NUF Weekend Report by Tony McNeile published in "The Inquirer" November 13th 2004
How Political Should Unitarians Be?
The National Unitarian Fellowship (NUF) weekend held at Great Hucklow this year
had politics as a theme something that should never be discussed along with
religion, people often say. It was a bold venture and had some surprising
outcomes. Revd. Ann Peart, the principal of the Unitarian College Manchester,
was invited to speak on the subject 'How political were the Unitarians of the
past?' and Sir Peter Soulsby on 'How political should Unitarians be now?'
Most of us came to the conclusion that the Unitarians of the past were somewhat
like the Unitarians of the present. They nailed their colours to the masts of
what passionately drove them - not because they were Unitarians but because of
their personal agendas. It was coincidental that they happened to be
Unitarians. Looking back at the characters of the past, historians can discover
that these people were also Unitarians and it is easy to claim them as
primarily working for our cause.
Peter Soulsby spoke of his own Chapel at Leicester, which in the nineteenth
century had been known as the 'Mayor's Nest' because the first six mayors of
the incorporated Borough came from there. Like himself each was driven with a
care to make the city a better place for all to live in and like himself they
were attracted to a Chapel where others of similar ideals would go.
But what is our Unitarian cause? There isn't one! We compared ourselves to the
Quakers who could put banners outside their meeting houses that proclaimed they
were for peace and not war. If Unitarians did that there would be voices of
dissent raised in our Chapels and we would withdraw our banner for the greater
good of harmony within the congregation. Those who are active in their causes
see this as a weakness in our Movement - that we prevent ourselves from being
politically active in anything. On the other hand, we do have special interest
groups within our Movement. There is the Peace Fellowship, Penal Affairs Panel,
the Earth Spirit Network, Psychical Studies Society and others.
We tried an experiment. For an hour we pretended our group was a congregation
and one was a minister trying to persuade them to stand with him and promote
Euthanasia. We realised it was impossible even for this small group of
Unitarians to come to a consensus. We could neither unanimously support the
cause nor entirely reject it. Probably we really were a typical sample of any
Unitarian congregation. What we did realise was that the solution was to belong
to a special interest group on the subject - either one in the Movement or a
national one.
The main conclusion of our weekend: the Unitarian Movement cannot speak or act
with a single voice - neither can any of its congregations, but there are
active Unitarians in many fields and they must either work alone - or with like
minded people in their general community or join a national group.
The Unitarian Movement never did and probably never will act as one. We do need
a networking system so that interest groups can share their expertise and
experiences. What we all have .in common and what we should all concentrate on
is the spiritual community that gathers us together as Unitarians.