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Faith and Freedom Spring and Summer 2024

The latest issue of Faith and Freedom is now available. In this issue we are pleased to publish the entire transcript of the most recent Reckoning International Unitarian and Universalist Histories Project webinar. Entitled Uncovering the Hidden Power of Women in Unitarian and Universalist History the discussion comprises an international panel with an introduction by Lehel Molnár, Unitarian archivist at Koloszvár, Transylvania, and with Rosemary Bray McNatt, President of the Starr King School for Ministry, Berkeley, California, as the moderator and concluding responder. The main papers are ‘The Story of Pharienbon Rani and Unitarianism in the Khasi Hills, India’ by Alisha Rani, professor of sociology at Shillong, India, and ‘Profiling Black Women’s Ministries in Unitarian Universalism’ by Qiyamah A. Rahman, a UU minister and activist in the United States. Responses are given by Olga Flores (Bolivia), Ann Peart (UK), and Mária Pap (UK and Transylvania), with closing remarks by Mark W. Harris, one of the main planners for the Reckoning Histories Project. The journal also includes some photographs (including the cover – see above and top) by John Hewerdine taken at the Annie Margaret Barr Memorial Orphanage in Meghalaya which help illustrate the theme of both Alisha Rani’s paper and a review by Derek McAuley also found in this issue.

Margaret Barr in her office in the Khasi Hills (Photo: John Hewerdine)

Other papers include Wayne Facer’s Mr Jellie’s Romance, an account of the pioneering days of Unitarianism in New Zealand and how amidst his work to establish the cause he fell in love with and eventually married Ella Macky. She was a member of an active Unitarian family but her own commitments frequently took her to the other side of the world to attend University and to participate in the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers in Amsterdam in 1903, while Jellie carried out his work establishing the congregation in Auckland and supporting Unitarians elsewhere in New Zealand.

Barrie Needham examines the life and poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Catholic convert and Jesuit priest, whose poetry remained unpublished in his own lifetime but which has gained a great following from the early twentieth century onwards. A Victorian poet but one whose style is as bold and striking as anything written at any point since. Barrie Needham shows how Hopkins wrestled with his poetry to express his faith in God and his understanding of God in nature, and shows the philosophical understanding that underscored his writing. If you have ever read any Hopkins or heard his poems being read you will find this article immensely helpful.

In addition we have four excellent reviews of notable recent books.

Avi Shlaim, aged two, with his parents and sister in Baghdad, 1947. From the cover of his book.

Graham Murphy reviews Avi Shlaim, Three Worlds, Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, (Oneworld Publications, 2023). The book of the year for both the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, Avi Shlaim tells his own story as someone who was born into the prosperous and significant Jewish community of Iraq following the Second World War and who was forced, with most of the Jewish population, to emigrate to Israel in 1950. At the age of 15 his life changed when he managed to come to the UK, ending up at Cambridge and ultimately as Professor of International Relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford. As a young man he served in the Israel Defense Force but is not afraid to criticise Israel or Zionism. His most recent research has gone back to Iraq and his own origins as part of ‘a Diaspora that had been the living embodiment of Muslim-Jewish co-existence [which] was no more’. In Shlaim’s view ‘As Israel expanded, the Palestinians, Arab natives of historic Palestine, not the Germans or the Russians, would take the burden of punishment for the European pogroms of modern history and the Final Solution.’ His reflections on his Jewish past in Iraq and on Arab-Israeli relations ever since are well worth reading, especially at the present time.

Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey (eds.), Animal Theologians (Oxford Academic, Oxford University Press, 2023) is reviewed by Feargus O’Connor who takes us through the theological contributions to the consideration of animal rights, vivisection and animal cruelty. A number of the subjects of the book are Unitarians – most notably Frances Power Cobbe and Charles Hartshorne – and many would find agreement with Gandhi who Feargus quotes:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way animals are treated. Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that man is at present committing against God and His fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.

Professor David Williams reviews Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Astrotopia: the Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race (University of Chicago Press, 2022) a book which raises the issue of humankind’s increasingly exploitative attitude to space exemplified in the attitudes of such figures as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, described by the reviewer as ‘both so grotesquely wealthy that they can have dreams of both colonising space and the funds to achieve those aims’. It is clear too that the United States no longer views ‘outer space as the common heritage of all humanity.’ In the light of this how should we progress human interaction with space?

Inside the former NSP meeting-house Ballymoney (Photo: David Steers)

Liz McManus is a former Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal in the Republic of Ireland. Since leaving politics she has become a writer and in When Things Come To Light (Arlen House, 2023) she has drawn on her own family experiences to ‘craft an insightful and compelling novel’ in the words of Derek McAuley, our reviewer. Liz McManus’s grandparents were Unitarians/Non-Subscribers from County Antrim. Remarkably life took them to the Khasi Hills where (in the novel at least) they encounter the Rev Margaret Barr and Kissor Singh, the founder of the Unitarian Church in North India. In a strange piece of synchronicity Kissor Singh quotes St Paul ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind’, words which Liz McManus’s grandfather recognises as inscribed on the wall of his home church back in Ballymoney in Ulster. A fascinating novel incorporating Unitarians, family history, Ireland and India.

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Posted on by David Steers

The one constant in an ever changing world

The congregation of First Dunmurry has existed since around 1676. The first meeting house was an old lime kiln, later a meeting house was built in 1714, and this was eventually replaced with the present remarkable building of 1779. So the congregation is almost 350 years old and the building itself is 245 years old. Since 1839 the church’s nearest neighbour has been the railway. That is a long time to be neighbours. The railway has run alongside the Church for all that time. Of course, it has been run by different operators over the years, steam trains have been supplanted by diesel, it has even changed gauge at one point, but the Belfast to Lisburn line was created back in 1839, the station at Dunmurry being added at the same time.

Because of this proximity the railway has inadvertently helped create for First Dunmurry a small footnote in film history. In June 1897 the cinematographer Alexandre Promio came to Ireland on behalf of the famous Lumière brothers to make the first moving film in Ireland. He filmed in Belfast, including street scenes in Castle Place and on Queen’s Bridge, fire-fighters practising, and a few seconds of the first football match ever to be filmed, which was Glentoran v Cliftonville at the Oval in East Belfast.

He also filmed short sections of the rail journey between Belfast and Dublin. Cameras were cumbersome and had to be hand cranked. To capture movement they had to be pointed at crowds or some human activity or placed on a moving platform like a train or a tram. So the train was an obvious place to go and filming the view as the train pulled out of a station was a good way to catch a local view.

As the steam train chugged out of Dunmurry station, sometime in the Summer of 1897, Promio filmed the view and the result was a 37 second burst of film called Départ de Dunmurry. The opening few seconds shows an intensely industrial scene based around the long demolished mill, not immediately recognisable as the modern Dunmurry. By the end of the film we are into open countryside.

This new video enables us to compare the trail blazing film of 1897 with a contemporary film of the same view in 2024. Départ de Dunmurry 2024 enables the viewer to make that comparison:

Click on the video to see Départ de Dunmurry 2024

We can reflect on what has changed over those 127 years between 1897 and 2024. In one way we have to marvel at the technological progress that has taken place. In 1897 film was in its infancy, cameras were cumbersome, very expensive and required a lot of skill to use. Alexandre Promio was an expert who had filmed all over the world, one of only a handful of people who could do that. Today I am just one of literally millions of people who has a phone that is also a camera which can take digital films in colour with sound merely by pointing it in the right direction.

Imagine if you could show Alexandre Promio a modern phone or a digital camera. He would be more astonished than we could imagine. So we might ask what will technology be like 127 years from now? It is impossible to imagine.

But in the film what do we see today that is different? Today there are cars, lots of cars, there is a significant quantity of graffiti, but actually more trees and more houses. We can notice too that the old steam train takes a bit longer to get up speed than the modern diesel one. You wouldn’t know just looking at the videos though that the railways were much more extensive in 1897 than today. There were around 5,630 km of railway lines in those days, more than twice what there is today, and you could go virtually anywhere in Ireland by rail then. You are restricted to very limited routes today, particularly in Northern Ireland.

But when you compare the two films from 1897 and 2024 one thing has not changed and that is our church. Indeed it has not changed in any big way since 1779 when it was built. As the train curves to the right you can look up Glebe Road and see the church in its prominent position on top of the hill.

It represents our faith, our witness,  and though the world changes around us in so many different ways, what we stand for and what we do is always equally important. As we look out of the window of the railway carriage we can see the changes and notice too our Church, the one constant in an ever changing world.

We also have another new video uploaded to YouTube. Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Reflections on Spring, Pentecost, and Psalm 104 from the newly refurbished Session Room and the grounds of First Dunmurry (NS) Presbyterian Church. With the Rev Dr David Steers, minister, and Allen Yarr, organist:

First Dunmurry (NS) Presbyterian Church

Posted on by David Steers

Visit to six churches in Belfast and county Down

Between 7th and 9th May, Dunmurry congregation was visited by four Unitarian ministers from Great Britain. These included Rev Laura Dobson, minister at Chorlton, Rev Mária Pap, minister at Mansfield, Francis Elliot-Wright, student minister at Knutsford, and Rev Jim Corrigall, the London District Minister. On the evening of Tuesday, 7th May Dunmurry congregation welcomed them, plus members of other congregations and a good number of local ministers, to a social evening in the McCleery Hall. I conducted an interview/dialogue with Jim who told us about his role as London District Minister, growing up in South Africa and his anti-apartheid activities, his decades as a journalist around the world which took him to Northern Ireland among other places, as well as the theological reflections which led him eventually to enter the ministry. As part of the evening Jim shared with us the reading that means most to him in his ministry – ‘God’s Grandeur’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins – and we listened to his favourite piece of music –  Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika, God Bless Africa. It was a great night enjoyed by everyone.

Left to right Rev Dr David Steers, Rev Mária Pap, Rev Lynda Kane, Rev Laura Dobson, Francis Elliot-Wright, Rev Jim Corrigall, Rev Stephen Reain Adair, Rev Brian Moodie in the McCleery Hall, Dunmurry.

On Wednesday morning we made an early start in the company of a group of members of Dunmurry and First Church to visit six churches in Belfast and county Down and learn something about their history and witness. Thanks to Gary Douds we were taken around the churches in a minibus in great comfort and we were also blessed with fantastic weather.

Some of the party at Dunmurry, ready to set off at 9.00 am.
Laura, Jim, Francis and Mária visit the grave of Rev Alexander Gordon (Principal of the Unitarian Home Missionary College) at Dunmurry.
Outside Rademon later in the day.

In most of the churches I said something about the building and the history of the congregation and in Rademon Jim Ferris shared his historical expertise to give us a talk about his congregation. Our thanks go to all the ministers and members who welcomed us in our travels including Des McKeown, Rev Chris Hudson, Rev Dr Heather Walker, Mary Stewart and David Rooney, as well as Jim Ferris.

Des McKeown welcomes everyone to First Church, Rosemary Street.
Rev Chris Hudson welcomes everyone in the chancel in All Souls’.

We had lunch in Denvir’s in Downpatrick and returned to Dunmurry just 15 minutes later than our planned schedule had anticipated, so all in all a great day out.

In Downpatrick.
Jim Ferris explains the history of Rademon.

We visited in turn Dunmurry (1779), First Belfast (1783), All Souls’ Belfast (1896), Rademon (1713), Downpatrick (1711) and Clough (1837), buildings of different styles and ages but all with their own story to tell as part of our distinctive tradition.

In Clough, the last visit of the day.
Posted on by David Steers

Postcard from Dunmurry: Then and Now (a different view)

Back in January 2023 I posted a piece about a postcard of Dunmurry which showed the classic view of the church built in 1779. It was published in Lisburn by F.W. Harding and posted in November 1906. This is the picture:

and you can read about it by clicking here.

As I mention in that post, postcards of Non-Subscribing Presbyterian churches are not that common. I have seen the 1906 view before and there is also a much later one but I was pleased to discover another postcard featuring the church, this one new to me:

This dates from a little later and although it is taken from a less popular vantage point in many ways it gives a much clearer view of the building. This card was published locally by ‘W. McCartney, Stationer and Tobacconist, Dunmurry’ in the ‘Signal Series’. It has at the bottom left hand corner the title ‘Unitarian Church, Dunmurry’ and was never posted. On the back, however, it is dated May 19th 1919 and has a message to an unnamed recipient which reads ‘With best wishes for your welfare from the People of Dunmurry and district from W. Laursen’. The name is actually a bit hard to make out but that is my best guess.

In a way it is a clearer picture than the 1906 view, being a Real Photograph, if a little damaged. But the view is not obscured by trees and you can clearly see the large amount of ivy that was then being allowed to grow over the left hand door. This is actually also present on the 1906 view although it is hard to make out behind the tree.

A modern image from more or less the same angle, taken a couple of weeks ago, shows the same view:

The view of the church hasn’t changed between 1919 and 2024. There are now houses along the side which weren’t there but the splendid building of 1779 is reassuringly the same.