This is the inaugural issue of The Liberal Christian.
There has been a change of policy: both PDF copies and Web pages of the articles may be read by anyone,
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Scott Wells, Washington, D.C.
The young Internet-based organization Unitarian Ministries (http://www.unitarianministries.com) might evoke feelings of curiosity and wonder from longtime and cradle Unitarian Christians. It is, by its founder's description, "a non-denominational online ministry dedicated to sharing the Unitarian Christian tradition and spiritual philosophy of interfaith." There is no hint of generational anxiety or conflict. Nor, indeed, is there evidence of hard feelings towards a denomination, association or tradition.
While Unitarian Ministries makes references to luminaries like William Ellery Channing, it seems clear that founder Maurisa Brown-Latham has created something not only younger, but new. In January 2009, we spoke by telephone for this profile.
In a story familiar to other come-inners, Brown-Latham grew up a Roman Catholic but converted to Islam at age fifteen, a faith she practiced for seventeen years. About two years ago, she looked at her life of faith and began to re-approach her Christian heritage "in a different way" that maintained the "monotheistic outlook of God" similar to the one she knew as a Muslim.
Looking for a religious alternative, Brown-Latham searched the Internet for options where she discovered Unitarianism. But from her home in Columbia, South Carolina, there were few options for Unitarian Christians and she decided that---rather than drifting from her own commitments---would "have to be my own minister." (Brown-Latham does visit the local pluralist Unitarian Universalist congregation and worships with a Unity church.)
Problems emerged. First, there are no Unitarian Christian seminaries in the United States and the seminaries associated with the Unitarian Universalist Association demanded more than she "could put into the process" including the prospect of deep debt. Instead, Brown-Latham chose to study by extension with The New Seminary, an independent, interfaith institution based in New York, and identifies both its interfaith approach and their encouragement of her Unitarian Christianity as important influences. The New Seminary, which ordains its graduates in its own right, will ordain Brown-Latham as an interfaith minister in June.
Her site, which attracts between 130--300 visits a day has been published since summer 2008. A pillar of her work is to take classic Unitarian Christian works, particularly those of William Ellery Channing, recast them in a contemporary idiom and publish them online and in bound versions. The former is available free of charge; the printed editions are sold as inexpensively as practical. A telephone-based devotional small group study begins this summer. Very recently, Brown-Latham has instituted a membership plan---a "pastor membership"---that is, despite the name open to ordained and unordained persons alike. There is no charge for the membership, which strives to identify Unitarian Christian leaders and coordinate the production and distribution of materials.
Her husband Mitchell Latham, a banker, assists her in the ministry by helping structure it and by ensuring the edited works of Unitarian Christian classics are simple, practical and applicable.
She encourages other Unitarian leaders to meet ministry needs, many being small or simple. "Without resources, it's too hard to be a Unitarian Christian."
Does Brown-Latham have a dream? Yes, "to be ordained as a Unitarian Christian."
Of her mission, she comments: "I'm not running away. I'm not giving up."
Unitarian Ministries may be visited at http://www.unitarianministries.com.
These are tough times for small, progressive theological schools. Economic conditions forced the United Church of Christ's Bangor Theological Seminary to sell their main campus: they are now nested in facilities owned by Husson University. In 2008 the Episcopal Church's Seabury-Western Theological School ceased admission of on-campus, degree-seeking students and as of January 2009, they were still re-organizing. They are trying to figure out how to do theological education with fewer resources and a small student body.
One progressive Christian group that has been rather successful at re-organizing its theological education is the General Convention of the Swedenborgian Church. Unfortunately, their example has largely gone ignored in the wider circles of America's progressive churches. This is understandable: this denomination, which sprang forth from the theological writings of the eighteenth-century scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg, has only 39 churches in North America. Many of these churches are clustered in New England, Kansas and California. They have about 1,400 members in the United States and Canada and so the smallest member communion of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Simply put, their small size makes them easy to overlook.
The earliest Swedenborgian churches in North America were organized in the very early years of the 1800s. Many of their early pastors were previously ordained converts from Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Congregationalism and Universalism; a few early preachers were raised up within Swedenborgian church ranks and these were educated at Harvard. But with decidedly unconventional theologies about salvation and the nature of scripture, and a strong bent towards esoteric mysticism, the Swedenborgians eventually felt it necessary to educate their clergy within their own house.
By the mid-1800s they opened the Theological College of the New Church. At the end of the twentieth century, the school was in Newton, Massachusetts and had been re-named the Swedenborg School of Religion. The school had declined along with its partner denomination, which had shrunk from a late 1800s membership peak of about 8,000 people. By the dawn of the twenty-first century the Swedenborg School of Religion had only three faculty members, often an equal number of students, a declining financial foundation, and serious problems with accreditation. By 2000 they only held affiliate status with the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), an accrediting body. Some graduates were facing challenges with admission to Doctor of Ministry programs and with chaplaincy credentialing programs that required an accredited degree. The school was no longer sustainable and was not serving its students as well as it should.
What could they do? They had a small facility -- and they could only afford a very small faculty -- both of which were not adequate for accreditation. The status quo could not stand. The denomination could dissolve the school and have their students study elsewhere without access to a Swedenborgian theological education. They could try to raise massive amounts of money to expand the school for a student base that would continue to be very small: a Herculean task for a denomination with about 1,400 members. Or they could do something different.
They chose to do something different: to do more theological education, with a smaller kind of institution. They decided to give up having their own separate seminary and decided not to abandon offering a Swedenborgian theological education.
The Swedenborg School of Religion closed down its independent, degree-granting operations. They sold the Newton campus and in 2002 they moved to Berkeley, California where they re-opened as the Swedenborgian House of Studies, at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR). In partnership with PSR they were required to maintain a staff that includes an administrative dean who can also teach, a professor of Swedenborgian theology, and a library devoted to Swedenborgian literature. They offer classes in Swedenborgian theology, history, and polity that can be integrated into PSR's larger Master of Divinity program. Beyond these basics, their more economically efficient institution has also been able to offer distance education for lay people, and a venue for an exciting rotation of adjunct instructors and visiting scholars. Student enrollment has often been higher than they were at Newton (although this year all the students have been in distance education programs) and some PSR students who started in other denominations have switched their ordination track to the Swedenborgian Church.
What PSR was able to do for the Swedenborgians was to free them from the burden of maintaining a stand-alone registrar and bursar, and having to pay for faculty to teach basic ministry skills, like pastoral care, counseling, administration, and preaching. Through PSR's affiliation with the Graduate Theological Union, opportunities have opened up for doctoral study in Swedenborgian theology. For example, there is currently one doctoral student exploring the Swedenborgian mystical perspective that the seven days of creation in Genesis represent seven stages of spiritual development.
Through a House of Studies, working in partnership with a large and progressive theological school, the Swedenborgian Church has done more theological education with a smaller kind of institution. And the denomination has been benefiting from a growing body of ministers working in churches, chaplaincy settings, and academic settings.
North America's Unitarian Universalist community could learn much from this. News in recent years from Starr King School for the Ministry has not been promising. Available funding has been declining. Costs of operation continue to increase. Their core faculty has been reduced to five non-adjunct members: one of which is presently a visiting professor, another who is on sabbatical and slated for retirement and a third who also serves as seminary president. None of these faculty members have special expertise in Unitarian Universalist history or theology. This is particularly strange because student access to scholars of denominational history and theology is frequently cited as the most important reason for maintaining a distinctly Unitarian Universalist degree-granting institution. It could be speculated upon that continued erosion of financial health and faculty size could result in future challenges to Starr King's accreditation. Starr King has a history of accreditation challenges and was not fully accredited by the ATS until 1978.
What can be done? Should this school continue down the path of the status quo? Could they one day be forced into closure? Should they engage in Herculean efforts to prop up an institution that may not be working as well as it could?
I would like to suggest that it is time to do more with less. And I would like to propose that the example presented by the Swedenborgian House of Studies could allow Starr King to continue with greater strength. As the Starr King House of Studies at PSR they would have an opportunity to become a more focused institution of Unitarian Universalist theological education.
The Rev. Derek Lee Parker is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Earlham School of Religion. Ordained at Epiphany Community Church (UUA) of Fenton, Michigan, he presently serves as Minister for Youth and Children at the Irvington Friends Meeting (Quaker) in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Scott Wells
Liberal Christians, as the term is understood by Unitarians, Universalists and their kindred, are few in number and perhaps declining. I write perhaps because nobody knows for certain how great our numbers were last year, a generation ago or a hundred years ago.
We do not know what changes the culture will bring to make liberal Christianity seem more or less vital, and we do not know what God has for us to be more faithful or productive. Our best days may yet be ahead. And if so, how might they be realized?
Let's begin with the conventional wisdom about reform and revival. We start by taking institution-building resources and survey our options for common work and inspiration. Generations of church organizers rallied the faithful and called for sacrifices of time, money, prayer and effort for greater and more visible Reign of God on earth. Christians have organized on a peer-to-peer basis for common, informal and non-commercial work for centuries. Today, even challenged by uneven access to technology and a faltering global economy, people have unprecedented access to receive, create and share their ideas and to self-organize into groups with a common work. If Jesus broadened our idea of neighbor, access to communication allows us to talk and cooperate. Centralized power of coordination and dissemination has real competition.
I hope that his publication can be a bridge and model between the accustomed way of making connections and a new (and not altogether formed) way.
There are two ways to approach a project like this. One way is to make the first outing a paragon, inspire participation---and fund raising---and work to make each successive issue, program or version as good as the one before it. But this tends to settle the shape of the project before it has even started and the costs would be hard to meet, much less sustain. It also betrays the greater goal of cooperative communication. The other option, which I have taken, is to begin modestly, grow and develop steadily all the while soliciting feedback. So this is, by necessity, a work in process. But even a work in process needs a standard.
I promise to put out six issues of The Liberal Christian in 2009: one at the midpoint of each even-numbered month. That should be long enough to see if this experiment will bear fruit, be migrated to some other model or be retired. My goal for The Liberal Christian is for it to be editorially independent, international in scope and intellectually rigorous.
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This means bits of The Liberal Christian and works licensed like it may be shared in church newsletters, made the basis of another article, read into a recording, be formatted into a chart or translated into any number of languages. A liberal license, I believe, is the appropriate response to people doing God's work.
Publishing articles and notices of interest is not The Liberal Christian's only function: it should also inspire new practices and rehabilitate lost treasures for churches and individuals looking to conduct the work of publication and administration more effectively. An early example will include detailed steps on how this magazine is put together and published. These resources will not be included in the magazine itself, but will be included in a future section of the http://www.liberalchristian.net site.
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UUCF meets for Revival. The Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship will host the eighth in its Revival series of conferences from March 26--29 at All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. The theme is Jesus' Gospel of Inclusion: The Future of Our Churches, Our Lives, Our World. Bishop Carlton Pearson is the featured speaker. Details at http://www.uuchristian.org/revival
British GA holds AGM. The Annual General Meetings of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches will be held at University College Chester April 15--18 and includes a meeting of the Unitarian Christian Association on April 16. The theme is growth. Details at http://www.unitarian.org.uk
French Unitarian Christians meet. The General Assembly of the Assemblee fraternelle des chretiens unitariens will be held at their headquarters in Basse-Goulaine, southeast of Nantes, on April 18. Details (in French) at http://afcu.over-blog.org/article-26517673.html
Ordination held in Denmark. On November 16, 2008 Roberto Rosso was ordained at the Danish Unitarian Church, Copenhagen in a service officiated by the Rev. Knut Heidelberg of the Norwegian Unitarian Church. Photographs and video of the event may be seen at http://http://roberto.unitarkirken.no/
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