A Religious Home
The world is full of beauty: we need to express our wonder, praise and thanklessness, our gratitude for the priviledge of life.
The world is full of suffering, tragedy and horror: we need courage and strength to face them.
These are both good reasons for cherishing a religious home - a church.
People need a community where they can find reverence, beauty, meaning of life, the warmth of mutual support and sympathy, and the will to reach out in service to the world.
You may share this view yourself.
You may believe that the spiritual life is a reality - the life of appreciation and devoted care that reaches out in generous self-giving. Nevertheless, you cannot believe the dogmas that churches expect you to believe before they will fully accept you
If this is your outlook, you may find that the Chorlton Unitarian Church can offer you a home. The Unitarian Church is not exclusive: it welcomes all seekers after truth.
Face the Challenges - Make Your Own Response
Most churches find their bond of union in scriptural or credal affirmations. All who wish to be members are expected to profess exactly the same theological beliefs, and undergo the same rituals.
The Unitarian bond of union is different. Unitarians believe that people can covenant to work together for the deepening of spiritual life, the strengthening of moral character, and the improvement of society without conforming to a set pattern of theological dogmas. Unitarians hold that differing theological views are natural and healthy and that attempts to enforce conformity are deadening and potentially destructive. History is witness to the horrors of religious intolerance.
Unitarians wish their church to help them face together life's spiritual challenges. The church helps people to come to their own individual conclusions and forge their own peosonal faith.
Who are Unitarians?
Unitarians are people who wish their religion to be broad, generously inclusive, and tolerant rather than narrow and dogmatic.
They have a hunger for more freedom, more justice, more fairness, more fulfilment for more of earths creatures.
"Reverence for Life" points us in the right direction: respect for the wonder of creation, which is the root of worship; service, whose aim is to enable whatever life we can influence to attain its highest development.
"Unitarian" Means Unity
The word "Unitarian" originally referred to ancient controversies about the doctrine of the Trinity - God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one. The early Unitarians did not find this doctrine in the Bible, nor did they find it helpful. They stressed the unity of God and the humanity of Jesus, and so were called "Unitarian".
Controversy about the Trinity has little appeal for modern Unitarians. Today we understand unity differently. The unity we are concerned with is the unity of all creation. we think of our religion as the sum total of the many different ways by which we may relate ourselves to this unity: through worship and devotional experience, through scientific investigation, through right conduct.
Are Unitarians Christian?
Unitarians have their own way of understanding Christianity. They stress the humanity of Jesus and the challenge of his teaching. To follow him means to serve the causes that he served. Being Christian means trying to share the generous and loving spirit of Jesus, and spreading that spirit abroad in the world. Unitarians set small store by labels, even by the label "Christian"; it is the spirit that matters.
God
We are not in a position to give a precise definition of God. Nobody is. What we can do is to turn ourselves to the source of our being - to creativeness, to the power and the glory, to the force that draws us on to create goodness and loving - kindness - and to this we say "God".
Experience of God is what matters, rater than words about God. Words are only pointers to the experience. We can understand that for some people even the word "God" itself may be unhelpful. Theat does not mean, however, that they are cut off from the reality the word points to.
Wherever people have sought thruth, loved beauty, worked for justice and known goodness, not in religion only but in the many non-religious channels present in the world, the love of God is active; it is "broader then the measures of man's mind".
Worship
Unitarians do not think of worship ad a ritual bowing down before some almightly potentate. For us it is an expression of our sense of wonder. It is a celebration of those things that are of supreme worth. "Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things." St. Paul's words still give us the best definition of worship.
Prayer and meditation are ways of focusing attention on what is most valuable; they are not magic.
Services
Our services are simple in form. They usually consist of hymns, prayers, meditations, readings, music and an address. We read from the Bible, that storehouse of spiritual experience and wisdom. We recognise that not everything in it is of equal value. It sis a thoroughly human book. We reverence the wisfom it contains, but we do not look upon it as infallible.
We also read from many other writings, past and present, both Christian and non-Christian.
What do Unitarians understand by "Church"?
For Unitarians a church is a group of people who are all learners in the school of the spirit. We hope it is a fellowship where the barriers of ordianry life may be broken down.
It aims to be a community where people are accepted as themselves, with their weaknesses as well as their strenghts, and yet challenged to turn themselves toward truth, and try to become more fully human.
Unitarian congregations are essentially demovratic and self-governing groups. women have equal status with men.
The purpose of our churches is the worship of God, and the service of humanity.
A true church can never be merely inward-looking. It exists not for itself alone. It is the union of those who love, and for the help of those who suffer.
(adapted from the Cambridge Unitarian Church webpage)