are benevolent or good, and as a faith group we might find inspiration from our sister church in Transylvania who, under Soviet occupation, took as their motto: ‘Be as cunning as snakes and as gentle as doves.’ from the gospel of Matthew.
I want to begin my talk this evening the first of five theme talks ‘Discerning our Unitarian mission in an upturned world’ from a deceptively simple perspective and ask:
‘What is religion?’
Discovering some perspective on this question will lead us to an inquiry into how we respond to our past, and I hope then to point out ways in which unacknowledged histories may influence current realities, and perhaps identify potential pitfalls, before offering what might provide an alternative prospect.
In the Study of Religion as an academic discipline the definition of religion is itself contentious and at the risk of over simplification I would suggest that there are basically two main camps into which definitional analysis divides: the first is Substantive (or essentialist); those who think religion should be defined by its ‘essence’, what it centres on, raises up or brings to focus; [3] so the rituals and [crucially for Unitarians on all sides of the debate], beliefs of adherents become of primary importance according to this perspective, and the second Functional (or instrumental); those who think religion should be defined by its ‘activities’, what it ‘does’, the actions of its adherents which can be identified objectively by research into data.
But both perspectives in this debate have a big problem: if your definition is substantive and you say that what religion centres on is belief in the supernatural or worship of a deity you then erase or at least fail to acknowledge traditions which require no beliefs in God or gods, or experiences of the supernatural, and therefore certain types of Buddhism (especially western secular Buddhism), Jainism and Taoism for example, and certainly some Unitarians, just won’t fit into your definition – yet what they do is I would say certainly ‘religious’.
But on the other hand if your definition is functional thentraditions which, although outwardly seeming similar to clearly religious faiths in providing moral and emotional sustenance, comfort, instruction and social cohesion, are clearly not religious; they might be Guilds, mutual societies, educational establishments, dance culture ‘tribes’, wellbeing groups etc. etc.
So then you might instead claim that an activity is religious by virtue of quantifiable actions such as holding their gatherings at a given time and a special place, singing or chanting, wearing certain significant types of clothing, repeating rules including significant rules which are only available to an elect or which an outsider couldn’t possibly guess. This sounds rigorous but I’ve just described a football game, which is not reasonably defined as religious.
And anyway both of these kinds of definitional analyses are over reliant upon linguistic concepts at the expense of directly lived knowledge, wisdom and experience and so they risk producing a “one sided and overly rationalistic caricature of religion” [4] in the very place where a reliable and useful definition is urgently required.
Because distinguishing religious from non-religious activities, events and beliefs, and demarcating where the boundaries between them lie, remains key to understanding religion. According to Talal Assad; “defining what is religion is not merely an abstract intellectual exercise… [it] is embedded in passionate disputes”[5]. Passionate disputes on this very matter may indeed be seen to irrupt from time to time between ourselves as Unitarians despite the fact that our own idea of ourselves includes the ideas of freedom of conscience, reasonableness, and tolerance of the views of others. So something is clearly going on here which makes the subject hot, uncomfortable or even unbearable so I must tread with care and compassion as we proceed.
Because before asking ‘Why are we here?’ I’d like to ask, in the spirit of affirmative inquiry; seeking the best, the most positive aspects of the presence of our movement in the world:
‘What are we doing right now?’
then
‘What could we be doing?’
and then, maybe crucially;
Does any answer to these questions really resolve the question: “Why are we here?’’
So before asking you for your answers I’ll say a little about mine in relation to the chapel I serve:
What are we doing? Aside from regular acts of worship, here in the city centre of Leeds, Mill Hill Chapel has funded and helped to run a Well-Being group for four years, a gently facilitated therapeutic group centred on reciprocity and conversation.
During this time we’ve also set up and and helped to run a Conversation Group for Refugees and Asylum Seekers to facilitate English learning and community cohesion.
And we’ve set up and run a ‘Spiritual reading and inquiry group’ within the congregation to deepen our understanding of philosophy theology and each other through encounter and conviviality.
Does ‘the art of conversation’ in these different forms represent our closest approach to discovering a religious practice? Does this model perhaps relate to the historic ‘Salons’ that earlier generations of Unitarians populated and so provide a degree of congruence with our tradition as well as a clear contemporary application?
Then there is our holding space for other religious groups. I have a clear appreciation of our historical understanding that no one religious tradition has a monopoly of religious truth, but at the same time I don’t subscribe to a naive pluralism, I have a standpoint of my own based on my personal history, background, tradition and location, so instead of attempting to lead services from a multi-faith perspective, I’ve offered space to other liberal religious groups to run their own activities and we have for the past few years had a Buddhist Sangha, a Sikh Simran meditation and a Muslim Jummah Friday prayers, all running independently at Mill Hill.
Then we have also offered space to artists and arts students, hosted recitals, concerts and gigs, readings, lectures, theatre, performance & art works, film and theatre live recording and filming.
So looking into the future, now that post pandemic many our activities have been curtailed changed or stopped completely;
Should our spaces host all sorts of lively arts – now so threatened by de-funding post pandemic?
Might our chapels meeting houses and churches be reinvented as rehearsal and concert centres to come to the rescue of bands and theatre groups?
Or should we develop the model of wellbeing groups and conversational practices?
Or be hubs of all sorts of complimentary therapies meditative resources? Are we ‘spiritual health centres’?
Or should we strengthen our social justice campaigning activities; we had success advocating for same sex weddings, should we now refocus on our campaigning history as inheritors of some of the great social reformers of the past? Should we lobby parliament for Universal Basic Income? A four day week? Decriminalisation of recreational drugs? Should we campaign on behalf of refugee rights? Or against the destruction of the natural world?
All our ideas (howsoever good, exciting, progressive) fall into the functional definition of religion don’t they? They remain firmly in the concrete realm of what we do? They enable a clearly instrumental definition of our role and place. And that may be agreeable to many here; we often say we are about ‘deeds not creeds’, or that its our values not our beliefs which define us.
But I want to worry at these nostrums a little –
Are creeds really the opposite of deeds?
Setting aside the fact that intuition of the divine or holy doesn’t necessarily imply a creedal formula, aren’t our deeds in fact derived from or inspired by our lived orientation anyway?
And isn’t a sense of direction an important human value which arises from our felt sense of the Holy?
Certainly the great theologian of 20th century Unitarianism James Luther Adams thought it was this way round that the relationship had to work, that outwards from a sense of the holy our communities could extend responsibility into the civic realm.[6]
Clifford Geertz maintains that some rationalist attempts to explain religion disguise a desire to ‘explain away‘ religion. Geertz instead viewed religious traditions as cultures which carried patterns of meaning or “systems of symbols” in order to transmit meaning from generation to generation and beyond generations. [7]
Beyond generations and between time – liminality is a word which I want to take this opportunity to consider at this mid-point of this talk.
It derives from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”. Liminality according to Wikipedia, which seems as good a source as any, is the “quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. … During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which completing the rite establishes.
During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt. The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.[8]
As long time outliers, heretics, inhabitants of the borders, dwelling between humanist and Judeo-Christian, both spiritual and religious, as travellers in the liminal – shouldn’t we be able to bear spaces of complexity more easily?
Our tradition of humanistic, reason-based but clearly religious enquiry derives from the huge tumult of the reformation of the 16th and 17th Centuries.
I talked at the beginning, of times of danger when the kaleidoscope is shaken but these convulsions of culture are zones where our tradition have historically flourished:
Our earliest inception might be sited in the upheavals of Lollardy or the subsequent revolutionary activities of Jan Huss, & these rebellions provided fertile ground for the Reformation of Luther but (as George Hunston Williams pointed out[9]) the Reformation had a right and a left wing. The conservatism typified by Calvin and Luther was mirrored by the liberationism of the radical anabaptists and the warm humanistic spirituality of the Socinians from which our tradition grew, first in Poland and Transylvania and then in the United Dutch Territories; close enough to cross-fertilise into Britain in the period known as the English Civil War. That revolution galvanised the first wave of thinkers explicitly named Unitarian and the next British Revolution a century later the Industrial Revolution galvanised another wave when Priestley & Woolstoncraft visited revolutionary France & Lindsey and Iolo Morganwg seeded Unitarian churches throughout England and Wales, a century later the 1840’s Age of Revolutions galvanised the most productive wave yet as thinkers like Barbault, Harriet and James Martineau, and others oversaw the most influential period of revolutionary growth. We must not be afraid of times of great change.
Untarnished mirrors receive the whole picture, which is always the darkness, the light, and the subtle shadings of light that make shape, form, color, and texture beautiful. You cannot see in total light or total darkness. You must have variances of light to see. ~ Fr. Richard Rohr[10]
Against this admittedly slightly grandiose portrait of the revolutionary ‘Epic of Unitarianism’ it is important that we also keep in view our shadow:
I want to return to the Unitarian idea of itself and to ask you a question, try to respond quickly, don’t over think this: are you reasonably happy to be described as a ‘non-conformist’?
And now another question: are you reasonably happy to be described as a ‘Puritan’?
I suspect that you may have found that non-conformist is a label you’re happy to self apply, but Puritan? Not so much. And yet ‘non-conformist’ was simply the new description ascribed to Puritans after the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, after the failure of the English Revolution and Civil War.
And if its true that religious traditions are ‘cultures which carry patterns of meaning’ or “systems of symbols”, as Clifford Geertz says,[11] then we must assume that we also bear relationships to our puritan history.
And the reason I mention this is that perhaps the reason why we seem to fail to manage these liminal spaces well, why we seem not to be able to bear boundaries and borderlands – when you’d think that these turbulent times should be, really ought to be our natural territory is because part of our Puritan inheritance is an over reliance on rectitude.
A Puritan might be assumed to value purity, right? Virtue, righteousness; so perhaps affirmation of our own rightness, this continual emphasis on our rectitude, might be why we so frequently cross over, in our online and other disputes, into regions which are hot, uncomfortable or even unbearable.
Because if being right is our highest value, if we allow our unacknowledged shadow identity to be our dominant characteristic, then, as we decline and become smaller and increasingly hollowed out from inside, as we rely more on our own members to provide all our needs and gain less from outside; we will grow more and more likely to resort to puritan habits like purity standards; moral formula or ethical codes by which to impose conformity; more likely to accuse each other of heresy and ostracise rule breakers, more likely to engage in infighting more likely to indulge in increasingly frequent purges based on the transgression of rules and codes.
We will dwell less in liminality and borderlands, less in thresholds and more in confines; spaces of clarity, certainty and supposed truth.
But isn’t there an alternative possibility? What if, instead of the puritanical over-reliance on the virtue of rectitude, we were persuaded to instead re-connect with the sense of the holy, the sacred or numinous which our spiritual and mystical inheritance also allows us to affirm? If we were to re-centre a personal sense of connection with the ineffable, with the infinite and with the eternal as our core orientation, a sense of self-possession despite uncertain times, could be given space to emerge. A recovered sense of self which facilitates ambiguity and flexibility, which allows for and engages with nuance and subtlety, which acknowledges the right to exist alongside difference and discomfort, a sense of personal spaciousness and spiritual resilience could transform this diminished sense of ourselves.
One of our signboards at Mill Hill reads: ‘Spiritual resistance to the temper of our time’ and I know that other ministers in our movement are working on contemplative and mystical forms of practice which seek to reconnect with that spiritual, contemplative and mystical side of our religious inheritance. In this they are reconnecting with a valid and valuable element of Unitarian tradition which runs in and out of our past like a thread which appears and reappears in a tapestry through Anabaptist, Socinian and other European radical reformation ecclesia, through the philosophers of Deism and Transcendentalism, the ‘spiritualisers’ of the Victorian Era and on into our own period where beloved community threatens or promises to abolish the difference between the human community and the divine spirit, and it is possibly in this abolition of boundaries between the human and divine that we are able to perceive most clearly the theological points of contact between Anabaptist, deist, Liberation theology and contemporary Unitarian thinking.
So, ‘What is the spirit saying to the churches’? My title is taken from the book of Revelation, a mystical book of rare power which is one of the remaining texts of one of the earliest Christian communities which it is thought emerged and formed around the apostle John. It is from that context that we also have the luminous fragment
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Notes
[1] BLAIR, T; (2001) Speech to Labour Party Conference 2/10/2001
[2] KLEIN, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism. Toronto, Alfred A. Knopf Canada.
3. I’m heavily reliant here on a brilliant article by Steve Bruce – BRUCE, S (2011) ‘Defining Religion: a Practical Response’, International Review of Sociology: Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 21, 107–120
[4] CLACK Beverly and Brian, (2008)The philosophy of religion:a critical introduction. Cambridge : Polity. p.4
[5] ASSAD, T. (2011) The Cambridge companion to religious studies: Cambridge University Press. Ed. Orsi, R. p.39
[6] ADAMS, JAMES LUTHER, (1998), The Essential JLA Boston, Beacon, ed. Beach GK
[7] Geertz. C. ‘The Interpretation of Cultures’ (1973) New York : Basic Books
[8] wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality accessed 30/11/2021
[9] HUNTSTON WILLIAMS, GEORGE, (1962), The Radical Reformation. London. Weidenfield and Nicholson,
[10] https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/2021/
[11] Geertz. C. ‘The Interpretation of Cultures’ (1973) New York : Basic Books, see also Asad. T. (1983). Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz in Man, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 2
A Space of possibility 