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About time!

19/7/2013

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The website christianity.org.uk offers a refreshingly honest take on the claim that Jesus is God. It admits that Jesus never claimed to be God but offers the suggestion that by 'intriguing' his Jewish followers he caused them to conclude he must be.  It implies, though it has a careful line in anti-semitism to tread - that many Jews, similarly intrigued, didn't reach this conclusion.

About time!  After centuries of pointless oppression, specious argument and downright lies from representatives of the mainstream Church we get the admission that the status of Jesus is not obvious. It's a conclusion that the Church arrived at some time after Jesus's death.


It accepts that there are other ways to understand Jesus and the divine sonship hypothesis is the 'one that [some] Christians came to accept as the belief that made best sense of what had happened during the thirty remarkable years of Jesus’ life'.


It also, remarkably, accepts the wide variety and contradictory understandings of the meaning of the Crucifixion.  In the spirit of Free Christianity, it confesses that different people understand Jesus very differently. 


We haven't yet quite got there.  The website still claims that the New Testament clearly backs up the claim of divine status, whereas only the later epistles offer much support and then only if you have already accepted a trinitarian solution to Jesus.  Nor, more importantly, does it address the obvious issue that there are abundant evidences in the Gospels that Jesus was not God and, like the non-believing Jews to which christianity.org.uk refers, would have regarded such a claim as repugnant.


Still, it's a step forward. Free Christianity advances.




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Why this site is necessary!

14/9/2010

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http://reigniteuk.blogspot.com/2009/03/drop-free-christian.html
With 'friends' like this, who needs enemies?

The argument appears to be that Unitarian and Free Christian are synonymous terms; "two different names for the same tradition".

In the later nineteenth century and earlier twentieth century, that could perhaps be argued.  It's hardly true today.  Times have changed and there certainly are "Unitarians (who are not Christians)".

It seems another example of the creeping tendency to want to brand the Unitarian and Free Christian movement with a single corporate identity and excise the bits that don't fit neatly.
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Classic titles of Free Christianity

27/8/2010

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A few titles of interest that can be read online.

The history, opinions, and present legal position of the English Presbyterians by Thomas Falconer, 1834

The new affinities of faith: a plea for free Christian union  by James Martineau, 1869

Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty
 by John James Tayler, 1851


A Free Catholic Church  by J.M. Lloyd Thomas, 1907
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What is a Free Christian?

20/8/2010

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I have been giving further thought to what distinguishes the Free Christian from other liberal Christians.  I think the key difference is from where you start.  The Free Christian starts with an assumption of ‘creed-less-ness’ and freedom of belief.  This is why he or she is likely to be associated with the Unitarian and Free Christian Church. This is a different organisational and theological context to that of the liberal Christian within a mainstream Church.  However, the Free Christian accepts that the creeds have shaped the thinking of mainstream Christianity for many centuries and the doctrines set out by them are not to be dismissed lightly.  He or she is therefore interested in exploring and seeking to understand them, even if he or she cannot subscribe to them. This again is likely to be a different situation to that of the liberal within the mainstream who might well be finding the obligatory nature of the creeds constricting and seeking looser doctrinal interpretations than are accepted by their Church.

This means, I think that the Free Christian is distinguished from the Unitarian Christian in that he or she finds more value in engaging with the doctrines of the mainstream churches and is likely to be more at home with issues concerning liberal Christians in those churches than with matters of the Unitarian denomination.

These are, of course, theoretical distinctions.  I see no reason why one cannot be a Unitarian, a Unitarian Christian, a Free Christian and a liberal Christian; or an Anglican, a Free Christian and a liberal Christian.
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Wayfarer spirituality

6/8/2010

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There is a distinctive, though not by any means exclusive spiritual outlook that is associated with the Free Christian position.

It is a spirituality that is rooted in the conviction that, as Teresa of Avila's wonderful words put it,
Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

This focus on the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth and the implications of that for us, although it follows from the particular theological outlook of Free Christianity, is something shared by trinitarians, unitarians, agnostics and even atheists.

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Why Wayfarers?

5/8/2010

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It is my hope that in the future Free Christianity will be defined primarily not by the theological and the negative but by the spiritual and the positive.  As a step towards this, 'Wayfarer' seemed to me a good name for those of us who are following in the Way of Christ as travellers,  pilgrims perhaps; not rooted to a particular expression of faith but being open to new experience as we journey on.
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Why not Unitarian?

3/8/2010

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One might have thought that Free Christianity would be entirely at home under the umbrella that bears the name of the 'General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches'.  But it is a fact that many Unitarians today are not only in no sense Christian but they regard themselves as members of a non-Christian religion.  Indeed a significant minority are hostile to Christian witness within the movement.  This, together with the seemingly relentless tide in favour of establishing a single corporate identity for the movement (to portray it less as a general assembly and more as a single entity), means that the Free Christian aspect is under continual threat. Every other year there is a new initiative to rid the movement of what many see as an awkward and (even worse) out-of-date appendage to its title. 

The Unitarian Christian Association is doing good work to restore the fortunes of Christian witness within the movement and the concerns of Free Christianity very largely overlap with Unitarian Christianity.  It is also true that Unitarian Christianity is far less 'sectarian' and more Free Christian in its outlook than it was once (the two earliest Unitarian organisations in England both had constitutions that excluded Arians for example, and in later times strict Unitarians would denounce Free Christians' 'sickly' non-sectarianism).

While Free Christianity is not quite identical with Unitarian Christianity and there is a need for the Free Christian aspect of the movement to have active and explicit witness, the 'Free Christian' part of the name General Unitarian of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches also bears witness to the general commitment in the General Assembly's Object to uphold the liberal Christian tradition.
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Progressive, Radical, Liberal...or Free?

2/8/2010

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Why Free?

While Free Christians share much with Christian groups that use words like 'Progressive' and 'Radical' to describe themselves, such groups can have an agenda that Free Christians do not have and their material can sometimes seem rather negative.  

This may be because such groups are formed in opposition to a conservative, even fundamentalist, view of Christianity, whereas Free Christians are likely to be seen as on the more traditional wing of the Unitarian and Free Christian movement.

And perhaps for this reason, it is probably true to say that Free Christians are more sympathetic to traditional Christian forms and formulas, simply asking that they are not oliged to agree with them in order to be accepted as Christians.  It is also probably true to say that Free Christians are more interested in the flesh and blood Jesus of Nazareth than in a symbolic, mythical Christ-figure that is sometimes encountered in 'progressive' circles.

Of course, the word 'Free' has its drawbacks (which is partly why the Christian Compass journal dropped it in favour of 'Inclusive' - which in turn sends out its own message) but as long as it is understood to mean no more than unfettered by credal obligation, it is probably a reasonable adjective.  The name Wayfarers has been chosen as an alternative for this site, more on that later.
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    What's here

    A quick look at the 'blogosphere' shows that the nature of the medium means it is all too easy for a 'blog' to convey the impression that its compiler is, at best, self-indulgent and verbose, and at worst, a narcissistic bore.  Religious blogs are by no means immune from this.

    However, while I shall try to avoid sharing my each and every passing thought with you, there is a use for a space for shorter, more ephemeral pieces of writing, and on this website, that's here.   These pieces are likely to be frequently revised, sometimes rewritten and occasionally removed.

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