Author Archives: unitarian reform

07/11/08

Isaac Newton On The Hero Of The Nicenes

AUR has posted the first half of Isaac Newton’s “Paradoxical Questions Concerning the Morals and Actions of Athanasius and his Followers.” These sixteen arguments demonstrate that the instigator of the Nicene Council, Athanasius of Alexandria, was a fraud with little concern for the truth, probably a murderer, and a seditionist against the Church.

Considering how critical this turning point in ecclesiology was—setting the foundation of subsequent trinitarian history in all of its crusades, suppressions, and inquisitions—it is of paramount importance that we understand the truth of the events and intrigues of the day, that we might better understand the initial moral conditions and motivations which conceived and promulgated trinitarianism. More importantly for believers, it is important to know whether the faction that established the theology that now defines mainstream Christianity were honest and worthy of trust and respect.

Sir Isaac’s rational investigation and dismissal of the claims made by Athanasius still ring true three centuries after they were written.

07/10/08

Why Is Theology Important?

Many liberals, more comfortable avoiding debates about the authenticity of ancient texts and councils, suspicious of any sort of authoritative pronouncements on spiritual matters, and ideologically allergic to the concept of “organized religion,” often reject the very idea of religious expertise, insisting that freedom of religion and conscience implies a sort of theological free-for-all in which any opinion is as good as any other.

However, freedom to choose the implements of one’s intellectual life does not equate to competence in fashioning them. The Second Amendment right to bear arms, for example, did not makes gunsmiths of all Americans. Having the right to choose one’s doctor is not the equivalent of a license to practice medicine, and the freedom to back the politician of one’s choosing does not mean that everyone is equally qualified to lead the government… or practice law.

Expertise remains relevant, no less so in the ultimate matters of religion than in proximate issues like machine work, surgery, economics, and law. Expertise may not always equate to credentials (perhaps “often may not equate to credentials”) but that does not mean there is no such thing as expertise in religious matters.

Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams wrote in An Examined Faith:

Religious commitment issues from the declarative into the imperative mood, from recognition of divine fact that defines and redefines and sustains virtue. This is the sense of Baron Friedrich von Hugel’s assertion that “religion has primarily to do with is-ness and only secondarily with ought-ness.”

The absence of is-ness, of some declarative conception of Ultimate Reality, makes the ought-ness of religious sentiment groundless, unstable, and incapable of organizing. An injustice grounded in false is-ness is always stronger than the ungrounded; this is why the authoritarian Beast destroys the licentious Babylon in John’s Apocalypse, and why the adulterous woman in John’s Gospel is not able to save herself from stoning by the rule-mongering mob.  In both cases, it is an organized force for justice, the organized army of the Apocalyptic Saints and the organized thought process of Jesus, that successfully confronts organized injustice.

Maintaining a misguided aloofness from the is-ness of religion, liberalism too often devolves into what Adams decried as “fissiparous individualism,” an everyone-for-himself attitude that makes organized efforts toward justice impossible. In politics, this phenomenon is jokingly referred to as the Liberal Firing Squad: everyone standing in a circle aiming at each other, incapable of agreeing on basic concepts and policies. In liberal religion, this phenomenon manifests as creedlessness and a casual, or even dismissive, attitude toward coherent theology.

The Corruption Of Free Discourse

The origins of creedlessness lie in the Enlightenment spirit of free debate, which ignited as Christians broke from the bonds of state religion. Rather than simply accepting, without argument, the official position of the state church, free discourse allowed anyone to bring evidence and argumentation to the table, even if it challenged dogma.

As the age of state-enforced religion has waned, however, free discourse has become corrupted from the presentation of evidence and argumentation to the mere assertion of uninformed opinions, insincere speculations, politically-corrupted fabrications, and profiteering pop philosophy. This was never the intent nor the virtuous purpose of free discourse.

The result? We have the measured peer review of science challenged by Intelligent Design, asserted as an “alternative” explanation primarily through administrative and legal maneuvers because the evidence and argumentation of that pseudo-science cannot stand up to fair and competitive discourse. We have political slanders, mere assertions with no basis in fact or induction, excused as “free speech.” We have ideological, corporate, and sectarian interests capable of resourcing intellectual frauds to the point that they look like valid alternate explanations of reality, overcoming their lack of evidential and rational virtue by mere volume and repetition.

None of these are justified by the principle of free discourse. They are, in fact, subversions of it.  Speaking of freedom from dogma in an environment of rampant dishonesty and groundless speculation is like speaking of freedom from curfews in a town washed away by a flash flood.  In identifying one threat, it neglects another.

Creedlessness And The Sabotage Of Justice

Creedlessness had a proximate and an ultimate purpose. The proximate purpose of creedlessness, freedom from state religion, was accomplished in the United States in December of 1791 with the ratification of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The ultimate purpose of free religious debate, indeed the ultimate purpose of all free discourse, is to get closer to the truth of the subject matter. In fact, the stated purpose of Unitarianism through much of its American history was the investigation and promotion of “pure religion.”

This ultimate purpose has been subverted by an over-broad misapplication of the idea of freedom of conscience. Even James Luther Adams, while lamenting that lack of organization in liberalism which tends to grant fascism free reign over the mechanisms of society, promoted the counter-productive idea of “the prophethood of all believers.” When all justice-seeking people are elevated to the status of prophet regardless of their individual gifts, then justice-seeking religion is in every case reduced to a religion of one, and no organization for justice (or anything else) is possible.

And, when those who seek justice sabotage their own ability to organize, this primarily benefits not the justice-seekers themselves, who enjoy only the dubious benefit of spiritual solipsism. The true beneficiaries are those better-organized, and therefore more effective, unjust forces whose leaders can put forward the most absurd ideology imagineable which nevertheless, unchallenged by organized opposition in favor of justice, can spread through society like unchecked barbarians rampaging through an undefended civilization.

A just opposition that divides itself for conquest earns the gratitude of every tyrant.

Organization, at the very least organization of thought if not of human beings, goes hand-in-hand with professional, informed expertise in a given subject matter.  Instead, those who seek social justice all too often default to a sort of theological amateur hour, a spiritual karaoke bar where we pretend everyone is a great singer.  Worried more about opression than disarray, we leap from the frying pan of tyrannous dogma into the fire of a laissez-faire, spiritual shrugfest where “it’s all good.”

An effective and progressive balance, between the extremes of dogmatic suppression and schismatic license, is the idiomatic approach of AUR, which accepts that Truth transcends sect and language while also recognizing that having a coherent and informed conception of the is-ness of the universe is a necessary foundation for the ought-ness of any effective project for social and moral progress.

06/26/08

The Apocalyptic Saints

When it was being decided what to call this movement to reform American Unitarianism, one of the more evocative phrases considered was The Reformed Unitarian Church Of The Apocalyptic Saints.

Certain to be a conversation starter, this title refers to the saints who struggle against the Beast in the Apocalypse of John, otherwise known as The Book Of Revelation. However, it is not meant to be sensationalist, but rather an accurate description of AUR moral and political theology: standing neither on the left nor the right, but valuing the roles that both play in the moral dramas of political life.

The Revelation contains one of the most striking illustrations of the dynamic between corrupted virtues, of the ultimate victory of reconciled virtues, and of evil not as an independent force in Creation but derived from denial of the conditional nature of individual goods.

Beast vs. Babylon

The saints are not described very extensively in the Apocalypse, but the Beast and Babylon are. The Beast is clearly described as an authoritarian evil and a false god. Babylon, on the other hand, is described as a licentious evil, more of a hodge-podge of unorganized factions (“people, crowds, ethnicities, and languages” as it says in Apocalypse 17:15) than a genuine civic entity, and therefore a false city.

The Saints, in contrast to these two conflicting evils, are from a true City, New Jerusalem, of the true God.

The two figures of Beast and Babylon are recognized (by serious biblical scholars, anyway) as symbols of Rome and her Empire, but this proximate historical expression of universal spiritual forces should not lead us to dismiss the Apocalypse as simply a 1st Century political screed. The conflicting moralities that gave rise to the social conditions in John’s day are at work throughout human society and human history. Wherever human beings interact, Bestial authoritarianism and Babylonian licentiousness will play out their spiritual drama.

Unreconciled Opposites

Despite representing the same sort of complementary characters that form the basis of holiness when reconciled—Lion and Lamb, Law and Wisdom, Serpent and Dove—these two are evils when unreconciled. The authoritarian Beast hates the licentious Babylon who rides him, and rather than reconciling he destroys her. Babylon expresses her unreconciled nature by proudly claiming, “I am no widow,” thus denying the need for a complement.

Beast and Babylon represent two aspects of the deadliest of sins, Pride, which is the narcissistic belief that one’s value is incontingent of others, the very opposite of Agape (or Love, in translation), that highest yet humblest of virtues in which the other is loved as one’s self. Pride denies that good is derived from the Logos—from which all things came and in which all things are reconciled—and usurps ultimate morality for itself, claiming to speak for the Good or ignoring that there is such a thing.

Thus, Beast and Babylon represent two ways to reject reconciliation and contingency: Bestial Pride seeks to prove its incontingency by destroying others who will not submit, while Babylonian Pride expresses its feelings of incontingency by indulging with no consideration for consequence.

Just as good can be seen as the convergence and reconciliation of complementary virtues, the sin of Pride diverges into the tyrannous Rage of the Beast and the libertine Lust of Babylon. And, as Pride is the rejection of Agape, its complements are rejections and corruptions of the other theological virtues: the zeal of Rage is the corruption of the fidelity of Faith in rejecting the open-mindedness of Hope, while the aimlessness of Lust is the corruption of open-minded Hope in the rejection of Faith.

From Biblical Idiom To Daily Life

Although Beast and Babylon correspond to Deadly Sins, these two poles also play out in society and psychology where we might not be so quick to think in terms of sin and virtue. The political extremes of tyranny and anarchy are a good example. Whereas in the idiom of religion we might talk of Rage and Lust, in politics we talk of right and left, conservative and liberal, and here it is easier to understand how the dual offspring of Pride can tempt us as if they were the virtues of loyal Faith and open-minded Hope.

Speaking in Apocalyptic terms: the denizens of Babylon and the foot-soldiers of the Beast both think of themselves as the moral center. The Babylonians see anyone to their right as dangerously authoritarian, and the Bestials see anyone to their left as wantonly libertine. To prove that they are not extremists, both will invoke “worse” authoritarians or libertines to make themselves appear moderate. Upon closer investigation, however, these examples typically prove imaginary, historical, foreign (and therefore part of some other society’s Beast-Babylon dynamic), or members of a vanishingly small fringe minority.

And, given that both Rage and Lust are sins, it is quite possible for those on both sides to be in the wrong, insofar as they deny the contingency of their positions and reject the possibility of reconciliation.

The larger lesson from applying these spiritual types to our everyday lives, however, is that the Apocalypse is not a historical, physical one-time event for AUR the way it is for churches that indulge in materialist exegesis, but a spiritual event in action in our world at all times. The Apocalypse is not on its way, it is at hand. It always has been, and it always will be.

Whither Then The Saints?

The true mark of an Apocalyptic Saint is not that the armies of the Beast are on his right and Babylon is on his left. After all, both vices can play that game to “prove” they are in the virtuous middle. The true mark is that he loves both Beast and Babylon, and sees them as unfortunate corruptions of virtues, that each is a bloated demonization of the virtue the other lacks. The Saint wishes them reconciled to the universality of the Logos, even if they themselves do not.

While the Apocalypse speaks of the war between the Saints and the Beast, forced by the obstinate violence of Rage, it is mum on the relationship of the Saints to Babylon because the city is destroyed by the Beast. However, the differing approaches of the Saints to these two paradigms of sin can be inferred by the differing attitudes of Jesus toward sinners of the two types.

In the famous incident with the adulterous woman (the Pericope Adulterae) Jesus is clearly interacting with people given both to Rage, in the angry crowd, and Lust, in the woman herself—assuming she is guilty of the sexual infidelity with which she is charged.

Faced with the self-righteous violence of the mob, Jesus humbled it by asserting that the one without sin should throw the first stone. Though full of Pride and Rage, they were clearly not so lost to reason that they would claim to be sinless.

Faced with the already humiliated adulteress, whose Prideful neglect of consequence had been shattered by the threat of stoning, Jesus first stilled her self-disdain by telling her that even he did not condemn her; after all, what good is “love your neighbor as yourself” if you hate yourself? Secondly, addressing her Lust, he told her to go and “sin no more.”

The denizens of Babylon, intending no harm and being caught up in desires, are brought right through ministerial outreach. The followers of the Beast who are open to discourse can be humbled through artful moral reasoning.

The Militant Duty Of The Saint

But what of those foot-soldiers of the Beast who—unlike the Pericope Adulterae mob— are beyond reasoning, either through inarticulate rage or stubborn conviction? The Apocalypse has the Saints battling it out with the Beast, but doesn’t Jesus advise us to turn the other cheek when someone does violence against us?

“Turn the other cheek” is one piece of advice in a series of teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, a series which have as their common theme the internal, psychological origin of sin. It is not the act of murder, Jesus teaches us, but the angry impulse that is the sin. It is not the act of adultery, but the lustful impulse that is the sin. The act of swearing does not make you honest, only sincerity does. Some would argue that it is in this spirit that Jesus teaches us to “walk the extra mile,” to give a shirt-thief your coat, and to turn the other cheek: do not react out of retaliation.

How, then, do we reconcile this with Jesus’ reaction when faced with the money-changers exploiting the poor in the Temple? Jesus did not turn the other cheek or offer them his coat. The Gospel of John tells us (2:15) that, “making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the Temple.”

The only way to reconcile the Sermon on the Mount with the Expulsion of the Money-Changers is to reject both impotent pacifism and violence in anger. On the one hand, one’s motivation should not be one of vengeance or rage; one should be ready to turn the other cheek. On the other hand, we do not have the right to turn someone else’s cheek when we see them struck, or hand over someone else’s coat when we see their shirt stolen.

When faced with sins of violence, abuse, and exploitation—when faced with the unremitting Beast—the Saint must not give in to the spirit of vengeance or self-interest, but the Saint must still fight.

06/23/08

Americans Believe In Idiomatic Religion, God

United States Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Among the interesting findings:

Seventy percent of Americans believe that many religions can lead to eternal life and 68 percent believe that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religions, indicating that they have an attitude toward their religions similar to AUR’s idiomatic creedalism.

Twenty percent of self-described “atheists” and 55 percent of agnostics claim to believe in God, indicating either a lack of clarity or a dual-tiered attitude that leads some to reject the idea of religion while retaining a belief in God.

06/5/08

Statement Of Reformed Unitarian Principles Of Justification

The following is not a creed, but a statement of general principles justifying the reform of American Unitarianism.

1. FOR CHRISTIANITY.

To capture the spirit of Jesus, the spirit that moved people to moral action and carried a message that appealed to the process of analogy and rational discourse typifying the Gospel teachings of Jesus, it is important to rediscover original Christianity, once called “primitive” before that word took on a negative connotation.

It is generally recognized by non-sectarian scholars that Trinitarianism as articulated after the Alexandrian controversy is nowhere found in the canonical Torah, Prophets, Writings, Gospels, Letters, or Apocalypse. Nor is it to be found in Jewish or Christian writings before the Alexandrian faction had defeated traditionalists. Even the often-cited consubstantialist theology of Tertullian never asserts that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are coequal and coeternal. Trinitarian theology was so absent from the original teachings of the Church that Nicene Christians had to insert it into the text of the Gospel of John, and forge a spurious Trinitarian confession for St. Lucian after his death.

And yet, this anti-rational innovation has become the single greatest dividing line between Christianity and other faith communities, the greatest barrier to understanding, and the greatest hurdle to Christian ministry.

The original Unitarian, rational, discursive, and ecumenical spirit of Jesus is important not only to Christianity itself, but to the relationship of the Church with other religions. AUR believes that Christianity should be distinguished by its devotion toward Christ, not to its credulity toward the Trinitarian views of Athanasius and his supporters.

2. FOR MORALITY.

A Unitarian view of God is not only original to Christianity, but essential to the assertion of any religious morality that has as its purpose aligning the human will with the Ultimate Reality rather than aligning religion to the comfort of human frailty and confirmation of human prejudice. A Unitarian view provides no refuge for exclusion, no refuge for self-worship disguised as spiritual partisanship. In a world where all things have an explicitly singular Source, the ultimate reconciliation of all things is an impossible reality to ignore

Nilitarian and Trinitarian conceptions of the Ultimate provide no ultimate reconciliation of parts. Purely materialist views of the world simply ignore the issue, and Trinitarianism obfuscates ultimate concerns with an unnecessarily complicated and irrationalist dogma that distracts us from the most important lesson to be learned from religion: universality of the moral Source of the world.

3. FOR REASON.

The ultimate issue of reasoned inquiry into the nature of reality is the origin of reality itself, the so-called Fundamental Cause. As causation itself is part of that class of things for which we seek a Cause, that Fundamental Cause is by necessity itself Uncaused. A more apt definition of “God” is hard to imagine than “the uncaused fundamental cause of reality.”

Causation being the ability of things to affect one another, it is necessarily tied up with multiplicity. Multiple things in relation to each other imply a context or medium of interaction, and that environment itself implies a greater Cause. Non-Unitarian conceptions of Ultimate Reality thwart reason and hobble rational philosophy.

4. FOR RELIGION.

Religion, if it is to be believed, must be about reality. The God described by Semitic tongues and cultures must not be the god of Semitic language and culture, but the God of the universe. A Christianity that denies that truth is possible in other religions or, as Justin of Caesarea proposed, that the truth in other religions was a pre-emptive trick by devils to confound Christianity, is not a religion of the God of Creation, but the god of a church of self-worship.

Attacks against religion often take the form of criticizing sectarian squabbles, each church and school of thought condemning all others to perdition. Often these condemnations take the crude form of group loyalty rather than sincere principle.

AUR views all religion as idioms of the truth, attempts by fallible creatures to experience God, even as we emphasize that the discipleship of Christ is our excellent path. Incomplete truths in primitive religions are not the result of mischievous demons, but have the same explanation as the incomplete medicine, engineering, and astronomy of primitive cultures: inadequate time to develop and investigate and clarify concepts and models.

Holy wars and unprincipled sectarian hatreds sabotage religion from within.  The principled ecumenical spirit of Unitarianism (which is inherent to the original Christianity of the Three Magi, the Good Samaritan, and the faithful pagan Centurion) is important to religion itself.

06/1/08

Feast of Justin Martyr

In honor of St. Justin, today we post selected quotes from his writings.

Reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophical to honor and love only what is true, refusing to follow the opinions of the ancients, if these be worthless.
– 1st Apology, Chapter 2

This quote, while quite agreeable to Reform Unitarianism, is ironic in light of Justin’s strong reliance on Hebrew prophets and praise of them as more ancient than European philosophers.

[God] accepts those only who imitate the excellence which are in Him: temperance, justice, charity, and the virtues which are peculiar to a God who is called by no proper name.
– 1st Apology, Chapter 10

This is one of the many quotes in which Justin asserts the central principle of AUR: that God can have no proper name.

We reasonably worship him [Jesus], having learned that he is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third.
– 1st Apology, Chapter 13

This expresses in good pre-Nicene language, the sequential triplicity of the One God, the Son of God, and the Spirit, rather than any sort of coeval trinity.

The Word, who is the first-born of God, was produced without sexual union.
– 1st Apology, Chapter 21

No one can utter the name of the ineffable God; and if anyone dares to say there is a name, he raves with hopeless insanity.
– 1st Apology, Chapter 61

To the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name given, because if He were called any sort of name, the person who gives Him the name would be his elder. These words—Father, God, Creator, Lord, Master—are not names but appelations derived from His true deeds and functions.
– 2nd Apology, Chapter 6

There is, and there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things, who is also called a messenger [angel] because he announces to humanity what the Creator of everything—above Whom there is no other God—wishes to announce to them.
– Dialogue with Tryphon, Chapter 56

AUR understands the “first God” to be the true Unitary God while the so-called second “God” is merely called that due to its divine nature, as in the first verse of The Gospel of John, and in Philo’s theology. As Justin himself asserts, “God” is merely an appelation; terminology is not as important as the distinction between the single uncreated Creator and creatures. It is very clear from Justin’s writings that Christians of his day understood this “second God” (the Logos/Word/Son) to be subordinate to, and derived from, God the Father.

05/22/08

To Avoid An Unintended Message Of Prejudice

In honor of the 12 Days of Trial, AUReform.com had prepared a piece about the conflicts in the early Church during the days of Constantine and Nicaea, specifically focusing on the often dishonest and violent roles played by the Roman and Alexandrian-Athanasian factions.

However, in the context of recent media focus on anti-Catholic rhetoric by certain Evangelical leaders, this blog post on ancient conflicts seemed almost to align itself with those who would demonize the entire Roman Church as “The Great Whore.”

So, offering an ecumenical antidote to recent sectarian vitriol, let us instead simply assert that AUR and RCC both honor the Emperor Constantine, albeit in different ways and for different reasons.

Although AUR believes that the difference between Unitarian and Trinitarian views of God, the universe, and morality are significant and critical to salvation, we also believe it is easier for a good-hearted Trinitarian Catholic to get into the Kingdom of Heaven than it would be for prejudicial, sectarian, and materialist hate-mongers… even if they were strict Unitarians.

We believe that, however important to salvation might be the idiom on which sectarian and denominational differences are based, God does not respect our moral prejudices based on those cultural difference. There is a reason Jesus taught us about the Good Samaritan, member of a hated religious minority considered heretics by Judean Jews. There is a reason Jesus praised the faith of a pagan Centurion. There is a reason Paul told the Greeks that the “Unknown God” honored in their pagan temples was the same as the God of Christians.

Condemning entire other religions is not the teaching of Jesus Christ.  It is a tactic of autolatrous tyranny.  The great irony in certain allegedly Christian leaders attacking hated outsiders as representing the “The Great Whore” is that the Apocalypse from which they lift that language makes clear that it is the Beast that hates Babylon.

Although AUReform.com may still, on a later date, publish this important history of the conflict between Unitarians and what would become the Roman Catholic Church, we did not want even the appearance of agreeing with those who would condemn Catholics as a class by publishing it during the current news cycle.

Have a safe Memorial Day weekend!

05/15/08

The Spring Calendar

Spring Calendar starts in that part of the year where the last possible days of the Easter Calendar fall.  Since AUR follows the Western calendar, Ascension can fall as late as 3 June, and Pentecost as late as 13 June, but in general Eastertide wraps up during May.  Therefore, Springtide starts in  mid-May and extends until just after the transition into Summer.  After the Spring Calendar begins the ramp up to Declaration Thursday and July 4th.

12 Days of Trial, focusing on tragic errors of the past, start on the 20th of May.

    Lucifer’s Day, the 1st Day of Trial, marking the anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea in which the Josiac error of conflating the Logos and God was repeated. This is also the traditional feast day of Lucifer Calaritanus, one of the principle proponents of this error against Christian monotheism.
    Constantine’s Day 1, the 2nd Day of Trial, the traditional feast day of Constantine who supported Christianity politically after a vision allegedly aided his bloody power struggle for control of the Roman Empire.  This is a day to contemplate errors of superficiality without substance.
    Constantine’s Day 2, the 3rd Day of Trial, the anniversary of the death of Constantine, who was baptized on his deathbed by Arian bishop Eusebius.  This is a day to contemplate finding subtance after superficiality.
    Attacks On Reason, the 6th Day of Trial. Among the events commemorated on this day are the Scopes trial and the Edict of Worms.
    Attacks On Innocence, the 9th Day of Trial. Among the events commemorated on this day are the Indian Removals of Andrew Jackson.
    Godiva Day, the 12th Day of Trial on 31 May, in which the Christ-like story of Lady Godiva reminds us that pattern of trial and sacrifice are engineered into the workings of the world.

12 Days of Unity, starting on 1 June and symbolized by roses. Just as the rose has a sweet scent and thorns, these 12 Days are to remember the rewards and perils of belief.

    Feast of Justin Martyr, the 1st Day of Unity, commemorating the earliest Christian apologist, whose doctrine of the Logos explained that the Son is clearly subordinate to the God the Father.
    Zealous Errors Day, on the 2nd, to remember with humility that evil acts are often committed in the name of good. Among such acts falling on this day are the Arian Vandals’ pillaging of Rome, the beginning of guilty verdicts in the Salem Witch Trials, and the start of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution.
    Conviction Day, on the 6th, to commemorate those who stand up boldly for their convictions, such as Patrick Henry and Robert Kennedy, both of whom died on this day.
    False Conviction Day, on the 7th, to remember that often our bold convictions may be misplaced. The seige of Jerusalem (during the 1st Crusade) occurred on this day.
    Feast of Barnabas, on the 11th Day of Unity, to commemorate the Apostle tortured and stoned to death by those envious of his successful ministry.
    Feast of John of Sahagun, on the 12th Day of Unity.  St. John was known for his bold critiques of sin, for which he was persecuted by those enraged by his criticisms.

12 Days of Reconciliation, starting on 13 June.

    Marriage Day, the 1st Day of Reconciliation, commemorating the marriage of Martin Luther to Katharina von Bora, and the marriage of male and female symbology in St. Onuphrius (or Humphrey), a hermit who was depicted as half-man and half-woman.
    Flag Day, which falls on the 2nd Day of Reconciliation in the United States, can be used to examine the reconciliation of the many into the one, as the many states represented by the stars and stripes are joined in the Republic.
    Feast of the Bolt, the 3rd Day of Reconciliation, honoring St. Vitus who protected against lightning, and Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiment proving that lightning is electricity. (A good day to meditate on Luke 23:23-25)
    Moral Economy Day, the 4th Day of Reconciliation, commemorating Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech on the division driven by economic and moral interests. Also the birthday of Adam Smith, whose free market economics was based on the reconciliation of moral ends and selfish economy.
    Transition Days, the 9th Day of Reconciliation, commemorates the birthday and transition of Reinhold Niebuhr from pacifist to Christian Realist. This is the day on which to meditate on the reconciliation of peace and war in justice, and the development of naive and immature idealism (which blindly opposes others) into a mature and balanced morality. This is also the Summer Solstice, marking the transition of the year from youth to maturity. 
    Feast of John The Baptist    , the 12th Day of Reconciliation, is the Feast of John the Baptist, who marked the transition from the youthful religion before him to the mature religion of Christ after.
05/8/08

Pentecost – The Harvest of Christ’s Ministry

On the Sunday following Ascension Thursday falls the Pentecost, originally a Hebrew harvest festival known as Shavuot or the Day of First Fruits.  It is also called White Sunday in some Northern European countries.

In Judaism, this day commemorates the descent of the Law on Mt. Sinai, but in Christianity it commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on followers of Jesus.

In both cases, a great flowering resulted. Just as the Jewish people were bound by the physical ties of tribe and family, Christians are bound by the mental ties of concept and idiom.  So, in Jewish tradition, Mt. Sinai became covered in blooms and greenery after the Law was revealed, a material flowering.  In Christian tradition, the crowds who witnessed the descent of the Spirit discovered they were granted the wisdom to understand the words of the Apostles in their own language, a mental flowering.

For Reform Unitarianism, these parallel revelations on Shavuot/Pentecost represent a great reconciliation of complementary goods: punitive Law which outlines strict rules of conduct and benevolent Wisdom which over-rules the obstacles of language.