The next issue (Volume 77 Part 2, Number 199, Autumn and Winter 2024) is due out very soon, so this is a chance to preview our brilliant new Logo:
Faith and Freedom was founded in Oxford at the instance of the Ministerial Old Students’ Association of Manchester College, Oxford in 1947 and has been published continuously since. For the first time we have our own logo. Bold and attractive it expresses our identity and our long tradition of freedom of thought in matters of religion.
I added this short video to our YouTube channel featuring the church and some of the grounds at Dunmurry built around a short passage on prayer written by Valentine David Davis. V.D. Davis trained for the ministry at Manchester College when it was still in London and James Martineau was Principal. He was one of the last links between that generation of ministers and the mid-twentieth century. His little book The Lord’s Prayer An Interpretation. Together with an Address on The Offering of Prayer was published by the Lindsey Press in 1938.
His book on prayer is full of insight. He is perhaps someone who is rather overlooked in our history. On leaving Manchester College he went to Christ Church, Nottingham as minister for a few years before moving on to the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth for eleven years. This was followed by a further ministry at Wallasey. In Merseyside he was greatly influenced by John Hamilton Thom whose devotional Services and Prayers he later edited along with a selection of J.H. Thom’s writings in a A Minister of God. Ministry in Liverpool and Wallasey was followed by eleven years as editor of The Inquirer before returning to the ministry in Bournemouth where he served for twenty years up to retirement. He made some more important contributions to devotional publishing and to history, producing A Book of Daily Strength as well as A History of Manchester College and a history of the London Domestic Mission Society. He was editor also of Hymns of Worship, first published in 1927, reprinted a number of times, then republished with a Supplement (1951), and later still republished in a revised format in 1962. Even Hymns of Faith and Freedom, published in 1991, described itself as a radical revision of Hymns of Worship. So as one of the first fruits of the collaboration that led to the new General Assembly and ‘offered, in the interest of unity and comprehension, with the prayer that it may be blessed in its ministry to the fellowship of our churches’ it proved remarkably successful.
We also uploaded to YouTube our full Easter Day service at Dunmurry recently. The full service, including hymns, prayers and readings can be seen here:
Congratulations to Wayne Facer on the publication of his new book A Vision Splendid. The influential life of William Jellie. A British Unitarian in New Zealand (Blackstone Editions, Toronto, Canada, 2017 – http://www.BlackstoneEditions.com). It’s an excellent study that looks at Unitarian origins in New Zealand through the work of William Jellie, an Ulster born Non-Subscribing Presbyterian who was one of the many pioneers from there who went out to establish congregations in what were then dominions of the United Kingdom.
Wayne Facer
The book has a striking cover, taken from a work by an unknown New Zealand artist, and is a very important addition to the study of the way Unitarianism spread around the globe and adapted to new situations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It will be reviewed in future issues of the Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society and Faith and Freedom.
About the book I have written:
Wayne Facer has written an absorbing biography of a hitherto little known but nevertheless fascinating and important person. Through meticulous research in both New Zealand and the UK the author illustrates the pioneering life of this minister and educator.
Born in county Down, Ireland, in 1865 and described by his family as “Irish through and through” William followed an uncle into the Unitarian ministry. A relatively small but theologically radical denomination Unitarians placed great store on the value of an educated ministry and Jellie received an excellent education at Manchester College which moved its location from London to Oxford while he was a student there. The author draws out the influence of this education upon Jellie especially through the person of Philip Henry Wicksteed (1844-1927). Through him he developed a love of Dante and literature in general as well as a belief in politically progressive causes and the need for direct intervention in society in favour of the poor. Serving in ministries in both England and New Zealand, where a contemporary journal described him as preaching “sermons and addresses so far superior to the ordinary”, he became a key figure in the establishment of Unitarian churches and institutions in New Zealand. After retirement from the ministry he embarked upon a new career as a lecturer for the Workers’ Education Association.
We owe a great debt to the author who has traced the varied course of Jellie’s long career, bringing him vividly to life in the context of his times, his ideas and principles, his family and friendships and the institutions and organisations which he supported.
New Zealand Ministers – William Jellie, James Chapple, and Richard Hall at the Unitarian Hall, Timaru (from the back cover of the book)
A Vision Splendid. The influential life of William Jellie. A British Unitarian in New Zealand (Blackstone Editions, Toronto, Canada, 2017, ISBN 978-0-9816402-6-6, Pages: xxv + 278)
The Spring and Summer 2016 issue of Faith and Freedom (Volume 69 Part 1, Number 182) is now available.
There’s a great deal in it, including Rachel Muers’ and Rhiannon Grant’s examination of the subtle checks and balances of Quaker decision-making processes in ‘At the Threshold of Community’. Ralph Catts discusses ‘Child spiritual development and the role of a liberal church’ and Victor Lal gives us the third part of his research on ‘The Unitarians of the West and the Brahmo Samajees of the East at Manchester College, Oxford 1896 –1948’. Indeed the cover picture on the latest issue includes an Indian 15P. stamp dating from 1967 and featuring Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who was Upton Lecturer in Comparative Religion, Manchester College, Oxford, from 1929 to 1930, later becoming President of India between 1962 and 1967. Dan C. West discusses ‘The Emerging Church’ and Susan Fogarty examines questions of ‘Faith Tourism’ in the context of poet and Welsh Anglican minister R.S. Thomas. Mark Adair’s paper ‘Once upon a time’ on the use of stories in religious discourse takes as its starting point a line of dialogue from the 1987 film Planes, Trains and Automobiles: “Everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate… Here’s a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener…”
This issue also includes a review article of the Unitarian Historical Society’s Essays in Honour of Alan Ruston contributed by Martin Fitzpatrick as well as reviews by Marcus Braybrooke, Pat Frankish, Rosemary Arthur, Lena Cockroft, and Iain Brown. There’s much that will interest any reader on a whole range of subjects.
If you would like to subscribe to Faith and Freedom, which is published twice a year, you can do so online via PayPal through the Faith and Freedom website:
http://www.faithandfreedom.org.uk/subs.htm
The 2016 Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society are now out. If you are not already on the mailing list you can join the Unitarian Historical Society via the treasurer. Details of how to join (along with a great deal more) can be found on the UHS website: http://www.unitarianhistory.org.uk/hsmembership4.html
This year’s Transactions include:
Bells and Bell-Ringing in Unitarian Chapels
Leonard Smith
An Inventory of Unitarian Bell Locations
Leonard Smith
Selling Manchester College: 1949 and the aftermath
Alan Ruston
Harriet Martineau and ‘safety’ in the after-life
John Warren
As well as reviews of
Free Trade’s First Missionary Sir John Bowring in Europe and Asia, Philip Bowring, Hong Kong University Press, 2014, pp. 262, with portraits in colour plus 18 pages of index. Hardback. ISBN 978-988-8208-72-2. Price £33.
Children of the Same God: The Historical Relationship Between Unitarianism, Judaism, and Islam, Susan J. Ritchie, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2014, pp. I-xx, 106. ISBN 978-1-55896-725-0. Price $14 US.
In these Times, Living in Britain through Napoleon’s Wars 1793-1815, Jenny Uglow, 2014, London Faber & Faber, pp. 641 plus 98 pages of notes and index. ISBN 978-0571-26952-5. Price £25.
The Dissenters Volume 3, The Crisis and Conscience of Nonconformist, Michael R. Watts, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 493. Hardback. ISBN 978-0-19-822969-8. Price £85.
The Spirit of Dissent: A Commemoration of the Great Ejectment of 1662, Janet Wootton, (ed.), Institute of Theological Partnerships Publishing [ITPP], 2015, pp. 210. ISBN: 978-1-908532-04-6. Price £10.
Willaston School Nantwich. Later St Joseph’s and Elim Bible College, Andrew Lamberton (ed.), Willaston and District History Group, Chester, 2015, pp. 144. ISBN 978-0-949001-56-6. Price £11.95. Copies of the book can be ordered from the Willaston and District History Group.
From Somerset to the Pyrenees in the steps of William Arthur Jones, Geologist and Antiquary, David Rabson. Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society (SANHS). pp. 108. Paperback. ISBN 978 0 902152 28 1. Price £14.95 plus £3.99 post and packing from SANHS.
velvethummingbee 