Unitarian Jokes

Apparently, according the the Unitarian Facebook page, there is a Unitarian Joke Book for sale. What? You don't need to buy a Unitarian joke book, when you could write your own.

On that page I suggested these:

A Unitarian went into a hall full of adults only and said, "I know there are no children here but nevertheless I am going to tell you a children's joke."

A Unitarian decided to illustrate ancient and modern. He said, "Look, this is a Double Decker chocolate bar and that is a three decker pulpit."

A Unitarian preacher said he was going to tell a few jokes, and they were all old ones. People started complaining, but he said they don't when he goes around using the same service in different churches.

A Unitarian said he was going to be "really liberal today" and asked his congregation, "Don't you think Jesus was a really decent human being?"

A Unitarian theologian enrolled at University in the History department.

I could write the joke book myself. Wouldn't be very funny. [I added]

Neither End Works: Institutional Pessimism

I admit that I am pessimistic regarding the future of organised religion. Many of the times when people take a service and they say 'that was good' I often think otherwise, perhaps at another level.

Let me be clear regarding apparent success. There is no future in anything to do with 'signs and wonders'. This is capitalism religion, an individualism of aspiration and good signs and based on a warm glow spiritual materialism. It was invented with the sociological in mind, in terms of using the religious culture of individualism, but hardly anthropological, in that it draws its religious signs from a past culture of millennialism, getting sick by demons, and the supposed supernatural canopy. Such is not now - not how we think, it explains nothing and is not what works in a practical sense. So the religious sociology is devious and dishonest, as it tries to reuse a lost past. Except it can't, because it has made a concession, in that in the time of Jesus the supernatural belief was collective not individualist and based on what God was about to do to everyone with the Jews as a whole first in the queue.

So Jesus was one of those prophets at that time and place who mined what the other prophets of his stream had said, according to the writings and the intense talk among the rabbis, and set himself up as a Jewish suffering servant for God to then do what he would, starting with sending the Messiah (someone else, some other figure, or Jesus transformed - the latter being what the early Jewish Christians believed along with him having to have been the first of the resurrected, ascended and having to return very soon). When the Kingdom came in, all the dead would rise, all would be judged; such as the Roman occupiers would be simply be swept away; the married would be like angels together; and history as such would come to an end. While Jesus was alive, those he ministered to had healings with the belief that demons escaped and this prepared them for the coming Kingdom, and they were to sin no more while they all waited. They sat and had love meals and thought of a different future where the worst off would be best off.

When Paul turned the collective expectation into a salvation faith through God's sole representative, it still was in the context of those expected collective changes. To have a salvation figure was enough, rather than to have a law. Paul's view remained the same - either or, but he changed sides and then made those necessary cross-cultural changes that would project Jesus into the Gentile world.

The signs and wonders of modern day individualism is a kind of cop-out, and people are not healed by the removal of demons. This whole 'experience' approach is a spiritual placebo and is nothing but a sect of spiritual entertainment that lowers its barriers to contemporary culture while believing the ridiculous and unscientific. No Kingdom will come from it. Of course it attracts those who want and indeed get spiritual entertainment, and individuals so involved are very adapt at living in two worlds at once. Many a time I've tried to examine someone's sociology of knowledge of the present day and their religious beliefs of a past day, and it's like they throw a switch. The sort of beliefs they profess that allow access into the religious form play no part in their expectations of ordinary life. They don't pray for rain because they know it is a chaotic process under a climate system told by scientists called weathermen (and so on). Food grows on its own account in a web of interacting existence - no deity pushes it up.

But there they are, attracting the circulating minority of Christian thrill-seekers. But what of somewhere like I attend?

The service was very good, I'm told, and indeed it was clear in presentation, and I had an active part in its musical choice and indeed affected the service's content. But the service examined prayer and the Lord's Prayer in particular, with it said, then heard as sung by Andrea Bocelli, then read as a Bible reading and then as in a more secular and universalist interpretation - amongst much else said about prayer. As someone who has stopped saying the Lord's Prayer the service didn't (as it happens) address my criticism and the modernising and universalising of it I don't think works.

The Lord's Prayer is not about us as individuals doing good things to bring about a Kingdom. That is a liberal-humanist cop-out, the same kind of individualism used by the charismatics. It is a bit more collective, in the sense of all hands to the practical pumps, but the transformation into the ideal was not presented as some sort of work ethic. Sure we can say sorry and forgive as we would be. Does it need this 'teaching'?

But would this service, and such an intense focus on one apparent prayer, be attractive to the outsider, the spiritual seeker, one of the minorities that comes to a really liberal church? I don't think so. On this level, it all appears far too traditional, and is a slightly radical message delivered in a traditional format. It suits those who are used to the format, but the format is dying on its feet. I try to inject some musical expansion into it, something like the cultural 1970s and Classic FM, but this doesn't break up the format sufficiently.

I just think organised religion is in deep trouble, whether the working is apparently successful (and attracting some) or not successful where the cultural barrier is now high.

New Wine Re-circulating Wine

I've not been blogging much as it is, to be honest, in this a period of waiting between news items that draw comment; also I am recovering from a five minute relationship that got to the stage where I removed myself from dating websites and now have put myself back on them, all thanks to some better and past-related offer. You go through waves of frustration and re-enquiry afterwards and the annoyance of how well she suited, at least from my viewpoint.

Still, life goes on, and in the agenda area of this blog was a comment made at the Unitarians a few weeks ago, about an attractive female seen standing outside a New Wine church while many of her kind were going in to this place. It is not exactly the experience of a Unitarian church, and the Hull church has a side door.

(I'm grateful to Rachel blogging again on this subject to inspire me to comment, where she rates herself as fully into New Wine and its dispersal, also into Anglican (and other) evangelicalism despite a number not accepting women in leadership (and she was the only priested female present), and distant from the indaba-finding of difference and yet loving social commitment across Anglican Churches.)

The New Wine type church is sect-type or conversionist while trying to be anything but when it comes to contemporary culture. It is sometimes referred to as Third Wave because it is a born again Pentecostalism that connects with culture. New Wine is one of a number of such expressions, but it is denominationally a self-organising one. There are a number of theological individuals better known than others that have made contributions. One is John Wimber's Kingdom theology where God will act supernaturally to bring about a Kingdom through the believers as agents. Some of these signs and wonders were visible in the Toronto Blessing, in the 1990s, of animal-like behaviour, physical movements and uncontrollable laughter (apparently). In the 1970s at the Fuller Seminary in teh United States there was a deliberate conscious plan of combining fundamentalist type belief with sociological church growth insights that informed the New Wine movement, so that one of its most noted outcomes is the homogeneity of its gathered crowd - younger, tending to be middle class and with social aspiration. The fact that an attractive lass stands outside the door is no accident, though the origins of this may have been lost in the background detail. Not only was sociology used for church growth, but so was psychology: John White examined the revivals of the past and their psychology, with the intention of using such insights: the psychology of revival can be induced again via individuals.

To simplify all the above, the Kingdom theology and psychology is the belief that God works through the gathered individuals. There is thus a huge emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the collective driver of individual experience whilst, it would seem, the anchor is the retained biblical (more or less) literalism.

Some of its leaders and the Toronto Blessing have come in for ethical criticism, but the biggest criticism has been its claim to pull in new people. The bulk are people who have come from other churches. New Wine has been suspicious of research and its motivation from sociologists of religion despite its use (the use of which has been called Religious Sociology: with roots in French Catholic research for Church purposes). The potential for being regarded as socially deviant does not impress a group that is trying to have both its sectarian cake and eat it in an accepting public.

The question is how to understand the New Wine movement in terms of the various secularisation and pluralism and even postmodern hypotheses of life and meaning today. Clearly it is a non-structure structure, in the sense of both breaking free from existing formal Church structures as well as invigorating some congregations within Churches. It is clearly low barrier culturally - indeed it is an entertainment Church, drawing is mode of operation from the rock and pop culture, even dance culture in some cases, whilst then being high barrier for belief commitment including a previous culture of supernatural signs and wonders (and it would be interesting to see how individuals negotiate those - one way is to contact people who have left the movement to see how the juggled the demands made on them).

Most churches juggle these barriers. The Anglicans are, of course, all over the place. Some of the anglo-Catholic churches have a high cultural barrier when it comes to the speciality of ritual but low belief barrier in terms of what is required for acceptance in the congregation. Some post-evangelicals are attempting to lower the belief barriers in identifying the spirituality of low evangelism. In a liberal Church like the Unitarians or Quakers, there are very low belief barriers but high cultural barriers (plus behavioural for Quakers in their speciality of silence) - the surely realised view that the hymn sandwich is of the past and rather past its sell by date, and yet with no idea of what might replace it. Yes the newest book supplement has hymns more like songs, but it is a tweak on the whole. I like services where a central sermon is broken into fragments throughout the service, but again it is a minor change and not always relevant. Unitarianism isn't exactly New Age, and its future depends on how the liberal religious will circulate around the denominations. One might hope that the Church of England could shed a few as it seeks out homophobia and inequality, but if it ordains women as bishops it is more likely than not to get over this most difficult phase in its evolution.

Bizarrely, the more liberal Anglican also draws on the notion of the Holy Spirit: the one that reveals more, and different, the one that allows cultural and belief flexibility. It is not just the neo-Pentecostals. The point was put to me about Karl Barth after a lifetime's effort being a bit fed up with his own theological method, and what if he had moved on to do a theology of the Holy Spirit even from his perspective? It would definitely not be neo-Pentecostal, and imagine it running through the equivalents of say Hans Frei then: it couldn't then end up with a Lindbeck and his frozen Church culture of performance-recognition.

New Wine is not some fantastic outbreaking movement: it is simply a reordering of the Christian minority, and one that attempts to hold belief and the notion of signs and wonders while relaxing culture. The Internet has now levelled the playing field in terms of knowledge and outreach, so that Unitarians or liberal theologies in the mainstream will not be so unknown. Whether the shake-out will be thoroughgoing we wait and see, but the context of movements now are pluralistic choice, secularisation from old institutions, and ordinary and practical including technological ways of majority thinking that do not employ signs and wonders of the supernatural.

Assistance in materal from Hunt, S. J. 'Sociological Methodologies and the Changing Nature of Contemporary Fundamentalism' in Francis, L. J. (ed.) (1999), Sociology, Theology and the Curriculum, London: Cassell, 93-103.

Alternative Provision

My idea for the provision of other oversight for women to be bishops in the church of England. This is a straight question: what is wrong with this?

A parochial church council may issue a Letters of Request to the diocesan bishop according to the diocesan scheme put in place by the diocesan bishop using best practice as built upon in the Church of England. Such a scheme can therefore be updated for improvement.

On receiving the Letter, the diocesan bishop should use the diocesan scheme already in place.

This means that, at a minimum, he or she should consult the parochial church council about its concerns in relation to the celebration of the sacraments and other divine service and the provision of pastoral care. Other processes and consulations may be involved.

Taking the expressed concerns into account, the diocesan bishop delegates another bishop to carry out all leadership and pastoral functions to the parish in his or her expectation of suitability. A trial period may be involved followed by further consultation with the diocesan bishop. The diocesan bishop also has the right to replace such a choice subsequently after further consultation.

Such an additional bishop is not required to subscribe to any statement of faith beyond what all bishops have to affirm when making the Declaration of Assent. The additional bishop in position should take account of diocesan policies and decisions, and hold meetings with the diocesan bishop, but is free to exercise the derived powers of being a bishop in respect of the parishes under the diocesan bishop's delegated care.

The additional bishop chosen must be from the Church of England and be either a diocesan bishop from another diocese, a suffragan bishop of the diocese, a suffragan bishop of another diocese, an assistant bishop of the diocese who is a member of the House of Bishops of the diocesan synod of the diocese; or an assistant bishop of another diocese of the Church of England who is a member of the House of Bishops of the diocesan synod of that other diocese.

The idea is that all the power to decide is with the diocesan bishop. Conservative Evangelicals are not allowed to circumvent this, and they get their bishop with derived powers on the same basis as others. In practical terms the bishop with oversight is the one the opting-out parish consults, but this bishop is always ultimately delegated from above.

Hard Questions for Gay Inclusion

The extension of the previous entries is that to the matter of gay inclusion in ministry and all forms of blessings; it is a matter of religious liberty that, if there is to be gay marriage, then churches should be able to carry out gay marriage.

But there is a core problem, and it has to be faced. I agree with Changing Attitude's campaign, "of course", but there is a difficulty. The latest campaign posting states:

It’s time to proclaim with passion and spiritual enthusiasm Jesus’ gospel of unconditional love and welcome for all.

But is this so? Where, historically, is this outward inclusion made? I see Jesus very much concerned with Jews. Jews are the chosen people - quite a responsibility for them - and the cause is bringing about the Kingdom of God. Jesus was messianic to this effect. When he meets Gentiles, he regards some of them with ignorance and even contempt: let's say, at best, he lacks pastoral skills.

He gets challenged about his attitudes and he changes his mind - he learns better. And this from gospels that are very much pushing Gentile inclusion. In other words, Jesus is likely to have been less Gentile-inclusive than these Gospels (all coated in Pauline influence) make out.

I don't buy it, this 'back to Jesus' purity, like, in the end, I don't buy a Jesus-centred animal rights campaign. Again, as a rabbi, he will have participated in the slaughter of the lamb in the Temple, and his imagery (his beliefs, indeed) are of demons shooting off from people into unclean animals that then run off the cliff edge and kill themselves and their contents as someone gets better. It is the health service of demonic explanation (i.e., rubbish) and at the expense of lesser creatures.

This Jesus in the campaign is a by-word for inclusivity and unconditional love, but it doesn't match up to either the historical or the doctrinal versions. Did Jesus say anything against homosexuality? Probably it never entered his head for comment, because he might only have known that it was something Greeks and Romans did. He did regard marriage as something angelic once in the Kingdom of God, and was thus fiercely against divorce. The Church is considerably more inclusive about divorce than Jesus was.

(By the way, I'm of the view that Jesus probably spoke common Greek as well as Aramaic, as common Greek was the linking language of Jews in the region, so he will have been aware of the wider world and the naughty things it did. It just wasn't his field of concern.)

The theology for gay inclusion has to be a humanist theology. It shouldn't be locked up into the cult-of-an-individual, because that won't support the outcome.

If (as Jeffrey John claims - but how?) God is supposed to accept and value all people equally then it must be based on a broader theology than a Jesus centred one.

The Jesus that supports inclusion - gay inclusion (animal rights too) - is an imagined Jesus, and one that gets caught up in fantasy. It's this notion that Jesus has moral perfection, and he does not.

Deeper on Subservice and Asking

The argument about language and subservience, and the female approach as opposed to the male, starts to look like a justification for male exclusive priesthood!

I'm saying (so far) that Anglican women rise to be bishops and then use the language of subservience, either regarding father God or Jesus Christ. These are above, these are followed, and the language is male. In the myth, God becomes human and a sex is chosen.

When men have used this language of subservience, for donkey's years, they have nevertheless been privileged priests and bishops, so in a line and sharing the gold-dust handed down. So they became used to being in the hierarchy that uses the hierarchical language, and indeed in their churches they have exclusive, hierarchical rules - the bishop is the cornerstone and the lower clergy stand in his place dotted around the bishop's parishes.

Now it becomes important that if women join this hierarchy then they should do so equally, but it becomes difficult to wipe away hundreds of years of split sexual approaches to such religious language.

The female approach to subservient language really was just that, because the role was given from the fixed barrier in place. Indeed there was the all-important mythic impossibility of the semi-deified virgin mother, and made statue (doesn't move, something to look at), for men to dote over while impossible for any woman. The best woman was sexless and mind you don't menstruate.

So the woman rises to the top and joins the full hierarchy. She can now identify with the first women who had leadership, even in the proto-orthodox line, as well as the men, and of course in the many later-on heretical groups where women retained important leadership roles until snuffed out by authority or faded out.

For me, the equality will only be right when the language ceases to be one of subservience. It is important not to 'follow' any human being in a religious doting sense.

And the sex barrier remains, because for a man there will always be participation in that hierarchy and in the 'love' of the fellow man Jesus like a friend or colleague, even a superior one, like a bond, whereas for the woman Jesus will always be that of a lover, or a male friend who could be a lover but is not but with whom she does not bond.

Yes, I know, that there is the gay relationship, where Jesus can be a man's lover. But what of the lesbian, for whom he is a friend but of another sex? Friend, colleague but perhaps still not one to bond with. I understand gay men are often attracted to opposites - I'm not sure how universal this is. I'm not sure how iconic Jesus as an opposite can be to be an object of desire to a gay man; I rather think that the attraction of the religion of Jesus to a gay man is in the ritualistic and theatrical actions of doing the job. But not for some, so again it's hard to generalise. Heterosexual women often choose gay men friends because they are safe: one wonders if Jesus as unavailable is a religious iconic friend in this sense because he is always unavailable - a bit like the devotion to Mary by a gay priest or bishop (she can never become real, she is never sexual to him, as well as having been de-sexed).

I have very close male friends, and no desire to get into any sexual expression with them. This surely comes as some relief. But it doesn't alter the nature of the bond. With a woman, closeness really does come with the sex, and more than that, with repetition. The intimacy comes body to body in a way not so with a man. And you want that intimacy. The woman also invests her emotion into such a relationship.

We hear of nuns who invest their sexual desires into a Jesus icon. But surely most women do not. The relationship is presumably quite cool and, because of subservience, might even be at a critical distance. He really is unavailable.

There is another issue too. The attractive female bishop. There are going to be a number of male priests attracted by the boss, or the boss of other priests. It is going to create mixed up desires in a setting where the desires have been regulated by single sex authority and desexed statue women. Some people are just going to have to learn to be professional, and when relationships start, to declare them when they involve a potential clash of interests. Because start they will because sexual difference and desire have a power that rivals any religious syphoning of the sexual instinct.

My own view, developed over the last few years, is that all forms of cult-of-the-individual are harmful, and this includes devotion to spiritual figures. The Christian religion is built on hierarchy and is therefore damaging: damaging to those trying to build personal authenticity.

There are models of Trinity and Unity that emphasise the social and loving, but all forms of following are necessarily hierarchical. They are either based on dogma or an uninformed league table approach of higher ethical people. What is important, instead, is the way, either some pre-made or discovered versions, or ones you work out for yourself.

I don't think women bishops will ever be equal until the language of Christianity is radically rewritten, but so radically rewritten that it becomes of form of very liberal Judaism or thoroughly and not classically unitarian. Its references to Jesus would have to be at an angle and more occasional, with perhaps more emphasis on transcendence or on ethical human striving.

But until women are bishops, there won't be any rewriting.

Meanwhile, interesting developments in the Church in Wales, where they even had Charles Handy involved in making suggestions for future structures. He is a sort of miracle worker of organisation participation. Trouble is, he does this for firms that are still selling their products. Basically, the Church in Wales is small and collapsing. It is facing widescale social irrelevance, in a setting where various non-conformist groups have vanished chapel by chapel, but it is a single organisation that realises that it may not have a future. Perhaps the odd woman bishop might help there too. Hard to say, but there is nothing unique about the Church in Wales. The Church of England might be desperate to hang on to establishment, but in its attitude towards women and gays it is straining its relationship with state and society.

After all, the replacement amendments in November for the Church of England General Synod might be just as cackhanded as July's, and with no amendments (the cleaner option) still might not achieve the two thirds majority vote needed. And if the vote doesn't achieve the two thirds, and another five years wait before the equality issue returns, can the Church of England keep taking the internal pummeling it gives itself over these predicaments that change its future?

Rising to Subservience

Chatting to a chap at the church Friday morning, with a measure of agreement. He is one of those everything comes together type universalists, and it's a position I've encountered before and tend to resist. But as he seeks simplicity, so am I also in a 'stripping out' mood.

He has a service next in November, and likes to think ahead and let ideas bubble up. I'm more of a production line person, to grab any idea and run with it and make something of it. My service for fellow residents, to be completed this weekend for Monday, is God is a DJ - the result of a comment and a link to some music by Faithless made recently.

He has two ideas. One is the simplicity of ethics and the other is something about heroes, people we look at like Francis David's 'We don't have to think alike to love alike'. I too think that ethics has to come on their own, not pre-set by any kind of theology. He is also into the writings of Karen Armstrong and has re-borrowed her book on The Buddha. But to me, how much is that just construction in tradition, and I said she was far too kind about Muhammad, in the sense of making excuses about raiding camel trains and the disloyal opposition of Jews in Madina, who I regard as morally dubious. This is a problem with universalism - it isn't critical enough.

Where I've changed is that I've stripped out all senses of following individuals - the cult of the individual is probably always damaging.

I see a clash in the whole business of women bishops. I made a comment on Facebook about a recent blog entry against those against women bishops. Now, to be honest, I don't much care about bishops anyway, although the idea of co-ordinating those who facilitate others in a communal tradition is a sensible idea. But given they exist, they should be open to all. But as the argument proceeds and concludes, you get this sentiment:

It is an irony to me that those who most understand the numinous, ethereal, other-ness of divinity, a divinity that reached out to us in human form, like the universe in a grain of sand, could so limit God’s priesthood to what I understand as the original sin: making God (and Jesus as our High Priest) in our own image, when we are called to come ever closer to ‘sharing in Christ’s divinity as [He] shared in our humanity’ (a prayer said by priests as we pour the drop of water into the wine as we prepare the elements (bread and wine) for the Eucharistic prayer reminding, us of the water and blood that flowed from Jesus’ side when the guard pierced Him with a spear to check that He was dead.)

Mary, Mother of Jesus, birthed our Christ through the blood, sweat and tears of a homeless young woman amidst the stench of a working stable, her bemused betrothed beside her. Having chosen such an entry into this world, I doubt very much He is quite as precious about blood, and femininity and clean linen as we dare to suppose Him to be.

To me this is the language of subservience, subservience to a deity believed to be exclusively in one male (note, male - that's what happens when you invest deity in one person, you have to choose the sex). For the life of me, transcendence, if it exists, is a joining up, and is hardly likely to be invested in one male. What of nature and evolution, and the animals, the beauty of equations that produce fractals, the arts, the tribes we fight about and try to overcome, the gift and exchange that binds, even sleep and dreams. What of history, of space, of knowledge that leads to awe? I do not 'follow' a person of little historical record and for which the attachment is a community based on the mythic notion of living after death and returning as a messiah. That's a biological nonsense as well as a thought form long dead for practical purposes.

So as women priests rise up the ecclesiastical pole (if they do), it is all to maintain the language of subservience anyway. The blokes did it because they also had priestly power, pipes of the Christ power, one step below and part of an institution said to be his body. So is this the 'power' that the women want as well? Or will it have a different ring, coming from a background of subservience, to rise and then continue. Like the last remaining miracle (the resurrection) Christ becomes the last remaining man. He only washes your feet so you lick his, in ecclesiastical terms.

It's a nonsense and to be finished. But then, of course, it is goodbye to Christianity. Because, no matter what Christian Unitarians say, Christianity is the idea that Jesus is the Christ, and not some league table winner ethical bloke - because, on that, we don't know and it is rather second hand to the ethical point anyway and you don't follow some bloke like you follow a football team.

Of course you might say Jesus pointed away from himself and to the transcendent (as he understood him, supernaturally) and rather to the effect that Buddha pointed away from himself and to the Dharma. You can say that, but there is the issue about how much the Jesus of history thought he was connected to the coming of the messiah and really whether he took on too much self-assumption (that his tears were necessary for God to get the point and send the messiah). So Jesus is not ego-less at any point. I don't find this attractive at all. It is also a so-what, in that it is for us to point to what matters, to what is important. None of this, anyway, should result in attitudes of subservience. Of course it is plainly offensive that women cannot rise to the managerial top, but if this is to practice subservience then it is the ultimate glass ceiling of all.