The cost of civility—A politico-theological meditation following the judgement hand-down at the Supreme Court this week
READINGS Exodus 19:16-25, 20:1 (NRSV) The moments before God gives the Ten Commandments and other laws to the people On the morning of the third day there was thunder and […]
The Muslim/Unitarian encounter and some personal reflections following a visit to the Darul Uloom Birmingham Islamic High School
Darul Uloom Islamic School INTRODUCTION On Monday last week I had a very interesting and positive visit to the Darul Uloom Islamic School in Birmingham. I was invited by the […]
A non-prophet organisation?
In his memoir, the philosopher Norman Malcolm recalls that Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed “that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without […]
Working Together in Conversational Motion—or why we are more like a wing than a conventional church community
READINGS: WORKING TOGETHER by David Whyte from The House of Belonging ©1996 Many Rivers Press We shape our self to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. […]
Not the beginning of a new religion (re-ligio) but its end (de-ligio)?—A new-materialist reading of Pentecost
READINGS: Poem No. XXII in “A Shropshire Lad” by A. E. Housman From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky,The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here […]
The freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today “The newer testament—the Gospel according to this moment”
Becoming “Free Spirits” and “Archeologists of Morning” Andrew J. Brown Second Edition—2019 A revised version of a talk given at the “Sea of Faith” Annual Conference, Leicester University, July 2016 […]
The case for an Ecstatic Humanism—being “skeptics with naturally religious minds” or “open-minded ‘reverent’ humanists”
READING Some of you will recall that I recently introduced you to a passage by the philosopher Henry Bugbee, a key part of which used the word ‘ecstasis’. He wrote: […]
“More dangerous than an unanswered question is an unquestioned answer” — a meditation on the need to leave behind the old Unitarian doctrine that “God is One” and move from IS to FLOWING
READING: Guide by A. R. Ammons You cannot come to unity and remain material:in that perception is no perceiver: when you arriveyou have gone too far: at the […]
What else can one to do in so-called dark times but offer the civil humanism of neighbourly love?
READING: From “Men in Dark Times” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970, pp.22-23) by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975): The question is how much reality must be retained even in a world become inhuman […]