My Spiritual Journey by Bruce Bebington

The Chamelion

My Spiritual Journey

by Bruce S Bebington

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My views alter. The chameleon changes its colour but the animal is the same. I have experienced different influences and directions of thought and action. Nevertheless, there is a continuity in my search to understand the world throughout different thought patterns.

As I write, I draw certain conclusions. These conclusions are often over-simplified but remain insightful as they appear numbered in the text following. Particularly, these conclusions are not tied to any doctrine of beliefs and therefore may have less or more validity as the reader will judge.

I do not recall much about my religious education before secondary school which I entered in 1957. My mother was a methodist by upbringing and orientation and my father was a protestant Christian but, like many such people, he only attended church on some holy days or to celebrate weddings of his friends or to mourn at funerals. I am sure that my mother sent me to the local Methodist church in Winshill, Burton-upon-Trent which town we lived in until I reached the age of 13. I went to the Sunday school at this church. I only have fragmentary memories of this Sunday school and it would be unfair to reach any views on its place in my spiritual journey save to write that the school’s message has a place in my unconscious religious attitudes and inclinations.

My journey really begins at secondary school. My father got a promotion in his work that led him to move from Burton to the London area [parents lived in Woking then] from my age of 13. I was a pupil at Ashby-de=la Zouche Boys Grammar school when my parents moved. They decided that I should board at this school so as not to interrupt my secondary education by changing schools as well as other reasons that are irrelevant to the journey. For all students, the Christian religion formed a core part of the education. Partly, this consisted of religious instruction which centred on the historical nature and ethical commands of the bible. The history of the church or religious controversies were mainly absent from this curriculum. Additionally, there was school assembly. We had to line up in straight lines whose discipline was overseen by elder boys as prefects. This line up happened rain or shine.  We then went into the large school gym. We sang a hymn from a catholic selection such as “there’s a wideness in God’s mercy” to “onward Christian soldiers”. This hymn would be followed by prayers including the Lords prayer and a speech usually from the headmaster. This speech would have a secular topic varying from relating the success of Ashby school cricket team to berating pupils who wandered from the grounds permitted to the area where the headmaster and his wife lived next to the school site.

As a boarder, religion returned on Sundays. All pupils went to church except two Islamic ones who joined in my last three years at the school. At first, I went to the local Anglican church The boarders went there in their school uniform and sat apart. This sitting and dressing practice always jarred with me as it made us look special from the other congregants. The service consisted of going through an order of service plus a short sermon and some biblical readings.  I had trouble with following the prayer book as the recitations leaped from one part of the book to another. Most of my colleagues had grown up with this liturgy and had no such problem. I told my mother that I felt out of place one holiday and by my second year at the boarding school. I was going to Ashby Methodist church.

This Methodist church was a large oblong building with a quote from the sayings of Jesus written across the high wall from the end where the minister stood during the service. I cannot recall what the writing said. In this service, much more attention was placed on the minister and especially his sermons. The minister was generally unpopular. I believe that he was a reticent man who could not befriend or empathise with the congregation. His sermons were generally uncontroversial and well prepared. They were delivered in a general monotone and a few congregants took the opportunity to have a doze while he gave the sermon.

Sometimes, the school’s headmaster would lead the service. The man was an arch-conservative on social, religious and political grounds. He spoke against rock and roll singers; spoke against shamans; spoke against comprehensive schools. What worried me more deeply was that the preachers spoke largely of drawing nearer to God by improving personal character. Little was said about working to improve society in Britain, let alone abroad. When work was mentioned as taking place abroad, this work was of missionaries seeking to convert the foreigners to Christianity.

Indeed, one Sunday was set aside to concentrate on bettering one’s personal character. The proposed betterment often consisted of not doing certain things like drinking alcohol, playing cards for money, swearing and watching lascivious films. Not all the congregation advised a total abstention from such activities.  They said that a moderate indulgence in such activities did no harm. They said that the idea of these abstentions came from the primitive methodists whereas they were wesleyan methodists and the two religious groups had amalgamated some time back and the “prims” had brought their ideas into the unified church.  All this talk of abstaining seemed to me to miss the point. I saw poverty among my classmates who could not buy the full school uniform and were admonished by prefects for their dress. These classmates could not do their homework properly as they had no room set aside from the family for this purpose. Meanwhile, we were told not to play a game of bridge for a three pence stake!  So, I concluded firstly:

1.  Any faith is not worth having unless it puts at least equal emphasis on work with other people as it does with personal moral discipline.

I do not know entirely where my concern with other people’s unmet needs arose but it always over-ridden my genuine concern for the nature of their character. Maybe, this emphasis runs in my family as my parents certainly espoused it. Maybe, it was instilled partly by my early religious education.

I went to Manchester University as a Christian. My ideas about the religion were fairly orthodox on my arrival Heaven and Hell were places that you went after death although I was unclear as to exactly where the places were. Jesus was both a historical figure and a saviour of humanity. The church was a place that led you to the salvation Jesus offered. It was at the time when David Jenkins was rewriting these orthodoxies. For example, he said that Jesus did not have a physical resurrection after his crucifixion but that the resurrection was spiritual. I was aware of his writings but did not engage with them.

I joined the Manchester inter-faculty Christian Union [MIFCU] and lived in halls of residence for most of my university life. In that particular hall was a group of evangelical Christians who met for prayer and to read the bible. I lasted with them for about two months. I had two problems with MIFCU. The first was the aggressive way in which I was told to engage with my fellow students to get them to join MIFCU. I felt that these students had formed their own views on religion in a considered way and their views should be discussed in a dialogue. Secondly, I found MIFCU doing the same thing as the “prims” in telling you not to indulge in activities that were fun in moderation. They even poured disdain on student stunts for the annual rag week where the students dressed up in fancy clothes and did activities like climbing university towers to raise money for charity.

I determined by the first new year at university that I was an atheist and specifically wanted nothing more to do with MIFCU.  By my mid-twenties this atheism had morphed into agnosticism. For the whole of the seventies, I largely was involved in activities outside religious observance. Specifically, I was starting a legal career and involved in politics. I must mention politics because it is one of my passions. I have always believed:

2. The political and the religious solution are not the same but cannot be at total variance.

To give an example, the church rightly works for a humane immigration policy. Yet the political reality is that open borders cannot work if only adopted by one country as the open country would receive most of the immigrants who could not find a worthwhile place in the other countries. Open borders might work if most countries adopted the policy. Thus, a country has to adopt some immigration control based on deciding characteristics of persons which it will and will not accept for entry. These characteristics will exclude some people who will suffer economic hardship and cultural deprivation by having to stay in the country that they want to leave. Thus, immigration control is a policy which is politically necessary but can be against some of the compassion that faiths espouse.

To be in politics, it is difficult not to adopt an attitude as a general guide to viewing decisions by politicians. Of course, one tries to judge every decision on its own merits but, to have no guiding political philosophy will result the individual to being an opportunist,

3. My over-riding philosophy is the socialist one that views all political actions by their benefit to society and particularly the poor and excluded part.

With this philosophy, I became well versed in writings of Karl Marx and Franklin Engels. Marx regarded religion as an aimless diversion for workers allowing them not to see their position in an unjust economic society clearly. However, I have long thought that humanity is both an economic race and a societal race. It is difficult to see how a largely economic analysis will lead necessarily to a more humane and harmonious society.

In this period of my life, I became increasingly attracted to humanism. It seemed to me, if one could strip away the cloak of religion, one could put on a garment of serving and prospering in a compassionate society. This garment would include the common morality of most faiths. I flirted briefly with the National Secular Society but I found their programme too negative as it concentrated on removing the participation of religion in state activity regardless of showing that this activity was actually harmful. I read quite a bit from the British Humanist Society’s publications without becoming an active rather than a passive supporter.

The next phase occurred in the eighties when I bccame a father. I had married a Roman Catholic in 1971 and there arose the question of schooling our two daughters. [My first wife died in 2010.] A compromise had been reached between us that our two daughters would go to an RC primary school and a secular secondary school. The daughters’ attendance at a local RC church school in Sutton Coldfield brought me into the orbit of the Roman Catholic church.

The school certainly placed a welcome emphasis on compassion and caring for others with exercises in how the children should behave to each other in this spirit. It also did a lot for charity. Children in Need day was a particular important event when the children dressed up in non-uniform and did a number of fund raising events particularly relating to their parents’ help.  It put a lot of effort into making the parents and children a community. In the summer, it held a family fun day which consisted of races and competitions largely for the children but involving the parents as well. Food was served and drinks and the adults chatted to other parents about all sorts of topics.   The adults were not always as supportive as they should have been of these efforts to make the school a happy and nurturing environment. All the time, conversations would concentrate on their particular child’s progress in reading, arithmetic or writing. I remember that there were a series of reading books which, as the child moved from one to another, signified increased proficiency in reading. I would be questioned by another parent at the school gate as to which book my child was “on”. Obviously, the interrogator hoped that his/her child was reading the same book as mine or that the other child was one book ahead in attainment of reading skill.

However, the school’s activities included attendance at the church which was its religious focus. Attendance at the local RC church was made more difficult for me as beyond the point that I did not espouse Christianity at this time. I was brought up as a Protestant and my instinct has always been against elaborate rituals in worship as associated with High church whether of an Anglican or RC variety.  For some time, I avoided going to these services which usually included simplified RC liturgy and handing out prizes or benedictions to some pupils.  My wife complained that my non-attendance was an embarrassment to her so I started to go. The services were led by a fat and amicable priest of obvious Irish background. Sometimes, the adults would recite some liturgical words which, I observed, to have a spiritual meaning for them. National politics did not take a part except over the issue of abortion. The priest was supporting a campaign by the RC church to water down the rights of pregnant women to an abortion under the existing law.  I was both opposed to this campaign and did not want the matter raised in school services.

During this time, I became more impressed with the church because of its position on certain actions taken by the conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher. I noted particularly their opposition to the failure of this government to actively improve the income of the poor while handing out tax cuts to the rich. As a result, the wealth gap was widening between the poorest and richest in society to my dismay. I noted the churches’ concern for communities where coal mines or steel plants had been closed after the withdrawal of state subsidy. These communities became employment waste lands

In the early or mid-nineties, both my daughters left their primary school and went to a Grammar school in Walsall. For me, this time marked a slow shift in my faith beliefs. I moved away from humanism. I found two intellectual problems with this belief system. I became convinced that there was some entity or force behind the universe which transcended the work or thoughts of humankind. I became a theist without any clear theistic affiliation. Secondly, it seemed to me that truth and goodness could not be defined by what was in the beneficial and philanthropic interest of humanity as most humanists wrote. There had to be a universal definition of truth and goodness which went beyond such human interest.

I did not develop these thoughts further until a set of events in 1998 which were to change the colour of this chameleon and which change my closest friends and family found hard to understand initially. I have described how. I, the chameleon went through methodist Christianity to atheism to agnosticism and final to theism. Having reached a theistic position, one naturally looks for a religion to explain our relationship to God. 1998 was a watershed year where I searched for such a religion. Initially, I turned to the eastern religions, specifically Sikhism and Hinduism. I wanted to get away from the old accent on personal uprighteousness to a more holistic interpretation of God in society and my inter-reaction with society. However, I quickly found a cultural divide with my personal mores and the religious life   of these faiths.

At this point, something momentous happened. I had suffered a business failure and consequent financial collapse. We had to sell the house in Sutton Coldfield to partially pay my debts from my half share. With my wife’s share and some help from her mother, we bought a terraced property in Walsall. I became unemployed and was so for two years during which time, I had 54 interviews and made 264 job applications. [I finally got a job in East London in 2000].

In my status of time to fill each day and in a low mental state. I had determined to try to find work. At age 51, I felt that I had more to offer than simply staying in the flat or going into a local park or shopping area each day. Apart from very occasionally seeing a few friends who mostly came from all over England to Walsall, I had no other external activity save going to a Lions club which I had joined in Sutton Coldfield some 8 years previously. I helped with their charity work. I was unable to go to their social events as I couldn’t afford the cost of participation.

One thing I did was to walk the family dog along a tow path of a canal very nearby. As I was walking one day, suddenly the whole day changed from indifferent weather to a bright light. Then, a voice began to speak but not in words. The voice was telling me that, somehow, my circumstances would be alright. It promised nothing like a job offer but told me that, whatever my future, this presence would be with me. It would be an ultimate support and sustainer whatever the future held, better or worse. Then, the scene returned to normal and I saw our dog sitting near me and turned to go home.

After this experience, I knew that I had to return to religion to thank what I perceived as God and try to place my life in his/her hands.  The only route I knew was through Christianity but there was a problem still. Although I accepted Jesus as a divine teacher and pathway to God, I couldn’t accept all the events which the bible said about him. I had been brought up to subject all related events to the scientific test of whether they were in accord with my experience or educational knowledge. My thinking was not that events around the life of Jesus did not happen as the bible said. I just was not convinced. For example, I do not know if Jesus walked on water. I accept that he may have. Further, I did not see it necessary to accept these related events in order to accept the divinity of Jesus’ mission. Yet, in every service, I was asked to recite a creed, usually the Nicene, that specified a belief in many such biblical based events about Jesus.

I was struggling to find a future in the church to which I wanted passionately to belong. One day, I made a rare trip to see a late friend in Hyde. He told me that he went to Flowery Field church in Hyde which was both Christian and creedless. I decided to try the local version: a Unitarian church in Walsall. [this church was later disbanded.]

I went to this church on a Sunday evening in Autumn 1998. The church met in the Walsall United Reformed Church. There was no notice on the door of that church when I arrived but I went in to find a door open to a small square room with a table which would hold around 15 people. The minister was dressed in black with a white collar in classic low church style. I later learnt that the Unitarian church in Walsall had been demolished during road widening over a decade earlier. It had not been replaced and the URC had allowed the Unitarians to worship at their building. No notice existed of this fac outside as the two churches could not agree on the wording. The Unitarians wanted to put up a statement of core beliefs and details of services but the URC would only allow a factual statement of the meetings’ time, day and denomination.

Services consisted of no more than eight people each time in the two and a half years during which I attended. The minister would talk in a lecture style of the tenets of Unitarian Christianity usually centring on some parable or sayings of Jesus. The sermons were intellectually stimulating but not inspiring. Occasionally, we had a visiting preacher. The church had great difficulty getting a musician to play the piano in the room. Often, we sang hymns without musical assistance from a large collection of such called the “Red Book”.

The congregation was quarrelsome. It quarrelled with the URC church over what should be put on front door. It quarrelled with the Birmingham Unitarian church. The Walsall church had no treasurer from its ranks. The Birmingham church offered to do the Walsall account books as well.  This offer was perceived by some Walsall members as a take-over of Walsall and vigorously condemned before and after services.

During my time there, two members died and a third became senile. By the time I moved churches, the congregation consisted of three real members who  primarily attended other churches or, in one case, was peripatetic.

Despite its shortcomings, I regard my days at Walsall as very educational and allowing me to find my theological home. I add that, while at Walsall, I was not fully conversant with unitarianism and this level of knowledge came later.  By a spiritual home, I mean a place where one can go to feel comfortable about the people around you, the message being given and, through music, prayer and liturgy, experience a connection with the divine.  In particular, I reached the realisation:

4. It is possible to marry scientific knowledge with faith up to a point and desirable to so marry them as far as possible.

In 2000, I got a job in East London and available accommodation in Balham to work in East London. My wife did not move to Balham until July 2001 to allow my younger daughter to take her “A” levels at the school where she had started studying them.  I used to go back to Walsall every weekend until, in early 2001, I stayed about every month in London for the weekend. I wanted to go to a Unitarian church on the Sundays of these weekends. There were two accessible alternatives: Croydon and Brixton. |As my car was in Walsall, I had to get to either church by public transport. I noted a direct bus from our flat to Brixton but no such direct service to Croydon. By such happenings, one’s life choices made!

Brixton Unitarian church, or Effra Road Chapel, is set in large grounds with lawns, trees and some flowers. There are two separate buildings, a bungalow and a house, which used to belong to the warden and the minister. These were let by the time I first went to raise income for the church. It possesses a large hall which is let out for functions and groups. Tea and coffee was served in this hall after the service for the first decade and, later, its existence moved to the back of the church. The actual church is red brick and very 1950s in its architecture with a high roof and an oblong shape. The striking feature is a mythologised version of Brixton behind the communion table with a St George holding a docile dragon on a chain. One can recognise parts of Brixton in the painting.

Earlier services consisted of the minister following the classic non-conformist procedure known as a hymn sandwich. Services differed from usual non-conformity mainly in that more secular sources appeared in the texts and sermons. The congregation was half Afro-Carribean and never exceeded 20 or fell below 5. [All these features changed in the later years but the minister remained the same]. There were two or three visiting preachers who appeared singularly once a month or less. One was an ex-Unitarian minister who preceded the incumbent. He was a very listenable preacher but also seemed to blend Roman Catholicism and liberal faith in a way that I found incongruous. The second was an offspring from the Methodist church who preached a mix of primitive methodist beliefs and liberal aspirations.

Generally, I liked the services as I felt that they gave me something stimulating without ordering me necessarily to follow what was being promulgated.

After my late wife and I had both moved to Balham, my intentions turned to joining the regional Unitarian organisation. I had been to the midland region’s meetings while in Walsall. The region was called in this area: the London and South Eastern Provincial Assembly of Unitarians and Free Christians. A mouthful so it was always dubbed the LDPA. I first attended in Brighton and it was quite a culture shock. There must have been a talk but I cannot recall its subject some 22 years later. I can recall the service. It mainly consisted of the local minister talking about hearing voices which connected one to a divine reality. She invited us to be silent and see what entered our consciousness. Silence followed but I heard or felt nothing. What struck me was the absence of any spiritual guidance apart from a reading from Rumi. The whole accent seemed to be on the individual creating his/her spirituality by internalised and unled though and feeling.

At Brixton, the minister suggested that I join the council of the LDPA. I duly served from 2004 to 2010 and again from 2016 to 2022. Firstly, I must write that I served with some really dedicated colleagues who did a great deal for their churches and to make the LDPA effective as well as, often, working full time. However, on neither occasion was my tenure a happy experience. Firstly, I will explain my problem with the majority of council. Indeed, I often ended up in a minority of one. Although council members were always efficient and thoughtful, I was disappointed with their insularity. Never once did they talk of joint activity with other religious groups or LDPA’s relationship to such groups. Nor did they ever talk about joining in activities of social or political campaigns. Their contribution to such campaigns was to make monetary donations from time to time.

There was one exception to this non-engagement with social issues: the matter of gay rights. [Personally, I am supportive of such rights including such matters as gay marriage.] Council did organise participation in Gay Pride marches,. I also remember an afternoon meeting saying how we should accommodate LGBT people in our churches. Behind all this emphasis was the concept that this group of people were more susceptible to a liberal faith for which I see no proof. Another issue that these council members never addressed was the implication that discrimination against gay people was the most important issue facing a church. In fact, there is other discrimination which is as bad on grounds of race, gender, religious belief etc. Further, the major world problems lie outside how we treat gay people although there is a concurrence of regressive attitude in how this discrimination happens and the failure to properly address the more serious problems. For example, what great good is achieved if this discrimination is largely reduced but large parts of Earth are uninhahitable through human-made climate change!

These characteristics extended to the district ministers that council chose. Rightly, these ministers were told to assist the component churches with their needs like covering services and supporting stressed clergy or lay leaders as a priority. However, they did little to reach out from the LDPA themselves to the social campaigns of the time or other faith communities.  I worked with four district ministers who, in three cases, tried to fulfil the limited role which was their priority in a consensual way. These ministers did try to branch out beyond the pastoral role with the constituent churches on occasions. For example, the last district minister ran a study course on Stephen Lingwood’s important book “Seeking Paradise”.

Recently, some effort has been made to take part in citizens’ campaigns by forming a group inside the LDPA. The concept is that the group will bring to these campaigns the essence of Unitarian attitude. This attitude is stated to be a spiritual sense of creation, an open mind and tolerance. However, there is a lack of an underlying political ideology to this thinking which may end up in a scatter gun approach to issues which are political rather than religious. To be fair, LDPA embraces a Green agenda. However, this environmentalist approach gives no answer to many issues such as child poverty or unequal access to education; good though the approach is within limits.

These reflections on the LDPA lead me to the big topic of my experience and understanding of unitarianism and its meaning. This topic demands another part to my spiritual journey.

By the third visit to Walsall Unitarian church, I learnt that there was more to Unitarianism than what happened on Sunday there. I was given two books to read about the movement by Cliff Read and George Chryssides . From these books, I certainly learnt a lot of the history of the movement and its diversity. It was more a case of what unitarianism wasn’t that I gleaned more than what it was.

I remained and remain unsure what a unitarian faith consisted of. Many writers have attempted to define it. Indeed, Cliff Read wrote a book entitled “Unitarian: what’s that”?  One definition is provided by the BBC of which I quote two key parts:

“Unitarians believe that God is one being, either God the Father or Mother. They may also believe that God is the creator, the source of existence, and the ultimate good.

Unitarians believe in religious freedom for each individual and encourage people to question their own and others’ beliefs. They see diversity and pluralism as valuable and want religion to be broad, inclusive, and tolerant”

I will return to this definition and how unitarianism appeared to me after describing my personal experience of it. One help in understanding unitarianism was going to the general assembly of unitarians, At Walsall, I went to the General Assembly[GA} although I cannot recall how the fees were paid. Certainly, I would not have been able to afford the fees myself,  I remember getting a lift from a widow who went annually to the event. She was an enthusiastic participant in the Earth Spirit movement which I leant to have derivation from people like the druids. On arrival, the event appeared like freshers week at university. The university grounds teamed with stalls offering a variety of interests from world peace to inter-church fellowship to music in services. I was excited by the variety of subjects and the possibility of learning something new from engaging in the meetings thereon. There were also general meetings where reports were talked upon by national officials and then opened to comments from the floor. As well as this, there were resolutions on topics ranging from current affairs to internal church administration. Again, these resolutions were discussed on the floor of the assembled members. The process reminded me a bit of debates at my university union.  I realised that the British unitarian movement was very wide in belief, embracing Christians and non-Christians, from this first visit.

I went to the GA twice more but I lost all enthusiasm on the return visits. The problem was that the break-out meetings lacked any in-depth analysis. The peace group would discuss the arms trade but no figures were given as to the main arms suppliers or the main countries to which arms were sold.  Enven, The Unitarian Christian Association held a meeting on the badly regulated credit market but gave no detailed proposals for its reform.

Another problem was a certain sectarian approach. At the last two visits, I was a delegate from Brixton and I was greeted by other delegates with the question as to why Brixton was so Christo-centric.  By my final visit, I only attended the main assembly meetings and the UCA break-out meeting. [I tore a muscle in my back so I could not attend on the last day anyhow as I was bed ridden.]

I learnt more about unitarian beliefs by attending LDPA meetings. Until the last years, there used to be three meetings for the membership a year which included the annual general meeting. The other meetings would include a speaker on either a faith subject or a social one. This speaker would be preceded or followed by a service and there was also a service before the AGM. Recently, the spring meeting has been replaced by FUSE which, over-simplifying, is a series of talks, workshops and religious observances held over a weekend.

The LDPA services were hymns usually praising virtues, readings of poems or literary compositions, meditations and sermons. The sermons always told us that had a good set of values and ideas to pass on to those outside our churches. We were open minded, compassionate, free from dogma and respectful of nature. My first response to this self-praise was that these characteristics applied to many other faiths or groups inside other faiths. The second reaction was that, therefore, these characteristics were not enough to attract many people to join us in themselves.

We were told of our ancestors who had led and succoured the church, of Thomas David and Michael Servetus who died for their beliefs. More recently, we were told of leading clergy who eloquently promoted our beliefs: James Martineau and Theophilus Lindsey. Yet it was clear that these persons and the others mentioned were Christians, albeit unorthodox ones. The LDPA preachers usually did not identify as Christians. Indeed, they did not identify with any of the other major world faiths either. This characterisation led me to wonder what theology or ideology did found their beliefs. They told me, sometimes, that they followed a Unitarian faith. This point is where I begin to consider the nature of a faith.

In criticism of the contents of these addresses in the LDPA, I am grounded in the idea that faith has to have a historical and developing set of prayers, literature, accepted structure and social message. Yes, faith also required a set of myths that somehow connected one to the divine. There was not enough substance in the material  that these LDPA preachers put forward to found a faith.  Put another way:

5. Faith is only long lasting and significant if its genus has a historical heritage.

This observation does not mean that unitarian sayings have no real value. The sayings do allow us more readily to question everything. The centring of a religious message on developing a caring and respectful attitude to human beings is praiseworthy. The willingness to look at proposals outside a Christian text can be very helpful. However, these strengths are not enough substance in unitarianism to make it a faith. Instead:

6. Unitarianism is essentially an attitude.

Essentially, the attitude is stated in the second paragraph of the BBC definition written above.It is possible to a Buddhist and a Unitarian, a Christian and a Unitarian or even a Pagan and a Unitarian but not just a unitarian. [I am here referring to the pagan tradition that sees the divine inside nature.] Further, one must be cautious in quoting from the Qu’aran  and, then, the Upanishads to support a proposition. The quotes may put the proposition succinctly. However, one may be accused of “pick and mix” theology if other parts of the quoted holy books do not support the proposition put forward.

In more recent times, I have continued to engage with Effra Road Chapel and am now its most senior attendee apart from a man who attends infrequently as, now, he lives outside London. The church has changed but not its minister. We do not get black families as we did when I first came although there are a number of individual black members. Our congregation is much more university graduated. The services have changed to mark this audience. We tend to hold more reflections on past philosophers, novelists and poets. The readings often come from such persons throughout the English- speaking diaspora.

As well as this chapel, I go irregularly to the Anglican church, St Pauls, in Tooting. These visits are partly influenced by my second wife. She is a methodist but, like many Christians, goes to a church in another denomination from her own. The services are very traditional following the liturgy in the current order of service. Even the hymns come mainly from the nineteenth century or earlier.

In the last decade, I have been less influenced by what happens in the churches which I frequent although I get spiritual refreshment from attending them.  I have tried to relate my lifelong concern with poverty to my faith life. From about 2005, I became involved in Church Action on Poverty[CAP] which is an offshoot of churches together. The group runs campaigns on changing legislation to assist the poor.

My last job was a debt and welfare benefits adviser at a law centre and, after 2010, I was acutely aware of how by welfare cuts, the government made the life of the poor harder in financial and welfare terms. There are many examples of such cuts but one of the most pernicious was the requirement that, to receive full benefit, a claimant must not occupy more bedrooms than s/he needs for the individual or family involved; called the bedroom tax. I found that my clients were faced either with receiving less benefit than they were said to need or moving because of accommodation which they had lived in for ages in many cases. Their other option was to move to a smaller home. Sometimes this option meant that the children had to change schools just before important national exams or they lost family support of childcare which had been nearby or the new home lacked adequate space for a disabled member of the family group

In 2017, I even organised a public meeting to highlight the issues of poverty in our midst for CAP. The meeting was well attended but then I had to consider what follow-up could be arranged. Particularly, I was concerned to give publicity to the incidences of local poverty. I then realized that the national organisation did not have the resources to help me actively and no volunteers came from the meeting to further their work. Facing that I had to do future work on my own, I decided that the burden involved was too great.

For a time, I was secretary to Churches Together in Brixton. The group used to organise an ecumenical service and a public event in Windrush square to mark Good Friday annually. It also publicised a number of initiatives on social action by local churches. This work went well for the first three years while the chair rested with two liberal Anglican vicars in succession. When the chair passed to an evangelist vicar, my dissent began. At the third annual service, a preacher gave a sermon quoting the bible saying that Saul had disobeyed God by not killing Philistine women and children as God instructed. The preacher told us not to disobey God like Saul had. I made clear to the committee my disgust at this sermon later. Then, a peace march was organised by churches Together in Brixton to call for an end to the endemic knife crime in the area. Citizens London asked to take part. At the meeting to discuss their request, some members said that Citizens London would include those “praying to another god”. The objectors did not want to join these people in a joint prayer for peace on Brixton’s streets. The majority in the committee voted to decline the request . I exited this organisation shortly afterwards.

From 2009, I started going to South London Inter-Faith group. At the time, the group consisted of Islamic leading members who were seeking a wider faith experience, representatives from a Caribbean Hindu temple, a Buddhist monk and a collection of Quakers and liberal Christians. Today, we still have Buddhists and Muslims but a preponderance of Quakers and liberal Christians. Initially, I just attended and the group was mainly led by a retired Anglican vicar and a committee. In 2018, the vicar was replaced by a health worker from the same church as chairman. I became secretary and, gradually, I became the main organiser.

The group meets on a Thursday midday each month with a bring and share lunch. During my leadership, there is usually a speaker. I got tired of meetings where members just talked randomly of events in their places of worship and general developments on the political or community spectrum. The speaker can talk of social action issues like the local foodbank or support of asylum speakers. S/he can talk about

their religious group such as the Babu Sai or the Sufis. Finally, we might just hear about the individual’s spiritual journey. I have tried to tackle issues that transcend the faiths like assisted dying and the place of LBGT people in faith meetings. As well as these meetings, the group has organised day long meetings on a Saturday or Sunday with speakers, music, readings and drama. Most notably, there have been meetings commemorating Christmas and Mohammed’s birthday. Finally, there have been inter-faith walks on a Saturday in summer going to three or four places belonging to different faiths such as synagogues or Buddhist temples, all in a walkable distance.

However, I would not write that inter-faith activity has changed my perspective fundamentally. It has certainly enriched my spiritual life as parallels have emerged with my previous religious practices. For example, I have found the Sufi meditation on the 99 facets of God as a deep and incisive way of considering the divine.

I have been more influenced recently by the writings of John S Spong and Marcus Borg. I am struck particularly by the approach of considering holy texts not only as a historical record or a set of ethical and theological sayings. These writers see some texts as metaphorical  in the sense that it matters less whether the recorded event happened exactly as written. The texts are more an underlying declaration of things that reflect truths of the divine partially beyond our understanding. I am drawn backwards in my mind to the debate whether Jesus had a physical resurrection or his resurrection was spiritual in nature which happened in my adolescence. The fact of the resurrection is not of prime importance in my current understanding. The over-riding fact is metaphorical: Jesus lives inside the human despite his death on the cross.

So, my spiritual journey is related up to this date. Before summarising, I will try to put a label on myself and my beliefs. I am certainly in the camp of progressive Christianity today. Am I also in the camp of unitarian Christianity? I think of Socinians who, in many ways, set the path for unitarian Christianity after the reformation. If unitarian Christianity means general agreement with Socinians, the answer is that I am in that camp. Quoting the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Socinians are

“People who referred to themselves as “brethren” and were known by the latter half of the 17th century as “Unitarians” or “Polish Brethren.” They accepted Jesus as God’s revelation but still a mere man, divine by office rather than by nature; Socinians thus rejected the doctrine of the Trinity…….. The Socinians also advocated the separation of church and state, stressed the importance of the moral life, minimized dogma, and held that Christian doctrine must be rational”.

So, from atheism to theism. From a conservative Christian church to a Unitarian one. There is no consistency in my thinking and I have moved from one religious group to another or even a non-religious group. However, I have tried to number some threads of thought and action that have guided me throughout in this writing. I could well be accused of inconsistency in developing my spiritual journey. Certainly, my changes of view are more than a flexible change of mind inside a consistent set of beliefs.  Further, I may modify my beliefs in the future as new experiences occur in the least.

I think that everyone needs to examine constantly whether one’s religious beliefs are still in accord with what one experiences and learning. One must be prepared to change a view radically. So, I end with one last point:

7. Consistency is not necessarily a way to reach the truth in one’s faith.

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