It started with a service delivered by a man called Julian.
His presence was gentle, you could feel the kindness in his heart just from the way he stood, smiled and welcomed you as a stranger without looking like heβs trying to work you out. Genuine friendliness is always refreshing when you live in a city.
Faith charities delivering public services 'could increase discrimination'
By Kaye Wiggins, Third Sector Online, 16 May 2011
Contracts should be awarded only to groups that have demonstrated commitment to equality, Unitarian body warns Public Administration Select Committee
Giving more responsibility for delivering public services to local faith charities as part of the big society agenda could result in increased discrimination against marginalised groups, according to the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.
Derek McAuley, chief officer of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, told Third Sector he was concerned that gay and lesbian public sector staff who were moved to local faith charities under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations might face discrimination by other staff at those charities.
His submission to the PASC says: "Non-religious people and those not seen to confirm to the dominant ethos of a religious body, such as being in an unmarried relationship or divorced and being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered, could find themselves subject to discrimination.
"Contracts should therefore only be awarded to faith-based organisations that have a public commitment to, and can demonstrate compliance with, the promotion of equality in line with the commitment of recent governments."
The "Big Society", a policy much promoted by the Government, and built around social action, public service reform and community empowerment, needs to be inclusive. You cannot have a "Big Society" and then implicitly or explictly exclude and marginalise some groups. Unitarians have long worked to promote social justice and led many initiatives for social improvement. We have never applied religious tests to our work.
We need joined up policies. One risk is that encouraging faith groups to be more active in delivery of public services could in some cases lead to a conflict with equality and diversity policy.
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Are they by any chance related? Yes they are. James and Kate Middleton are descendants of the Martineaus, a prominent family of Unitarians.
"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do."It's very exciting to see more UK Unitarian bloggers and twitterers, and I look forward to reading Sue's blog.
UUA Presents "It Gets Better" Video
The UUA Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries recently released a video in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth, encouraging them to seek out UUism as a welcoming faith community that affirms each person's worth, regardless of race, creed, gender, or sexual orientation.
The "It Gets Better" project is a collection of videos produced by people across the globe aimed to offer hope and inspiration for LGBT teens.
Watch the video now.
"The Kingdom of God, as the rule of God in the heart, the love and service of him, and the consequent love and service of all men as children of the one Father, that is not limited by any doctrinal definitions. No one but a Christian ever did, or ever could, work for the Church. But all can work for the Kingdom of God, not Christians only but all who consciously own God, whether Christian or Jew, Mohammedan [sic] or Brahmin, or any other of those to whom God has revealed himself "by diverse portions and in diverse manners" (The Idea of the Kingdom of God, R. Travers Herford, Lindsey Press 1929 p. 13).
This blog has started from my desire to see the development of Unitarian communities in the UK. Many of the approaches that have been suggested recently take a marketing approach where Unitarianism is a product and if we only marketed it differently we would 'sell' more of it. The model adopted in this blog is one which sees local Unitarian communities as just that - communities - which most community members are committed to developing.
This blog is born out of a desire to make a positive contribution to UK Unitarians' continued discussions (or not) about how good governance works and to offer some hints and wrinkles about how to make it work for Unitarian communities wherever they are, however big or small.
I am happy to answer any questions posted as comments on the original blog post.
In addition, I will be highlighting online those congregations that have made progress along the steps of the scheme. Congregations, please let me know if and when you have reached any particular level. I will then add you to an online honour roll, which will also help seekers to find the congregations that are keen to have them!
New President - Neville Kenyon
Friendly and forward-looking Neville Kenyon, a life-long Unitarian who lives in Bury, Lancashire, was installed as the President of the General Assembly for 2010-2011 at the Annual Meetings in Nottingham on 11 April. He is emphasising the openness and flexibility of Unitarianism, and his wish to encourage the quest for spiritual understanding and innovation, by choosing 'Nurture Your Freedom' as his theme.
Both practical and imaginative, Neville has a long history of energetic service to the denomination. He joined the Unitarian Young People's League in the 1950s and was its President in 1961. He has been a member of the General Assembly's Council and served from its inception on the successor body, the Executive Committee, until he was elected Vice-President in 2009. He is passionate about publicising Unitarianism and is a member of the General Assembly's Communications Commission and a Director of the Board of the Inquirer Publishing Company (2004) which produces the Unitarian paper, The Inquirer. He is chairman of the congregation of Bury Unitarian Church. Among his many achievements is the adoption by the General Assembly of a colour-scheme, typography and imagery which gives the Movement a 'consistent identity'. He is a steadfast supporter of any cause he takes up, is unfailingly genial, and, with a flair for selecting silk ties and elegant suits, is very possibly the best-dressed man in the Movement!
Neville recognises that Unitarians are in an ideal position to provide, in the 21st century, a home for those who have a spiritual hunger but are repelled by the creeds and dogmas of more orthodox faith groups. He says "We are in an ideal position, to reflect a growing imperative for a spirituality unfettered by narrow creeds and dogmas." He wants to encourage social networking between the newer members throughout the country. "People come to us from a myriad of backgrounds", he says "but they have all made a journey to find their spiritual home with us. The mutual support provided by networking on the web adds a valuable communication dimension for newcomers stretching beyond their local congregation".
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New Vice President - Rev Dr Ann Peart
The Reverend Dr Ann Peart, a distinguished Unitarian scholar and leading woman minister was appointed as vice-president of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches at the close of the Denominations Annual Meetings in April 2010 in Nottingham. She is looking forward to visiting Unitarian congregations and other groups both in Britain and overseas. "I am particularly interested" she says, "in exploring what keeps such a diverse collection of groups and individuals together."
Β» Read more
The Rev Alex Bradley, of the Unitarian Christian Association, said: "Different people see Jesus in different ways. Everyone to some extent has an image of Him, and writers and artists should be free to form their own interpretation.Excellent, well said. I blogged about this on my personal blog the other day:
"Religious freedom remains indivisible, and freedom of expression remains a core value of democratic civilisation."
I was talking to some fellow Unitarians on Sunday and we all said how much we are looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, as the ideas in it sound very Unitarian. We also remarked that the Unitarian concept of God is far closer to Dust than to the Authority, since many Unitarians are pantheists or panentheists who believe that the Divine is immanent in the world.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (May 10, 1900 β December 7, 1979) was an English-American astronomer who in 1925 was first to show that the Sun is mainly composed of hydrogen, contradicting accepted wisdom at the time.She was also a Unitarian and a member of First Parish and Church in Lexington, Massachusetts. According to Owen Gingerich:
Cecilia Payne wrote a doctoral dissertation, and so in 1925 she became the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe (now part of Harvard) for her thesis: "Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars". Astronomer Otto Struve characterized it as "undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy". By applying the ionization theory developed by Indian physicist Megh Nad Saha she was able to accurately relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures. She showed that the great variation in stellar absorption lines was due to differing amounts of ionization that occurred at different temperatures, and not due to the different abundances of elements. She correctly suggested that silicon, carbon, and other common metals seen in the Sun were found in about the same relative amounts as on Earth, but that helium and particularly hydrogen were vastly more abundant (by about a factor of one million in the case of hydrogen). Her thesis thus established that hydrogen was the overwhelming constituent of the stars. When her dissertation was reviewed, she was dissuaded by Henry Norris Russell from concluding that the composition of the Sun is different from the Earth, which was the accepted wisdom at the time. However, Russell changed his mind four years later when other evidence emerged. After Payne-Gaposchkin was proven correct Russell was often given the credit.
She published several books including:
"Stars of High Luminosity" (1930),
"Variable Stars" (1938),
"Variable Stars and Galactic Structure" (1954),
"Introduction to Astronomy" (1956),
"The Galactic Novae" (1957)
"Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin : an autobiography and other recollections" (1984) ed. Katherine Haramundan)
Payne-Gaposchkin was a many-sided personality known for her wit, her literary knowledge, and for her personal friendships with individual stars. She became the first woman in the history of Harvard University to receive a corporation appointment with tenure, and the first woman department chair in 1956.ΒMy other Finding Ada blogposts:
Jana Sims of the Institute of Education in London spoke on Mechanics' Institutes in Sussex and Hampshire. The leafy counties of southern England aren't normally associated with Mechanics Institutes, but as Jana revealed there were plenty of them, in places like Brighton, Lewes and Winchester, many founded by members of the Unitarian church. The coastal ones ran classes in navigation, and any ideas of southern softness were dispelled by 5.30am classes in science and philosophy. Music played an important part in most Institutes, dispelling the myth of Engand as a non-musical nation, and although the early 19th century saw resistance to womens' attendance, that was largely resolved by the 1840s.It is fairly well-known that Unitarians founded many educational establishments and projects, but I hadn't come across this one before!
William Johnson Fox became minister of the congregation in 1817 which in 1824 it built a new chapel in South Place. This the Society occupied for 102 years and the name is still commemorated in the title of the Society, although it moved from South Place in 1926 to build its present home in Red Lion Square which was opened in 1929.Perhaps those 19th century humanists and progressives would have been surprised at the modern evolution of Unitarianism, which now includes humanists, non-theists, theists, Pagans and Buddhists, among others.
In 1831, Fox bought the journal of the Unitarian Association, The Monthly Repository, of which he was already editor; for five years this was virtually the first ancestor of the Ethical Record. Verse was contributed to it by both Tennyson and Browning -- the latter always spoke of Fox as his"literary father" ; the contributors of articles included John Stuart Mill, Leigh Hunt, Harriet Martineau, Henry Crabb Robinson and a fearless iconoclast, William Bridges Adams, whose outspoken series of articles on marriage, divorce, and other social questions split the South Place congregation again. So came about another evolutionary step that included severance from the Unitarian movement and established South Place as the centre of advanced thought and progressive activity. Among the causes with which Fox identified himself and the Society were the spread of popular education and the repeal of the Corn Laws. In 1847 he entered Parliament whilst remaining minister at South Place for several more years.
The most outstanding of Fox's successors in that position was an American, Moncure Conway, after whom the society's present home is named. He had adopted an uncompromising anti-slavery position at home and came to England in 1863 on a speaking tour. He settled at the South Place Chapel from 1864 until 1897, except for a break of seven years (from 1885 to 1892) during which he returned to America and wrote his famous biography of Thomas Paine. During that interval, in 1888, under the leadership of Stanton Coit, the name South Place Religious Society was changed to the South Place Ethical Society.
Please join us on March 24 for Ada Lovelace DayAda Lovelace was briefly associated with Unitarians; her mother funded Red Lodge in Bristol, which was run by Mary Carpenter, and Ada was taught science by Benjamin Carpenter, Mary's brother (Woolley, 2002).
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.
Womenβs contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesnβt matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about β everyone is invited. Just sign the pledge below (click βpledgeβ after you have completed the reCaptcha) and publish your blog post any time on Wednesday 24th March 2010.
Paganism 101: A Unitarian Exploration of the New Paganism
by Louise Bunn with Fritz Muntean and Kara Cunningham
Todayβs Pagans revere the Earth and all its creatures, seeing all life as interconnected, and striving to attune ourselves to the cycles of nature. Pagan practices are rooted in a belief in immanence β the concept of divinity residing within.
The many contemporary Pagans who have found a home in the Unitarian community are grounding our work in the rational structure, the intellectual balance, and the humanist core values that have descended to us from the Enlightenment. Weβre working to develop a religiosity that is entirely compatible with, and complementary to, modern Unitarian rationality.
The new curriculum represents contemporary Paganism as:An interactive curriculum in 10 sessions including:
- A thoroughly contemporary and well-tested approach to Mystery.
- A performative, lively way of attending to the rhythms, wisdom, and demands of Nature.
- A way of using the richness of myth and ritual to build religious community.
- student lesson plans
- leaders' guides related articles
- reading lists
- an audio selection of chants
Manchester Liberal Jewish Community has joined with local Unitarians in celebrating the amendment to the Equality Bill which will lift the current ban on Civil Partnerships being held in places of religious worship. The vote was passed in the House of Lords on Tuesday 2 March, by 95 votes to 21.Congratulations to all concerned. This is marvellous news.
The amendment to the Equality Bill was jointly sponsored by the Unitarians, Liberal Judaism and the Quakers, with support from other inclusive religious communities such as the Metropolitan Community Church.
The Reverend Jane Barraclough, minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester city centre, was enthusiastic about the news: "At last (if the bill is passed) liberal people of faith can register their partnerships in their places of worship. We can welcome all those who share our progressive and tolerant values to our churches and chapels and celebrate the blessing of their relationships and their lives together."
Equality, diversity and justice are core values for both Liberal Jews and Unitarians. Both movements have welcomed lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people into their congregations for many years. Openly LGBT people participate fully in community life and leadership in both movements, which includes some serving as rabbis and ministers. Both movements are to begin amending orders of service for same-sex commitment ceremonies.
Tim Moore, a member of Cross Street Chapel and Associate Member of MLJC added, "I am very proud to be so closely involved in two of the inclusive religious movements who have taken a unified stand for equality and tolerance and against prejudice and discrimination. The latest amendment on civil partnerships is just one more success in the growing national campaign for full marriage equality for LGBT people."
"Liberal Jews, Unitarians, Quakers and their supporters have witnessed to their faith based on conscience, guided by reason, and tested in welcoming communities. We will continue working with our partners on looking into ways of furthering the campaign in the North West for marriage equality."
In Gaskell's estimation, true Christianity was not to be found in organized denominations nor in liturgy nor in theology. She believed and acted on a religion of works, "the real earnest Christianity which seeks to do as much and as extensive good as it can." Local action for change by those most intimately concerned, not government legislation, was her solution to social problems. Those who have should help those who have not. For her such charity began at or near home. She took her motto from Thomas Carlyle, "Do the duty that lies nearest to thee." Unitarian rationalist feminist journalist Frances Power Cobbe, after reading a story by Gaskell, wrote, "it came to me that Love is greater than knowledge β that it is more beautiful to serve our brothers freely and tenderly, than to hive up learning with each studious year."
The new website works better in larger screen resolutions, and has a more modern look to it, but you can still find your way around if you are more familiar with the old style of the site.It's a new day for UUA.org! Our new home page addresses topics of interest to newcomers to Unitarian Universalism, including a video feature and an interactive banner highlighting our principles and beliefs. A short "Find a Congregation" form makes it easier than ever to look for a local congregation. People already familiar with our faith may want to bookmark the new Resources for UUs page, which features expert-recommended resources, multimedia, and more!
UUA Announce 'Music in Worship'
The UUA now have a new expanded 'WorshipWeb' with a facility called "Music in Worship". Among other things, this includes a UU Composers Database.
Contributed by Rev Dr Linda Hart
The first episode of the CUUPS Podcast features basic info about CUUPS and an interview with British academic Michael York recorded at the Dec. 2009 Parliament of World Religions provided to us courtesy of the Pagan Newswire Collective.The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans promotes networking among Pagan-identified Unitarian Universalists, and provides for the outreach of Unitarian Universalism to the broader Pagan community.
What UUSC will do
UUSCβs disaster response in Haiti will focus on those survivors less likely to have access to aid, such as child domestic workers (restaviks), women-headed households that work in the informal sector, and people living with HIV/AIDS. Haiti has a vibrant grassroots movement with a vision of empowering people. UUSC will work closely with partners in this grassroots movement to reach those survivors at greatest risk of being overlooked. As of this afternoon, weβve already connected with three organizations and will be reaching out to others over the next 24 hours in order to shape our response.
We will be updating our website regularly as our plans develop.
In the depths of the global crunch, why would anyone want to waste precious money on pointless junk that ends up in the trashcan after a couple of uses?
But sales of consumer nonsense are still rocketing - stuff such as wand-shaped TV remote controls, desk-top hoovers, and electric toothbrushes costing hundreds of pounds. Even a hollow plastic golf-club you can wee into while playing a round (don't show it to Tiger Woods, please). We're still madly addicted to consumption.
Despite the financial collapse, carbon emissions from fossil fuels rose by 2 per cent last year to an all-time, planet-melting high. Scientists in Nature Geoscience say that much of this was caused by Chinese exports of consumer gadgets to Europe.
So, welcome to the Landfill Prize 2010, a divertingly subversive initiative to help to break this costly cycle.
We want people's nominations for the most needless, wasteful uses of our planet's precious resources that they've seen, bought or been given in the past year. Whether it's an electronic skipping rope, an automatic cucumber peeler or a laser-guided pair of scissors, we want to spotlight such pointless ingenuity as it makes its fast-track journey to the junkheap. This year we're specially interested in 'faux' green goods.
The prize, to be presented to the 'winning' manufacturer in February, celebrates the stupendous creativity of the people tasked with inventing constantly inflated new wants for us to want. It's a monument to perverse imagination and needless consumption. Most importantly, it's a plea for us to say, "Thanks. We've got enough stuff," and to break free from this crazy cycle.
The Landfill Prize site features a list of scientifically backed ways in which you can help to proof your brain against consumerist chicanery, written by John Naish, a national newspaper health correspondent, the author of Enough, Breaking free from the world of more . and the man behind the prize.
Nominations will be judged by a panel consisting of:The winner will be announced on the 16th February 2010. We'll invite the makers along to a little prizegiving. and if they don't want to come, I guess we will have to pop around to their place to make the award.
- John Naish (author of Enough: Breaking free from the world of more )
- Anna Shepherd (author of How green are my wellies?)
- Carl Honore (author of In Praise of Slow )
- Ben Davis (co-founder of BuyLessCrap)
For more information go to www.enoughness.co.uk
There are two time honored institutions in Unitarian Universalist churches that are, or should be, guarded by clergy and laity as if they were the Holy Grail. They are the free pulpit and the free pew. Succinctly stated, the free pulpit means that when a congregation lends its pulpit to a minister by calling that minister as its spiritual leader, the congregation pledges complete and unencumbered freedom of speech to say anything from that pulpit that he or she believes to be true. But that freedom is not something the preacher is born with, but originates in the bond of affection, the covenant established between the congregation and the minister. The free pew means that when a Unitarian Universalist congregation is gathered by a bond of affection, a covenant that makes it into a spiritual community, the most sacred agreement made is that no theological test will be given for membership in that congregation.A number of churches and ministers put their sermons and addresses online - it's a fantastic spiritual resource and a way to understand Unitarianism better.
<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />
<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />
<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" title="The Nightingale Centre" />
Name | Phone | |
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Joe Bloggs | 0208 123 4567 | jbloggs@gmail.com |
Ann Other | 0208 234 5678 | annother@gmail.com |
Fred Smith | 0208 345 6789 | fsmith@gmail.com |
The information architecture of your website makes it easier for visitors to find information. A typical church website will have times of services, contact details, how to find the church/chapel, sample sermons, profiles of the members and the minister, newsletter articles, and so on.
- The structural design of shared information environments.
- The art and science of organising and labelling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support findability and usability. Β» More
In computing, internationalisation and localisation are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalisation is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.~ Wikipedia, Internationalisation and localisation
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For people who want to bring together different services to create a unique blend (also known as a mashup), there are some really useful and easy to use tools out there.
Widgetbox allows you to develop small applications for embedding in webpages. The easiest widget to set up is the blidget, which fetches an RSS feed (from a blog, news service such as the BBC or the University's News pages,del.icio.us tags, Yahoo! Pipe or Flickr) and creates a shiny widget for embedding in a web-page, or for turning into a Facebook application or Google gadget.
Yahoo! Pipes allow you to bring together (aggregate) several different RSS feeds, filter out duplicate items, add author information, and so on.
Flickr is an online photo storage site, where you can display your photos (either publicly or so that only friends and family can see them), and you can use advanced search to obtain photos for use in presentations and on websites under the Creative Commons licence.
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, which means it is like bookmarking a favourite page in your web browser, but the bookmarks are saved on the del.icio.us website, and tagged with labels to make them easier for you and others to find. Each page on del.icio.us (whether it's popular tags, all tags, your bookmarks, or one of your tags) has an RSS feed associated with it, which can then be imported to a blidget or an RSS reader.
Jotform is the first web based WYSIWYG form builder. Its intuitive drag and drop user interface makes form building a breeze. Using JotForm, you can create forms, integrate them to your site and collect submissions from your visitors.
Google Scholar provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles. You still need an Athens account to log in to many of the resources you can find via Google Scholar, but it searches across all of JSTOR, Ebscohost, Blackwell Synergy, the DNB, Google Books, etc.
Google Books - Google have digitised many books libraries around the world. If the book is out of copyright, you can download the entire book, and search all of its content. Books that are still in copyright only allow a limited search. Β» More information
These are just two of the many tools offered by Google.