Going, Going...

1965: 15800; 2005: 3952, 2006: 3754, 2007: 3711, 2008: 3642, 2009: 3658, 2010: 3672, 2011: 3560, 2012: 3468 (One congregation did not report). 156 congregations: 78 similar, 50 declined, 38 grew in 2012. 63 have less than 10 quota paying members.

Update: others quote 153 congregations with their own base, including places not owned by them, but then 14 fellowships in addition meeting in their own homes or unfixed abodes.

The decline is over 3% a year. I once wrote a piece about Unitarians when 2000 left meeting regionally and staying in touch, assisted by historical money, with the handful of ministers as such training (when in house) at Great Hucklow. This was before the Internet.

However, the existence of such figures does not show that many people in a congregation are more recent, when the older members have been dying off. The average age in Hull, for example, has dropped considerably in the last few years, whilst the raw numbers struggle to maintain themselves and yet do.

Does She Believe It?

A week ago I was thinking of commenting on the service taker's Easter Day service. I didn't do it. He said that at one time a Spring service of renewal he took as a Unitarian cop-out, and one should examine the Christian Easter. Now he's not so sure. But he did, expressing the view that over time the influence of Jesus worked on the followers who told stories about him in a supernatural fashion. I was disappointed in the sermon, though I've some agreement with the general point that before one does general renewal one might tackle what Christians claim.

Use of Bill Darlison's The Gospel and the Zodiac I think was a distraction. The service taker is not convinced either that Mark was written with the Zodiac in mind, though the reading contained agreeable material about the ahistoricity of the passion narrative leading up to the death. The zodiac was not only far from Mark's mind, but irrelevant to the narrative. But I agree that the passion narratives simply aren't historical or reliable. They start with Palm Sunday at the wrong end of the year, and I doubt the Jewish court was involved and the Roman Governor wouldn't have given this set of executions other than a second glance.The boss doesn't bother much with operational routine, even at the edge of empire.

The problem I have with the oft-heard explanation after Jesus's death is that it relies on slow time. I actually think things happened quickly, and furthermore even some Christian Jews (but not all, maybe not most) were getting dangerously binitarian in their view of Jesus for monotheists.

We don't know that the disciples were devastated, but they certainly got out of the way of the killing authorities. The key for me is the expectation of the coming end of time and reality as known, that the Kingdom would sweep all away, and that Jesus followed a suffering servant model for God to act, and did so to its ultimate conclusion. I don't know if Jesus and Judas set things up or if Jesus was just easily picked up for death, hardly needing a plan. (The later atonement beliefs rely on there being bloody authorities in place; it cannot work with democracies and ASBOs).

The key is the ongoing expectation, particularly in the Jewish Church, but that died out. Paul also believed in that closeness of the end, but he turned Jesus into a figure of salvation himself. This is early stuff, within years, though Paul as Saul had no interest in that crucifixion live.

He is only interested in Jews that follow a messianic figure to return, or Jews that follow the Law. You can't do both, he claimed. Saul at first upholds the Law. He keeps the same argument when he flips and upholds the messiah, and the messiah is the only one. It makes more sense if the world is close to completion to have a messiah. The Law he argues is a holding device until now. On such an argument he can accommodate Gentiles who'd like a more monotheistic argued faith enjoyed by the Jews but not so available to varieties of polytheistic paganism.

The early Christians, including Jews, will have been pregnant with expectation and excited - charismatic, in our words - and highly supernatural in outlook (as was Jesus). That reality where the stars fluttered (not so high up, they thought) was coming to them.

I keep to the view that the tomb tradition is late. It is a late story explained within the story by women as witnesses told not to tell anyone. The real impact is Paul's, and then we have the meals by which Jesus or his transformation is the guest to come. Once he is dead, he either has to become someone that matters or fades away, and Paul fixes him up for cultural transformation in a way that the Jewish Church could not. As the eschatology dies down, the salvation figure starts to arise more centrally, and there is more looking back for looking forward.

Christianity is, in the end, a cult of an individual. This is what we moderns can see and what I cannot understand. I don't 'follow' individuals.

I've been reading some of Sarah Coakley's views delivered at Salisbury Cathedral. Death - it is accomplished.  She is an intelligent woman all right and she is clear that this is John's perspective, though I'm not sure she's right in seeing Jesus as simply "God/Man" under John.

A cosmic (remote from historical grounding) divinity he may be in there but not simply God given statements of subservience. Perhaps John is actually proposing a cosmic Superman that took on others' sins in the pre-scripted drama. Our hope resides in what was there done, says she, in the one death then. But what is the mechanism of this? It is not stoicism, not passivity, not cosmic power. But she is just making an assertion of a believer's joining in with it is finished, for which there is no mechanism proposed other than participating in the cult of an individual.

I do think that the Christian's faith is in vain, in the narrow cultic sense. Left with no mechanism for crucifixion, what is the resurrection then? She says it is not three impossible things to believe before breakfast, but rather three things to do: let go, as a kind of personal death, to turn and turn again (as doubt is present) "to keep longing for and loving him" and then see, clearly, the Christ.

Now there is something Buddhist about this, in that you give up the selfhood, and then go into something of a mind clearance turning around but with a longing for love, and then a clarity of mind opens up. But that's the process and quite enough: again, why a cult of an individual?

Resurrection may not be a gritting of the teeth in bad times before you can get to the good times; something may well have to die and be laid to rest to clear the decks for the good. But in a reality where the dead rot and quickly, you'd better stay alive to experience the good times.

The issue regarding the resurrection is not whether we die to self, turn around and then see clearly; it is whether a man died and that same consciousness was present and directive afterwards in encounters with his followers. I'm saying no, that the dead human is dead and that's it. If there are other cosmic possibilities (say consciousness has a quantum aspect that goes on beyond a brain) then there is nothing unique. The whole view of resurrection was about bodies dead that arise; Jesus was the first, but because he obviously hasn't kept appearing to people in a Church-official capacity, the resurrection was followed by an ascension and the Christian unique (then Muslim too) second coming. Jesus was made to ascend to tell Christians why there was no more in the way of appearances, once they had legitimated leaders and finally a congregation.

It is a myth, and Sarah Coakley is intelligent enough to know it. It is a myth about letting something give up in order that something new can really come about. But then she speaks within the story and doesn't historicise it (indeed, she accepts the limits of history), and she dodges whether the same consciousness directed a renewed body and met his followers as he did when he was more obviously human.

No. He was an evolved human being, like all the rest of us: an accident of evolution after those dinosaurs were removed. It hardly needs saying but to some it has to be said. Our cosmic end on this earth is based on the sun's life and our behaviour with technology; it has nothing to do with the cult of an individual, other than the possibilities from violent competition such cults encourage among a few of its followers.

Government Making Enemies

The Tories assume that we only care for ourselves, so if we are all right then bugger the individual who isn't. This 'Work shall make you free' government - except there isn't enough to go round and it is being spread ever more thinly - thinks that everyone in work is some version of white van man, who gives a shit about no one else except himself or his own family.

Not so. We live in a community, and it matters to those in work that those out of it at least can live reasonably while they look to get work. The language of punishment that suits millionaire George Osborne isn't that of others equally struggling who believe in society and community.

At least we know for sure why there is a bedroom tax. It is little to do with redistributing the housing stock, but rather to make enemies of those who can't find work.

People keep their curtains shut in the morning because they are trying to keep the expensive heat it; though now more sunshine means it is perhaps better to open the curtains. Osborne, or his mansion-borrowing sidekick, Iain Duncan Smith, wouldn't understand this. They are a bunch of privileged selfish gits who think that by making enemies others will vote for them.

How on earth did we end up with a government like this? I didn't vote for them, but for the Liberal Democrats on an entirely different manifesto. Bye bye Liberal Democrats, your punishment is coming. We were told by Cameron of a 'compassionate Conservatism', but that was a load of rubbish. They have turned into a government of a viciousness even Margaret Thatcher avoided, and she loved making enemies. But her enemies were institutions that had strength about them, often vested interests that, rightly or wrongly, she thought she should attack. Perhaps we were left with too few defences and the Tories have just gone for ordinary people; Blair's Labour never restored institutions that defended ordinary people.

This Labour Party and others, like the Green MP and the SDLP, have got to look for every opportunity to bring this coalition down. If they do they will be well rewarded. See how weak and fearful are the Liberal Democrats - clinging to the Tories before the avalanche of death gets them both - but try and winkle them off their masters. And don't join in the rhetoric of deserving and undeserving poor that satisfies the selfish Tories. This government is turning people into paupers with nothing left to lose and the faster it can be removed the better.

Throw Them Out

The Conservative Party has proved itself to be the 'Nasty Party' But the Liberal Democrats cannot wriggle out of this one.

I'm not going to join in with petitions to ask Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week when he pays more than that casually for a meal in a restaurant just for himself. We know how his supposed empathy turned into empatory and then just tory. He knows he is defending the indefensible with the bedroom tax.

Those who can get out of it will do so quickly, and then after this we are going to see people stuck and living in abject poverty. There isn't the housing stock available to effect the apparent intention of the policy, and this intention has long been a lie. The policy simply has to change. Even changing it to allow one spare bedroom, that is making it +1 than it is, would be a relief and improvement. You could at least then argue that everyone gets a room for a carer or a grandparent to stay. What cunts they are in government to deny people even this.

The Tories don't care because these are not their electorate. But if they think they can appeal to poorer workers, they can't, as they are even worse off with the bedroom tax as, very often, they end up losing the lot of what they do get. Again the Liberal Democrats cannot escape their responsibility: they cannot claim just the things they favour. The Liberal Democrats are not progressive, not seeking to include those at the bottom. Electorally, they will be destroyed: Eastleigh only told them that the Tory voter might as well vote Liberal Democrat (whereas it was thought to be the other way around). If the Tories are destroyed by the coalition and by UKIP I for one will be delighted, but I want the Liberal Democrats to be severely punished for betraying their electorate. I won't be fooled again. I can't wait and let's hope those who have been downtrodden can at least get to the polling stations to throw this lot as far as they can be thrown.

The Daughter I did Meet

So I have seen the daughter I never knew I had and yet knew rather well at one point in my life. Truth is stranger than fiction. Caroline, who is now thirty two (which I can barely believe), approves of this blog entry and will be talking about it herself this evening to her congregation as she makes another rather important announcement to them.

Let's go back to 1980. In those days friends and I had a social contact with those who went to a Methodist church. I was agnostic then and we were marginal to the core participants. But we joined in with some social activities. In that year they held a district all-night disco at Malton and Norton, in May, and then came the celebrated Midnight Ramble in the moors on the longest day. A group from Hull went to both events. This was the first year I kept my diary, so I have been able to recall both events very well.

During the disco, two of us males from Hull (and I won't tell who the other was - but it is written down!) went upstairs from the hall with three girls from York. One of them was too nervous to join in, but let's say I and he learnt that girls actually used their mouths and then one of them wanted to "know what it is like" and the other said OK too. He was a bit hopeless and I thought I withdrew quickly enough, let's say, and was quick with both of the participants, and it had never worried me since. One of the reasons I wanted to go on the Midnight Ramble a month later was to meet this main lass and find out who she was. I wanted to go out with her if she would, even if she did come from York, because she had been willing enough at the disco. And then, if not her, there was her also willing friend. But the two never appeared at the Midnight Ramble, only the third who kept her distance and said nothing much. I recall in those days being rather more youthful, responsive and repetitive than I can be now, and that May night was the evidence.

I didn't know anything about it, but apparently there was something of a local scandal at York, and two families moved away rather rapidly. My own family had no connection with the Methodists, and if anyone locally knew no one was telling. I don't think they did know and I for one knew absolutely nothing, back in Hull.

In Wakefield, Gillian (as I have now discovered her name) had a baby girl and despite this she attracted a boyfriend who took the year old on as his and then they had more children. But he died last year, and her daughter Caroline was only then told that he wasn't her real father. So I have met Caroline, and mum Gillian again. Caroline has had her own life of course but she regularly sees her mother. Caroline wanted to find her biological father and conducted a search and found out about me, and of course I am all over the Internet. Then she realised what an encounter she'd had already.

See, I'd already met her. In 2002-3 I was doing teacher training in Hull and, doing modern foreign languages, there was this student, Caroline; and during the academic weeks I sort of mixed with everyone but started chatting to her more and more. It was, like, I really fancied her but also told myself she was far too young. I was 42 and 43 and she was 21 and had only just finished her degree. What I didn't realise, of course, and could not, was that I was looking into a part genetic reflection. She looked a bit like me, and let's face it she also looked like a lass I'd fancied years back at the all-night disco.

More than this, she said that if she hadn't done modern foreign languages she'd have done RE like me. She was always interested in my religious views, which in 1994-2004 were Unitarian if somewhat on the edge. She herself was Christian, and in Wakefield the family had switched to the Church of England - she said her grandparents had been staunch Methodists but in Methodist terms were more 'Wesleyan' and quite high. So we had these increasingly advanced theological discussions during breaks.

This sense of fancying wasn't helped when she went to the same school practice as me, where the conversation continued and she was interested in what I was teaching and doing. That's when I did a drawing of her (see right) and she says now this is a really good and shows her personality (I kept it quiet then). The second practice was something then of a 'loss' when I missed her company. Often she didn't talk alone but there was a friend with her - well, at least at university itself.

When in early 2006 I investigated how many who'd trained were still in teaching a few years later - 50% only - she was one of those who had left the profession. I got out of schools too. Someone still in touch said she didn't like the status of foreign languages in schools and couldn't do the classroom discipline along with the lack of progress made by pupils. This she's confirmed: only it was worse - she realised her career mistake while on her second practice.

I do wonder if I'd have crossed the age gap. No, surely not. She, though, never considered it. Of course as soon as I met her I recognised her and she'd already realised who I was in her investigations. But one result of our talks was that she went forward for ordination and training in the Church of England and was accepted into the process. She started training as quickly as 2006 and was a curate by 2009, priested in 2010. She was safe from my longings because all the time there was the other person I used to chat with, and she was and is still with her. It is because of her - her partner - that she's just handed in her notice to the bishop. Her friend then was before a chemistry student (not doing teacher training) and Jenny now works in the food industry, commuting to Pontefract.

For Caroline, Justin Welby isn't a new beginning but is the last straw. She could not possibly live the lie any longer now and is joining the OEC. In the OEC every bishop but the Archbishop is now a woman! She said it has been ignored, really, when it comes to those Churches that have argued in favour of equal marriage. The only thing is, she won't get paid and will, in effect, have to be self-employed as a minister and rely somewhat on Jenny. The announcement of her leaving is this evening, and Jenny will be by her side.

So I've met Caroline at quite a time. As for Gillian, she lives in social housing, and April for her means the vicious bedroom tax. Caroline, again like me, was Liberal Democrat at the election and won't be fooled again.

In fact, not only was she voting Liberal Democrat but she was at one point starting to rise in the organisation and was considering being a candidate. But the coalition was precisely what she was against, and having stuck with her membership for a while has left the party. Now she wonders how on earth it can allow for something like the bedroom tax. It may be a nasty, vindictive Tory policy but the Liberal Democrats have signed up to it. Who'd have thought it. This is no April Fool, but bloody serious to the least who can afford it.

So on this day there seems to be much to make up but then at least I did know her for a short time. It almost seems like there is something genetic in parallel experience - definitely not astrology! Left to my own devices, though, had I behaved at university as I did in Malton and Norton, I might now be in a generational minefield of contradiction, but wiser younger heads exist elsewhere. But what of the other lass with Gillian (called Julie, I have been told) and her offspring? It doesn't have to be my one time friend's. Indeed, on that night, he was a bit of a flop, and I wasn't, and that was the point. Well, they remained Methodists (like Jenny's family, apparently) and moved to Pontefract. But that's all we know, if that.

Easter Economics

I don't believe in Easter, that is to say I don't believe that the crucifixion of one man had any cosmic significance nor do I believe in 'the' resurrection afterwards. I don't actually believe that the Passion narrative is reliable. There is a point where reinterpretations and re-explanations simply give way to non-observance in any sense.

Nevertheless, there is only so much one can take of 'let's celebrate spring' all of which is a little delayed this year. Spring is not a hope but an angle of the globe against the sun, so yes it's OK to know where you are but let's not overdo it. We overdo it partly thanks to visiting preachers who replicate others.

The other 'tactic' is a kind of religious parallelism, where last Sunday the service taker, a minister, contrasted September 2001 in New York with her visit ten years on, and wove that into the spring theme. So you have devastating loss, but a rebirth that still takes into account that loss. More was made of it by reference to blue skies. But, I wonder, is it a theology of anything, or is it just observation that, after some nasty event, people just have to recover and move on. They don't forget but might forgive, and even those who don't forgive just have to move on for their own good.

For me, the Christian myth derives from that actuality, rather than treating the myth as primary (via which there is unique salvation). The reality is that the loss that happens in some events is real and cannot be glossed over, but there is a point where - the tragedy recognised - you do carry on.

In one sense the present economic troubles are continuing because there has not been a tragedy, a death, or a collapse. We still have liquid money bubbling about to try and avoid economic death. The government bailed out the banks and now banks are being used to bail out governments. Governments are using quantitative easing to hold a baseline insead of allowing money to flush out, basically to disappear. The danger is that once the economy does move we will hyperinflate. Nothing died, and without dying it can't resurrect. Also capitalism has died; if we do hyperinflate then if democracy has anything to do with it powers will be needed to direct economic activity after it continues to fail.

Recently the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced assistance to buy property, as if he wants a quick fix as of before: instead of allowing prices of property to fall, this will allow them to rise, and simply is an attempt to move money from the banks (where it is stuck) into purchases of property, that is the appearance of economic activity. But it isn't. It simply says I want inflation to be back in a property bubble, moved from a bank dormant bubble.

Evolution is itself based on death: the individual units die as the genes get stronger hosts; and really the economy had to die before it was allowed to recover. But great interests seem to have prevailed. We are left in a position where a resurrected economy won't be resurrected. It'll just be as it was, uncrucified. Yet, uncrucified, it is like a dying plant, but not dead, and cannot flourish, and somehow has to die first before it lives again. In other words, Cyprus and Greece are better off defaulting and starting again than this constant management to bob along the bottom with successive bailouts that go nowhere. No one is flushing the system clean.

Yorkshire (or a Fragment of) Comes to Hull

It was an all day job at the Yorkshire Unitarian Union meeting on Saturday, with examples of people who'd come a long way in the snow (Skipton) and those who didn't, and didn't come from relatively near either. A morning discussion on prayer in worship (though I did about impossible readings, however impressive the reading - I picked on the intellectual constipation of Catherine Pickstock who was writing about liturgy in my example. I was quite impressed with North Lincolnshire-living, Doncaster-attending, Jim's reworking and generalised Lord's Prayer, which he contrasted with a purist reworking of apparent original meaning. Jim Stearn and I clash, but contrary to common view I quite like his intensity and I genuinely thought he was on to something here, though I had a go at him for trying to find an enemy in a 'secular' humanist if no one else. What he did was try to retain the rhythm while extend the meaning to be inclusive and broader in scope.

Begetter of life in every creature,

In thy dimensionless domain,

Be thy revered and blessed teacher;

May thy harmonious peace obtain,

Right actions shape a better future

And our daily needs sustain.

From the poison of guilt may we be free

Through the power of mutual charity.

Guide us safely along thy ways,

Renew us, today and all our days.

Spirit of life, while our hearts unlearn

All the creeds that wrong Thy name

Still let our hallowed chalice burn

With our faith's undying flame.

The latter bit is a Unitarian identity tagged on, which actually can be used on its own.

Jim himself has managed to read all of James Martineau's The Seat of Authority, written in pure Victorian. This was towards an MA, and he was keen to show me that Martineau was a Kant individualist rather than a Hegel man. But, I asked, while agreeing, what if Martineau's actual result was a Hegel like progression? And for me this radical individualism (as the seat of authority) has to be combined with the Martineau the liturgist who employed an evolved behind-the-times more-beliefs-than-he-had collective liturgy that had the effect of crashing one into the other. You end up with a first postmodernism of this collective utterance while it's all individualist.

These days service takers almost write it from the beginning every time; indeed one old (rather good) publication on service taking said don't assume that because it is from a book that a prayer must be better than your own. And what of service books to reduce the effort - that they create copyright problems? This has been easily solved when I have produced them (as I have been) (also for emergency service taking) by simply writing everything yourself from scratch.

What I talked about was liturgical principles, going from one end of the service to the other, and the order involved as a kind of journey.

Jim mentioned to me something I'd not heard about, that if 20 start up what is that if 20 close? He was referring to an extended discussion at the more business meeting of the YUU in the afternoon. The scheme is 20-20 or such, and I'm one of those who'll look at it further. There is this new scheme of money gathering that, when it reaches £100,000 (as it nearly has), will start to deal in either nearly defunct or new congregations assuming a plan and demographics worked out, for substantial payments. But a district had made a big investment to this, on the basis that the £100,000 input (which it seems it must be) comes to its district. That seems to me to say that others in other districts that don't lay on such a restriction will end up subsidising those that invest a chunk that do lay on a restriction - but of course a lot of these funds do come with restrictions. And money isn't exactly the problem. As Jim also said to me, when you become a Unitarian you attach yourself to managing a lot of money. I just wonder about all this: for me, congregations grow as a result of social movements and our (market) relationship with other churches. Inclusion and identity matter now, and other churches have made a bad fist of this, and the Unitarians done rather well and known. So let's see if a number of congregations "bounce", which is when the clique in charge that held it back gives up, or genuinely new people come along and act as a seed for more that causes a congregation bobbing along the bottom to recover.

The 20-20 approach is one that brings into issue the question of planning your future, and what was once known (but never happened) as Development Ministry. The YUU has been considering having a YUU-wide minister, one that would train others in church ministry - a "bishop" as I put it.

We also discussed motions to the General Assembly, like the animals one that seemed like 'how can you oppose this?' when its specifics mean there is more to it, and plenty in the Assisted Dying motion for a Church position that may well not get the approval that might be assumed.