The latest issue of Faith and Freedom (Volume 79 Part 1, Issue 201, Autumn and Winter 2025) is now on its way to subscribers. Having been in print since 1947 we have now reached issue 201.
Rev Sidney Spencer by John Stanton Ward, Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
Sidney Spencer is a much neglected figure in twentieth-century Unitarian history and Jo James gives a comprehensive examination of his theological ideas. A Unitarian minister noted for his strongly pacifist witness both before and during the Second World War, with only limited formal academic credentials to his name he nevertheless became Principal of Manchester College, Oxford as well as one of the acknowledged world experts on mysticism. His interest in this subject resulted in a number of publications culminating in the Pelican Mysticism in World Religion in 1963, an influential work and something of a best seller in its day. Jo illuminates Spencer’s theology, sets it in its context and seeks out its relevance to the present day.
This year is the 100th anniversary of the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’, the famous trial which took place in Dayton, Tennessee when local teacher John Scopes was taken to court for teaching Darwin’s theories in his classes, contrary to the law of the state of Tennessee. John Midgley gives a timely account of this key event, forever made famous by the movie Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracey.
One hundred years is a long time yet the whole case has many uncomfortable resonances in the present age and these perhaps feed into the current situation in the United States. Dan C. West, who has ‘lived through 15 presidents since the beginning of the Second World War’, gives a very insightful analysis of the current political, theological and cultural trends which mark America today.
How do we understand our place in the universe, how do we understand the universe itself in theological terms? Feargus O’Connor provides an excellent examination of Our Mysterious Universe: Accident or Design? looking at the philosophical notions that underpin the argument from design.
Following on from Barrie Needham’s article considering the Koran/Quran from Western, liberal Christian eyes in our last issue, we are pleased to include a response from Imran Usmani who brings considerable insight to the topic through his extensive researches on Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
We are delighted to once again include a number of reviews, including Peter B. Godfrey’s review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity; Peter’s review of the late Rev Art Lester’s Thank God I’m an Agnostic: Trusting your Hunch about God, the Universe and All That and the editor’s review article on A Short History of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland. Including Sketches of Individual Congregations and a Fasti of Ministers who served in them by John Nelson.
You can take out a subscription via Nigel Clarke, our Business Manager, or online via PayPal. The details of how to subscribe can be found on our website here: https://www.faithandfreedom.org.uk/subs.htm
Having been founded in 1947 we have now reached the significant milestone of our 200th issue. Still proudly flying the flag for a thoughtful, liberal approach to religion our journal goes all round the world and has readers on every continent.
200th Issue Cover
Our Cover includes pictures of a selection of some of our 200 issues. We’ve had some splendid images in the last few years with photographs taken by some notable photographers as well some historic pictures or artworks that have really stood out.
With this being such a special issue we have selected three articles from our back catalogue that shed some light on our development over the last 78 years..
The first is from our very first issue. A Declaration of Faith by Dr Albert Schweitzer set the tone at the very genesis of this journal. It is hard to over estimate the importance of Albert Schweitzer within liberal circles at that time. A polymath thinker, theologian, humanitarian, philosopher, physician, he epitomised the cutting edge of a liberal, questioning approach to religion in the mid-twentieth century. Written for a meeting of the International Association for Religious Freedom, the world’s oldest interfaith organisation, a body which we have often had close interactions with, it was a considerable coup to have his contribution in the very first issue.
The second article is God is Necessary by H. Lismer Short published in Autumn 1958. At the time he was a future Principal of Manchester College, and his article displays the depth and breadth of his scholarship. Essentially an answer to the humanism of that age and the development of a scientific thinking that had unsettled the traditional Unitarian approach to the divine. The article declares that we ‘have been satisfied with cosmic explanations or enquiring agnosticisms, and have not sufficiently tackled religion from the end of human anxiety and dread.’ The traditional proofs of God no longer hold but ‘all the burden of living’ still required a place for faith in a personal God.
Harry Lismer Short. Portrait in Harris Manchester College
The final article from our back catalogue in this issue is A Rational Basis for Religious Belief by Arthur J. Long dating from Summer 1974. Another Unitarian Principal (this time of the Unitarian College, Manchester) this is another article which displays the writer’s considerable erudition as well, in Arthur’s case, of his irrepressible sense of humour. What is particularly interesting about this paper is that it was prepared for a long-forgotten meeting between Unitarian and Roman Catholic theologians which took place in 1973. The papers for this encounter still exist and it might be profitable at some stage to revisit them. The basis of this article is not to ask ‘Does God exist?’ but rather ‘What sort of God?’, he rejects the argument from revelation and the argument from experience and roots religious belief in a rational theism, ‘underpinned by a rational empirical theology’, and uses Peter Berger’s A Rumour of Angels to frame his apologia.
Rev Arthur Long (from the cover of his 1978 Essex Hall Lecture)
New pieces for this issue include On Reading the Koran by Barrie Needham, a timely, fair and objective assessment of this crucial text which is so frequently mentioned but very seldom examined. The other is Frank Walker’s The Sybil’s Request. Death and Our Human Imagination which explores how we understand death, Heaven and eternity and ranges over the thinking contained in the poetry and literature of such figures as T.S. Eliot, T.F. Powys and Julian Barnes, and ends, appropriately enough, with a quotation from Harry Lismer Short.
The articles are followed by a great selection of reviews:
Reviewed by Graham Murphy
Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson, ‘Forgotten, Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials’, Profile Books, 2025 reviewed by Graham Murphy
Michael Allured and Kate Dean, ‘Soul Deep: Exploring Spirituality, Together’, Lindsey Press, 2024, reviewed by Laura Dobson
Jade C. Angelica, ‘Where two worlds touch’, Skinner House Books, 2024, reviewed by Peter Hewis
Patrick Riordan SJ, ‘Human Dignity and Liberal Politics: Catholic possibilities for the common good’, Georgetown University Press, Washington DC, 2023, reviewed by Helena Fyfe Thonemann.
Reviewed by Laura Dobson
An annual subscription to Faith and Freedom (two issues) costs £16.00 (postage included) in the United Kingdom. Single copies can be ordered at a cost of £8.00 each (postage included). Cheques should be made out to Faith and Freedom and sent to the business manager:
Nigel Clarke, Business Manager, Faith and Freedom, 16 Fairfields, Kirton in Lindsey, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. DN21 4GA.
Overseas subscriptions are also available.
It is also possible to pay online. For more details see our website:
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.
An annual subscription to Faith and Freedom (two issues) costs £16.00 (postage included) in the United Kingdom. Single copies can be ordered at a cost of £8.00 each (postage included). Cheques should be made out to Faith and Freedom and sent to the business manager:
Nigel Clarke, Business Manager, Faith and Freedom, 16 Fairfields, Kirton in Lindsey, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. DN21 4GA.
Overseas subscriptions are also available.
It is also possible to pay online. For more details see our website:
The latest issue of Faith and Freedom (Spring and Summer 2023, Number 196) is now available and will be with subscribers. New subscribers are very welcome, details of how to subscribe can be found below.
Elmina Castle, Ghana (Photo: Aidan McQuade)
The cover picture features a collection of shackles used on slaves in Elmina Castle, Ghana, a photograph taken by Aidan McQuade who contributes our first article – Ireland – slavery and anti-slavery.
Cover picture – Photo Aidan McQuade
Aidan McQuade is a former director of Anti-Slavery International and has worked extensively in development and humanitarian operations, including leading Oxfam GB’s emergency responses to the civil war in Angola from 1996 to 2001. He writes of the horrors of the slave trade looking through the lens of Irish involvement and noting also those individuals who contributed to anti-slavery activism in the eighteenth century.
He writes:
“Over hundreds of years slavery devastated the African interior as wars and raids, encouraged by the European powers, kidnapped millions of people, many of them children, to feed the demand from the Americas for human beings who could and would be worked to death to produce cash crops, mostly for European markets.
As with today, it is easy to ignore the exploitation that occurs within the political economy – the systems that govern business, trade and employment – when the are concealed far away from us.
So, when it was first brought to public attention by Thomas Clarkson, the image of the Brookes ship shocked the world. It presented in stark detail a visceral reality of the slave trade: how slaves would be packed like sardines into the holds of the slave ships. Clarkson’s friend and comrade in the anti-slavery struggle Olaudah Equiano had direct personal experience of being treated as this sort of cargo and he described it in his auto-biography”:
…we were all put under deck …The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, … but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, … almost suffocated us. … many died, …. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the [latrine buckets], into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable… Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions, and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites.
The door of no return, through which slaves would leave Elmina Castle for the slave ships. (Photo: Aidan McQuade)
John Maxwell Kerr, is a founder member of the Society of Ordained Scientists. His paper, originally given at Harris Manchester College, examines The Search for Meaning in Nature. It is a wide-ranging and deep study using the author’s knowledge of science and religion, incorporating all the riches of literature and poetry, and reaching a surprising conclusion.
Rev John Maxwell Kerr
Barrie Needham’s article on ‘De-churching’ or To the church no more looks at patterns of belief and church attendance in the twenty-first century. What can churches do to overcome these tendencies, what do they need to offer?
Rev Frank Walker
We have an inspiring sermon by Frank Walker, Outlooks on life that still challenge and encourage us, and Graham Murphy provides a review article and essay on Matthew Teller’s valuable book Nine Quarters of Jerusalem, A new Biography of the Old City, which gives such insight to this troubled city, Graham writes:
“In his book about the Old City he describes a place we can visualise, though we may never have been there. We see in our minds eye a golden Dome set within castellated walls as if true to the plans in history books and illustrated bibles. How we imagine Jerusalem is freighted with biblical notions which Teller’s book tends to undermine with doses of reality. He draws our attention to lesser-known aspects of the city’s past and finds himself fascinated by the religious rituals. He interviews the people who live and work beside the pilgrim routes and sacred sites. He shows us how they regard their city, how they cope with its recurrent crises and the lack of rights for the majority who live there.”
And as ever we are blessed by some wonderful reviews. In this issue we feature:
Facing up to Climate Change
Mike Berners-Lee, There Is No Planet B – A Handbook for the Make or Break Years. Cambridge University Press, 2021 (updated edition) pp 316. ISBN 9781108821575, £9.99 pbk. Gaia Vince, Nomad Century – How to Survive the Climate Upheaval. Allen Lane, 2022, pp 260. ISBN 9780241522318, £20.00 hbk. Greta Thunberg, The Climate Book. Allen Lane, 2022, pp 446. ISBN 9780241547472, £25.00 hbk. Reviewed by Professor David A. Williams
A ‘warts and all’ attention to church history
John W. Nelson, A Short History of the Non-Subscribing Church of Ireland including sketches of individual congregations and a Fasti of ministers who served in them, published by The Rev Dr J.W. Nelson, 2022, pp 420, ISBN 9781739978501, £15 hbk. Reviewed by Philip Blair
Praying to an ‘unknowable God’
Bert Hoedemaker, Never-Ending Prayer – A Case for the Christian Tradition. The Lutterworth Press, 2022, pp 136. ISBN: 978 07188 96027, pbk £20. Reviewed by Jim Corrigall
Rev Jim Corrigall
and
Eavesdropping on fascinating conversations
Philip Allott, The Music of Time: Twenty-Four Fables for Today, Matador, 2022, pp 408. ISBN 9781803132228, £7.99 pbk. Reviewed by Frank Walker
Subscription Details
An annual subscription for each volume (two issues) costs £16.00 (postage included) in the United Kingdom. Single copies can be ordered at a cost of £8.00 each (postage included). Cheques should be made out to Faith and Freedom and sent to the business manager:
Nigel Clarke, Business Manager, Faith and Freedom, 16 Fairfields, Kirton in Lindsey, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. DN21 4GA.
It was good to be at the Old Students Association meeting at Harris Manchester College, where some of the images of contributors seen above were taken. And good to see Rev Dr Peter Godfrey, Editor Emeritus of Faith and Freedom.
The latest issue of Faith and Freedom (Volume 24 Part 2, Autumn and Winter 2021, Number 193) is now ready and on its way to subscribers. There has been a slight delay but it is now ready and available to subscribers old and new.
Cover of the new issue featuring Pandita Ramabai
In this issue we are delighted to have Margot Stevenson’s fascinating examination of the life and achievements of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922): ‘Hindu reformer, scholar and educator, feminist and Christian’. Her religious affiliation changed during her lifetime, but while she became a Christian she was far from being an advocate for proselytism. Both a scholar and an activist she taught in the United States and United Kingdom and also set up schools in India. Although a convert she did not abandon her Hindu culture and Indian forms. Within Christianity she changed direction a few times and was linked to Unitarians for a time. Most of all she was defined by an ardent desire to ameliorate the lot of women, girls and widows in Indian society and would go to great lengths to personally rescue young girls who had been married as children and were subsequently widowed and faced a life of misery as a result. Her article also includes a number of illustrations of Ramabai and her work, a person who, in the words of Margot Stevenson, still ‘exudes a mysterious charisma’, almost a century after her death.
Barrie Needham asks about the idea of progress in religion (a very pertinent question for our journal since Faith and Freedom has described itself as ‘a journal of progressive religion’ since it was instituted in 1947). Truth, discovery about God, moral norms, a fulfilling life – how do we define a progressive religion?
Esther Suter is a journalist and ordained pastor in the Swiss Evangelical Church. She writes about ‘How do we become human?’ in the context of Fritz Buri (1907-1995) one of the most prominent liberal theologians in Europe in the twentieth century. An active member of the IARF with many close associations with Unitarians, Fritz Buri was a disciple of Albert Schweitzer who developed and extended his theology in his long career.
Csaba Tódor, a Unitarian minister and educator in Transylvania, looks at the difficulties experienced by churches behind what was once the ‘iron curtain’ as they transition and their societies transition from the centrally planned, authoritarian system of the Communist era to the market-led liberal democracies of the present era.
Helena Fyfe Thonemann gives us her exegesis of ‘Christ’s fury in the Jerusalem Temple at Passover, and the problem of vicarious sacrifice’ which looks at the meaning of communion in the context of replacing the covenant of the Old Testament.
As always we have some important reviews including Marcus Braybrooke on Andy Bannister, Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?, (Inter-Varsity Press, 2021) and Peter Godfrey on Brian Holley’s personal journey ‘from fundamentalism to faith’. In addition Andrew Hill reviews Samuel Haliday by the editor of the journal and Mary Stewart’s book on her church graveyard.
An annual subscription costs £16 and is available from the business manager or through payment via PayPal. You can subscribe via the Faith and Freedom website here: https://www.faithandfreedom.org.uk/subs.htm
The illustration at the top of this page shows Pupils of Pandita Ramabai at the Sharada Sadan, Poona (Pune) from Helen Dyer, Pandita Ramabai: The Story of Her Life (1900)
The latest issue of Faith and Freedom (Autumn and Winter 2018, Volume 71 Part 2, Number 187) is now available.
The front cover has a self-portrait of Edward Lear as the ‘Archbishoprick of Canterbury’ with his cat Foss which relates to Howard Oliver’s article Beyond the Nonsense: Edward Lear and his Writings on Religion and Faith, a rare examination of the religious thought of this unique artist. Other articles include Barrie Needham’s exploration of language, reason and faith in Mysteries Too Deep for Words; Dan C. West’s For Fear of the New, Missing the God of Surprises looks at how we respond religiously to the destructive contemporary challenges that are emerging in society on both sides of the Atlantic; Frank Walker makes a distinction between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ Christianity in What has Christianity ever done for us?; and Peter B. Godfrey recounts his experiences and memories of A Theological Student at Oxford 1953 to 1956.
As always the journal is richly supplied with reviews, including two review articles:
Alastair McIntosh, Poacher’s Pilgrimage – An Island Journey, Birlinn, Edinburgh, March 2018, pp 285, ISBN 9781780274683. £9.99 Pbk. Reviewed by Jim Corrigall. An insightful evaluation of this book informed by an interview Jim conducted with the author.
Unitarian Theology II. Papers given at the Unitarian Theology Conference, Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds October 2017. Edited by David Steers. (Faith and Freedom, 2018). ISSN 0014-701X. Reviewed by Bob Janis-Dillon who gives a close examination of the supplement which accompanied the Number 186 of Faith and Freedom.
Other books reviewed are:
Derek Guiton A Man that Looks on Glass: Standing up for God in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), FeedARead Publishing, 2015, pp 266. ISBN: 978-1-78610-232-4. Reviewed by Stephen Lingwood.
Rachel Hewitt, A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind, Granta, 2017, pp 560. ISBN 978 1 84708 573 3. Hbk £25. Reviewed by Ernest Baker.
Jane Shaw, Pioneers of Modern Spirituality: The Neglected Anglican Innovators of a ‘Spiritual but not Religious’ Age, Darton, Longman and Todd, London 2018, pp 117, ISBN 978-0232053286-9. £12.99 pbk. Reviewed by Jim Corrigall.
Mike Aquilina and Grace Aquilina, A History of the Church in 100 Objects, Ave Maria Press/Alban Books. Notre Dame/Edinburgh, 2017, pp 424. ISBN 9781594717505. £20.99 pbk. Reviewed by David Steers.
Simenon Honoré, Education for Humanity, Spirit of the Rainbow, Suite 70, 2, Mount Sion, , Tunbridge Wells, TN1 1UE, pp88, ISBN 978-0-9566767-5-7, PB £5, plus £2 p&p. Reviewed by Peter B. Godfrey.
If you would like to take out an annual subscription please send a cheque for £15 to the business manager:
Nigel Clarke,
Business Manager, Faith and Freedom,
16 Fairfields,
Kirton in Lindsey,
Gainsborough,
Lincolnshire.
DN21 4GA.
In the latest issue of Faith and Freedom Professor Emily Klenin breaks new ground with an exploration of the writings of David Delta Evans, the Flintshire-born son of a miner who went on to become a Unitarian minister, printer, editor of the Christian Life, novelist and poet in English and Welsh. Emily looks in detail at his 1913 novel Daniel Evelyn, Heretic, which is both a fictionalized account of his childhood and youth and a confession of faith. She draws out the importance of this long-forgotten novel in the religious and social landscape of England and Wales at the time. It’s a fascinating account of a remarkable man who has been long neglected.
Stephen Lingwood develops ‘A Unitarian Theology of Tradition’. He asks “in what sense do we claim religious continuity in a non-creedal tradition that allows the freedom of religious evolution? In what sense is the Unitarianism of the past the same thing as the Unitarianism of the present?” These are important questions for Unitarians to grapple with and drawing on sources such as James Luther Adams, Susan B. Anthony, George Lindbeck and Alasdair MacIntyre and taking scientific method as an analogy he gives a compelling explanation of the way Unitarians can understand their own tradition.
In ‘Manchester College Oxford Old Students Association – The Early Years’ Alan Ruston uncovers the early history of the OSA and describes its birth pangs and early development, concluding with its creation of Faith and Freedom and the encouraging observation: “F&F has proved to be a successful long-lasting journal of mainly intellectual content representing the Unitarian position, which is now in its seventieth year. Its creation can be considered the single most important initiative to have been undertaken by MOSA.”
Our review section is extensive and wide-ranging. Graham Murphy reviews Diarmaid MacCulloch’s All Things Made, New Writings on the Reformation (Allen Lane/Penguin). It’s an excellent review of a timely and important book, Graham writes: “MacCulloch guides us around rooms of the past, noting progress, noting dystopia, and here and there a glimmer of light: ‘a Declaration in the parish church of a town called Torda, a place which should be more of a centre of pilgrimage than it is’ – Toleration.”
Stephen Lingwood’s incisive review of Frederic Muir’s edited collection Turning Point: essays on a new Unitarian Universalism (Skinner House) draws out the ‘trinity of errors’ identified there, including exceptionalism, an aversion to authority and, especially, individualism. This latter tendency is the root of the philosophy of Samuel Smiles and in his fascinating review of John Hunter’s The Spirit of Self-Help. A Life of Samuel Smiles (Shepheard-Walwyn) Bob Janis-Dillon shows how the sometime attender at Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds adapted Emersonian individualism to his ‘Self-Help’ idea, “a mode of thinking we need to challenge if we are to advance as a species”.
Rev Dr Marcus Braybrooke, joint president of the World Congress of Faiths, looks at three books that inform on the place of Islam in modern Britain (James Ferguson, Al-Britainnia, My Country: A Journey Through Muslim Britain, Bantam Press; Richard Sudworth, Encountering Islam: Christian Muslim Relations in the Public Square, SCM Press; Rahim Snow, Remember Who You Are, 28 Spiritual Verses from the Holy Quran, Remembrance Studio), an essential starting point for those who wish to open up dialogue and debate in this area. Marcus also provides two reviews of works that deal with Jewish–Christian relations and pluralism – Tony Bayfield (ed.), Deep Calls to Deep: Transforming Conversations between Jews and Christians (SCM Press) and Hans Ucko (ed.), Thanking Together: On Pluralism, Violence, and the Other (Journal of Ecumenical Studies).
In his review of what may be Don Cupitt’s “last and most important book” (Ethics in the Last Days of Humanity, Polebridge Press) Frank Walker lifts about fifteen random insights from the book. These all bear careful reflection. One takes up the theme of Muslim relations (“Western scholars should publish fully critical studies of the origins and the developing theology of the Qur’an and of the hadith”). In another Don Cupitt asserts: “Ordinary people will need a religious discipline like that of the Buddhist sangha to help people to calm their violent passions and to think rationally about how best to live.” It’s difficult not reflect on the plight of Muslims in Myanmar on reading this. But it is an important book concerned, as Frank says, “in the most down-to-earth way” with the end-times.
Faith, hope and healing are the themes of three reviews. Pat Frankish reviews The Enduring Melody (Darton, Longman Todd) by Michael Mayne about one man’s struggle with cancer, “a powerful and painful book, with a thread of reality and hope”. Christian Wiman’s book My bright abyss: meditations of a modern believer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is similarly a tale of a struggle with cancer, in this case that of a poet who tries to make sense of religion and God through his suffering. It is reviewed by Barrie Needham who draws out many profound insights from it. Barrie writes: “Faith which is self-centred does not, according to Wiman, recognise God impinging on this world through love. ‘The only way to ascertain the truth of religious experience: it propels you back towards the world and other people, and not simply more deeply within yourself’.” Andrew Hill also reviews a new book of hymns: Hymns of Hope and Healing: words and music to refresh the church’s ministry of healing (Stainer & Bell), a modern, progressive collection of hymns which covers a subject index of more than 250 topics. Andrew mentions some of them but those listed alphabetically from A to D give an idea of the books radical emphases: “ageing, balance, birth, carers, dementia, DNA, drugs…”
So many of the reviews are about finding and connecting with the divine in one way or another and Jim Corrigall reviews Lorraine Cavanagh’s new book Waiting on the Word: Preaching Sermons that connect people with God (Darton, Longman and Todd). Jim quotes the author “Sermon preparation is a matter of waiting in the pain of others, rather than worrying what we are going to say.” Finally Peter Godfrey reviews Crocodiles do not swim here (Avian House) by John Smith Wilkinson who looks at doctrine, Biblical interpretation and religious understanding from fresh angles.
If you would like to take out an annual subscription to Faith and Freedom you can do so online at http://www.faithandfreedom.org.uk/subs.htm or by sending a cheque for £15 to the Business Manager, Nigel Clarke., 16 Fairfields, Kirton in Lindsey, Gainsborough, Lincs, DN21 4GA.
FAITH AND FREEDOM, Autumn and Winter issue, (Volume 68, Part 2, Number 181) will be on its way to subscribers very soon. In it you will find:
Finding God in Strangers
John Navone
On Reading the Gospel of Mark with Two Eyes
George Kimmich Beach
Grace and Disgrace: a Social Pilgrimage
Yvonne Joan Craig
The Unitarians of the West and the Brahmo Samajees of the East
at Manchester College, Oxford 1896 –1948 Part II
Victor Lal
Six Months in a Prisoner of War Camp
David Steers
Manchester College, Oxford during the First World War
Evelyn Taylor
A Bible for Neo-Liberals
Barrie Needham
Bridging the Years in Marriage
Sue Norton
As well as reviews by Pat Frankish, Ernest Baker, Peter B. Godfrey, Lena Cockroft and the editor, and a review article by Graham Murphy on Sarah Shaw, The Spirit of Buddhist Meditation, The Sacred Literature Series, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2014.
Other books reviewed include
Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: a Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, SPCK, London, 2014.
Sam Harris, Waking Up: Searching for spirituality without religion, Bantam Press, London, 2014.
Mária Pap, Hungarian Unitarians in Transylvania, 2015.
Zoltán Fülöp, Emőd Farkas (eds.), Humble in Front of God, Words for Worship from Transylvanian Unitarians, International Council of Unitarians and Universalists/Hungarian Unitarian Ministers’ Association, Kolozsvár 2014
Emma Percy,”What Clergy Do”: especially when it looks like nothing, SPCK, London, 2014.
Marcus Braybrooke, Peace in Our Hearts Peace in Our World a meditation for everyday, Braybrooke Press, 2015.
John Pritchard, The Second Intercessions Handbook, SPCK, London, 2015.
Individual subscribers will also receive a copy of our Faith and Freedom 2016 Calendar. These are free to personal subscribers but extra copies can be ordered at a cost of £5 each, all of which goes to the charity the Send a Child to Hucklow Fund.
If you would like a sneak preview of the Calendar it can be downloaded on the Faith and Freedom website.
If you haven’t taken out a subscription and would like to do so you can also do that from the Faith and Freedom website:
The photograph at the top of this page is a picture by Transylvanian photographer Márkó László who has kindly contributed a number of pictures to the 2016 Calendar.
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