On Being a Unitarian

PREFACE THE rejection of traditional forms of religion by ever- increasing numbers of men and women has produced fer- The Lindsey Press, 1-6 Essex Street, London WC 2 ment and crisis in ecclesiastical circles. Can they adapt 0 THE LINDSEY PRESS 1968 to meet changing conditions? Will any form of organized religion meet the needs of those who have left the old forms? These are questions of more than usual interest to Unitarians, who have for centuries provided a home for at least some of the refugees from orthodoxy. During the past few years I have had the privilege of talking with hundreds of people who have wanted to know more about where Unitarians stand with regard to matters which are of deep concern to themselves. Many of these have subsequently found a congenial home within a Unitarian congregation. Yet it remains notoriously diffi- cult to give a short explanation of just what Unitarianism is. Having rejected the idea that a religion can be summed up in a set of words, Unitarians have become very con- scious of the inadequacy of words, though they most cer- tainly do not for that reason remain silent. But the attempt to express in words what it means to be a Unitarian has to be made over and over again in this world of change. It is to respond to this need, however inadequately, that the words which follow have been written. I am most grateful to Greta Stewart for typing the manuscript and to my wife Margaret for reading the proofs and making a number of very valuable suggestions. It will be obvious from the text how much I owe to Unitarian thinkers and writers of the past four centuries, without, Distributors in North America: Unitarian Church of Vancouver, I hope, being too parochial in my appreciation. My 949 West 49th Avenue, chief indebtedness, however, is expressed in the dedication. VANCOUVER 14, British Columbia, Canada Set in 10 on 12 point Old Style Printed by LSG Printers (Lincoln),Chvonicle Building, Waterside North, Lincoln CONTENTS Page 11 AN EPOCHOF HOMELESSNESS • m AN EPOCH OF HOMELESSNESS IN recent years some of the 'stately homes of England' have been blown up with dynamite, their owners having chosen this as the easiest way of coping with the impossi- bility of living in them any longer. Others have crumbled less dramatically into uninhabitable decay. Others again have been converted from homes into museums, show- places or public institutions. Something like this has happened in our century to the mansions of thought, many of them elaborate and im- pressive, which were built by our ancestors to give themselves a home amid the storms of life in a bewildering universe. 'In the history of the human spirit,' wrote Martin Buber, 'I distinguish between epochs of habitation and epochs of homelessness. In the former, man lives in the universe as in a house, as in a home. In the latter, man lives in the world as in an open field, and at times does not even have four pegs with which to set up a tent? Our own age is one of homelessness. There are still, it is true, a few remote and sheltered corners of the earth in which men still live in the homes of their ancestors, follow- ing a traditional pattern of life in which all the parts fall into a familiar and universally accepted scheme handed down from one generation to the next. This was the way most people lived in the past. Each person had his accepted position and function in an apparently unchang- ing order of society. The traditional wisdom of the tribe told him how to think and act in each situation. His life AN EPOCH OF HOMELESSNESS 13 12 ON BEING A UNITARIAN was not easy, but at least he had the reassuring sense of and yet we are often more keenly aware that it holds a feeling at home in the setting in which he lived. great threat. This threat is of a different kind from the the The chances of a person's being born into such a form of ones most commonly feared in past. Our ancestors society in any part of the world grow smaller and smaller lived in apprehension of a failure of the crops, or sudden each year. Modern communications take care of that. and inexplicable epidemics, or natural catastrophes arising Revolutions in people's ways of thinking and living could out of unknown and possibly supernatural causes. For us, in days gone by be confined to certain parts of the world the enemies are more likely to be our own creations, the and leave the other parts totally unaffected. Not so today. products of our new ways of thinking and of doing things. The revolution of our era is world-wide in scope. From a purely intellectual standpoint, the changes The uprooting is most obvious where a person has moved recently made in man's understanding of himself and of far from the surroundings into which he was born. During the world in which he lives have marked a great advance. the present century millions have been uprooted against But they have' often wrought havoc in his emotional life. their will, forced by circumstances over which they had no No longer is there any assurance that all our problems can control to leave their familiar setting and to reconcile be solved by processes of logical thinking, now that depth themselves rapidly to new surroundings, new patterns of psychology has gained some few insights into the vastness thought and behaviour. Millions more move voluntarily, and the potency of the unconscious realms of the human and often continue to move at frequent internals. Each psyche. Gone too is the assurance of living in an intimate such move means another breaking of personal and tradi- universe in which everything revolved around an earth tional ties, a further step away from the old settled order upon which in turn everything revolved around man. The of things. being who once regarded himself as the crown of creation But the process is equally inevitable, though slower, for feels reduced to insignificance by the disclosures of modern those who stay in the same place. The same place no astronomy, till the ancient assurance in the Book of longer remains the same. It rolls away from us even when Deuterolzomy that 'underneath are the everlasting arms' we try to stand still. It is possible to become a stranger in comes far less naturally to the lips than the prescient words the city in which one was born. But even more signifi- uttered by Pascal as he confronted the unfolding of the cantly, it is possible to become a stranger in the universe jn universe at the very dawn of the modern era: 'The eternal which one was born. The old landmarks we once used as silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.' guides are being swept away. The person who desperately The universe pictured by the sciences seems far less wants to live by inherited traditions finds it increasingly warmly*hospitable than the universe as pictured in pre- impossible. scientific days. The world of astrophysics and analytical =The only prediction that can safely be made about the chemistry is not one in which the spirit of man naturally future is that it will be vastly different from the present, feels at home. But the edge would have been taken off and far more so from the past. Change 'is rapid and at our discomfort if the traditional sense of community had times devastating. We know that it holds great promise remained as a reinforcement for the individual. Here too 14 ON BEING A UNITARIAN AN EPOCH OF HOMELESSNESS 15 the old order has broken down. The small group or tribe annihilation hung over the heads of us all by the world's in which a man was known and accepted as a person is no stock-pile of nuclear weapons, stored in quantities well more. In the mass society which has taken its place, the beyond the requirements for the total destruction of life individual feels that he personally counts for less and less. on earth. Subtler but equally real threats to survival, Furthermore, he only too often regarded as a functionary, is such as the soaring rate of over-population and the increas- more or less interchangeable with any number of similar ing pollution of the earth's surface, make their presence functionaries, rather than as a person in his own right. felt more insistently all the time. No wonder that ours is Much has been written and said in recent years about the an age in which philosophies of despair flourish. process of depersonalization in industry, which sets the pattern for so many of our social practices. Just as pro- The same could hardly be said of religion in the traditional gress in thought, by which man hoped to free himself from sense. Like so many other features of the past, religion ancient error, has increased his sense of alienation in the today seems remote and irrelevant so far as great masses universe, so also progress in technology, by which man of people are concerned. It is true that the conventional hoped to free himself from dependence upon the strength bow to God is still socially acceptable, especially among of his own arm, has too often turned him into little more politicians trying to give an air of respectability to their policies and slogans, but this has become no more than one than a art of his own machines.

Load more