05/20/10

Lucifer’s Day

Bishop Arius Assaulted at the Council of Nicaea

Today is the first of the 12 Days of Thorns, during which we contemplate the tragic errors of the past.  This dozenal opens the Spring Interval, also called the Rose Season.

The first Day of Thorns is Lucifer’s Day, marking the anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea in which the Josiac error of conflating the Son and God was repeated.

This is also the traditional feast day of Lucifer Calaritanus — whom some Trinitarians honor as “Saint Lucifer” — one of the principle proponents of the conflationist error against Christian monotheism. 

An excellent case study in partisan hypocrisy, Lucifer is famous for publishing two works advising Emperor Constantius not to meet with Arians nor forgive them, yet also a work advising the Emperor not to condemn the conflationist bishop Athanasius of Alexandria in absentia.

On this day, we should not only lament the unravelling of the original Church, but also contemplate the beams in our own eyes, that we do not follow where Nicaea and Lucifer transgressed.

01/18/10

Martin Luther King Jr. – American Prophet

It is quite appropriate that the (actual) birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. falls on the 9th Day of Defiance in the AUR calendar, in the middle of Nika Week commemorating when competing factions stood together against oppression in the Byzantine Empire, just as multiracial crowds gathered before Dr. King stood together against Jim Crow oppression in the United States.

But Martin Luther King is significant to AUR for other reasons, not only in his ecumenical attitude, but also the purity of the way he spoke of God’s relationship with Creation and his commitment of character to the will of God.

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11/22/09

Notional American Unitarian Reform Church No. 6

This is the sixth in a series of light-hearted signs for hypothetical American Unitarian Reform churches, created using an online image generator. I hope to show a range of attitudes and ideas all possible within the scope of AUR.

The sign for today’s notional church, Unity Christian, announces guest speakers from other faiths for Harvest Thursday, here called Thanksgiving Thursday to avoid confusion. Harvest Thursday is the only one of the Four Great Thursdays of American Unitarian Reform.

Significantly, the guest speakers are from Islam and Judaism, for whom Unitarian Christianity creates a continuity of true monotheism.