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Religion without Dogma: Unitarians and the NSPCI

Story: Mulla Nasrudin and the Wise Men

(A story by the Sufi Idries Shah)

The philosophers, logicians and doctors of law were drawn up at Court to examine Mulla Nasrudin. This was a serious case, because he had admitted going from village to village saying: “The so-called wise men are ignorant, irresolute, and confused.” He was charged with undermining the security of the State.

“You may speak first,” said the King.
“Have paper and pens brought,” said the Mulla. Paper and pens were brought.
“Give some to each of the first seven savants.” The pens were distributed.
“Have them separately write an answer to this question: “What is bread?” This was done. The papers were handed to the King who read them out:
The first said: “Bread is a food.”
The second: “It is flour and water.”
The third: “A gift of God.”
The fourth: “Baked dough.”
The fifth: “Changeable, according to how you mean ‘bread.'”
The sixth: “A nutritious substance.”
The seventh: “Nobody really knows.”
“When they decide what bread is,” said Nasrudin, “it will be possible for them to decide other things. For example, whether I am right or wrong. Can you entrust matters of assessment and judgment to people like this? Is it not strange that they cannot agree about something which they eat each day, yet are unanimous that I am a heretic?”

Indeed, one of our members telephoned me a couple of weeks ago asking that very question. He and his wife are making plans to get their son into a school which operates under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church and the children of Presbyterian parents are given priority. I was able to inform him that we are indeed Presbyterian, that we are a member congregation of the Non Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, but I was at pains to explain just what this means; and I intend to repeat that explanation this morning. It’s fitting that I should do so today, because the Non Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland is just one hundred years old, having been founded on 24^th February 1910, although this congregation didn’t join until 1935.

When people in the south of Ireland hear the word ‘Presbyterian’ they are often inclined to assume that it describes a particularly rigid type of Protestant theology. Ian Paisley is a Presbyterian, a Free Presbyterian, and there is a tendency to think that Presbyterianism is synonymous with the kind of Calvinism that Paisley preaches. But this would be an erroneous assumption. ‘presbyterian’ does not describe a theology at all; it is the name of a type of church government.

The three main types of church government are: episcopalian, congregational and presbyterian. An episcopalian church is run by bishops; the Greek word ‘episkopos’ describes one who ‘looks over’, and when it occurs in the Christian scriptures it is often translated simply as ‘overseer’. The Roman Catholic Church is an episcopalian church, as are the Church of Ireland and the Church of England. In fact, the Anglican Church in America is called The Episcopalian Church. For most of its history, and in most of its forms, Christianity has been episcopalian. The advantages of episcopalian government are obvious: one person makes all the decisions, so it’s tidy, efficient, centralised and orderly. The disadvantages are numerous: it can become authoritarian, rigid, and unresponsive to minority opinion.

By contrast, congregational churches, owe no ultimate allegiance to a bishop or to any central authority. A congregational church is self-governing; and all authority is vested in the congregation itself. The congregation can appoint ministers and fire them; the congregation decides on the nature of its worship, its theological bias, its outreach work and so on. All Unitarian churches in Britain are currently congregational in structure. There is a central body – The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches – which has an administrative role and which coordinates activities, helps train ministers etc., but it does not concern itself with doctrine and it has no authority over individual churches, which are free to secede at any time. The General Assembly holds annual meetings to which member congregations send delegates who debate and vote on motions affecting the movement as a whole. An elected committee deals with ongoing issues, and the whole thing is coordinated by a Chief Officer, who acts as spokesperson for the denomination, and he is assisted by a small staff in the offices at Essex Hall in London. When the denominational structure was reorganised a few years ago, there was some discussion about what we should call this Chief Officer. Previously it had been ‘General Secretary’, but this smacks of a political office rather than a religious one; and Chief Officer isn’t much better. Some people, myself included, thought that ‘bishop’ might be the best term, but this was strongly resisted. We are a movement which eschews that kind of authority, even though there are some Unitarian churches in Eastern Europe which do have bishops.

The democratic nature of congregational churches has obvious appeal; it’s good to be part of a community which makes its own decisions, but it can lead to inefficiency as ideas and policies are thrashed out at interminable length by elected committees, and responsibility is often shifted from one part of the organisation to another. In addition, congregational churches can be vulnerable. They are financially vulnerable since they cannot rely on any central body to provide funds. Some Unitarian churches in Britain and America are very poor, with barely enough money to keep the building from falling apart, and no money at all to provide a minister or qualified lay leader. Others, like Upper Chapel in Sheffield, are extremely rich, and the congregation of Shelter Rock in New York State is the richest Unitarian congregation in the world, living on the proceeds of natural gas shares which were bequeathed to it by Caroline Veatch some fifty years ago. Fortunately, the Veatch Foundation, which manages the money, is very generous and makes grants to various progressive causes throughout the world. In 2009 it distributed 10.7 million dollars, 3.2 million going to the Unitarian Universalist movement.

Individual congregations are also vulnerable to takeover by unscrupulous religious pirates. In political circles, this is called ‘entryism’. People join a congregation with the express intention of ultimately changing its theological position or taking over its building. Something like this happened in my home town of Pontefract. The Congregational Church – not expressly Unitarian, but extremely liberal in its approach – was transformed in a few years by an evangelical minister. It now boasts the largest congregation in the town, but its ‘hell-fire and damnation’ message is a far cry from the gentle spirit of tolerance that I encountered in its members in the 1960s.

When I came to Dublin in 1996 I lived on the Quays and would regularly pass the Dublin Working Men’s Club near the Clarence hotel and, having long been a member of such clubs in England, I decided to ask about membership. My request was met initially with hostility and I was grilled about my motives for joining in a very unfriendly manner. Eventually the secretary explained the reason for his attitude. It would not be long before the Clarence would want to expand and its owners would try to buy the Dublin Working Men’s Club, and the proceeds would then be shared among the club’s members. He thought I wanted to join because I wanted to make a bit of money!

So congregational churches can fail; they can be taken over. On your own you’re not strong. This is where presbyterianism comes in. A presbytery is a number of churches joined together by a commitment to provide support for one another. A presbytery is not governed by a bishop but by a synod, a committee consisting of the individual church ministers and a representative elder from each church. The chairperson of the synod is called the moderator, and this position is generally rotated among the ministers. Although the individual churches have some measure of self-government, they also have this wider obligation to the group to which they belong. Churches which operate on this model are presbyterian regardless of the theological system that they espouse.

So, according to that definition, we here in the Dublin Unitarian Church are presbyterian. We belong to the Synod or Presbytery of Munster which at present consists of this congregation and the congregation in Cork. You may be surprised to learn that at one time there were eleven such congregations here in the South – Clonmel and Bandon and Summerhill, were among the more prominent. But, while we are Presbyterian, we are Non Subscribing. This doesn’t mean that we don’t hand over any money! It means that we don’t subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith, a lengthy statement of belief drawn up in 1646 in England, which became the creedal foundation for the Church of Scotland, and for other orthodox Presbyterian groups. It is a pretty terrifying document, demanding belief in the infallibility of the Bible, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the physical resurrection of Jesus from death, original sin, human depravity, divine wrath, hell as the abode of the wicked – ‘the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness’ -, resurrection of the body on the last day, and numerous other doctrines which liberal minds throughout the ages have found irrational, offensive or both.

It was rejection of this kind of Calvinist theology that eventually led to the expulsion of individuals and groups from mainstream Presbyterianism during the 18^th century. Here in Dublin, for example, Thomas Emlyn, who was minister to the Wood Street congregation, was imprisoned for publishing a book in 1702 attacking the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus. Emlyn, it seems, is credited with being the first minister to use the term ‘Unitarian’ to describe his views. He was a Unitarian in that he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity as unscriptural and contrary to reason. The 18^th century was to witness more controversy of this type, and the result was a split between the orthodox Presbyterians and the ‘non subscribers’ who refused to sign the Westminster Confession. (For those of you who are interested in the details, I refer you to Jennifer Flegg’s essay, A History of Irish Unitarianism in Five Chapters, which I have put on my website until it is published as part of a collection of Jennifer’s work later in the year.)

In brief, two groups of non-subscribing churches in the North, the Synod of Antrim (formed in 1725) and the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster (formed in 1829), joined together just a hundred years ago, to form the General Synod of the Non Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland. The Synod of Munster, which today comprises this congregation and the congregation in Cork, joined in 1935, on the understanding that we need not affirm that the scriptures of the Old and New Testament constitute the rule of Christian faith.

We in Dublin are a kind of hybrid. We are part of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches with its headquarters in London, and I shall be attending the annual meetings of the G.A. in April. But we are also part of the NSPCI, and I shall be in Cork in two weeks in my exalted capacity as Moderator of the Synod of Munster for our quarterly meetings. Our relationship with the Cork church is the reason why Bridget, who is ‘minister in charge’ of Cork, gets up before dawn one Sunday every month and travels down to Cork on the bus to take the service, why Pam McCarthy is taking the service there today, and why a number of Dublin members have given and are giving their support to Cork in various ways. Because we are part of the same presbytery, we have some responsibility to the Cork congregation, despite the fact that it is so far away.

Having a foot in both camps has led to a number of controversies; I won’t bore you with the details, but the Northern synods are currently less liberal than we are; their worship is more traditional, with readings taken almost exclusively from the Bible, and their whole approach is more distinctively Christian than ours. A few weeks ago I was sent some material for use in this anniversary service; the suggested readings are all from the Bible, and the prayers would sound very strange to our more agnostic ears. There are some Dublin Unitarians who would like us to sever our links with the NSPCI, but the general consensus is that this would be both ungracious and foolish. Ungracious because the NSPCI has been very supportive when times have been hard, supplying this congregation and Cork with ‘ministers in charge’ when there was no minister here in the south, and helping financially from time to time. It would be foolish because, despite their undoubted traditionalism, these churches are a voice of reason and tolerance to help counter the sectarianism so prevalent in the North. We need to support them in any way we can.

To sum up, we can say that in its government this church is Presbyterian; in its theology it is Unitarian. But even this is misleading. Words change their meaning, and ‘Unitarian’ today, does not mean ‘one who believes that God is not a Trinity but a Unity, and that Jesus was a man and not God’. This is what it meant throughout the controversies of the past, but today it means ‘one who refuses to accept that people should be divided by disagreement about metaphysical concepts which are little more than speculation, and which have virtually no bearing on the way we actually live our lives’. At least, that is what I take it to mean. Based on this definition, the first Unitarian was not the first person who said, ‘I don’t believe in the Trinity’; it was the first person who said, ‘I want to make up my own mind, unhindered by inherited opinion or dogma’. Like Nasrudin in our children’s story today, we refuse to be drawn into controversies about the nature of God when we can’t all agree on the nature of bread. We are a free church, not so much because we can believe what we like but because we feel ourselves free to go beyond belief altogether, to construct a religious community in which controversies about doctrines have little or no place, and in which people with differing theological beliefs can sit together side by side. In this, at least, northern Non Subscribing Presbyterians and southern Unitarians are united.

28^th February 2010