The Letter

In October, 2011, I decided to stop being a Methodist. I grew up in the Methodist Church, as did my parents before me and their parents before them (although one of my grandfathers started out as an Anglican and as a child I was so Methodist that this seemed vaguely exotic). For fifteen years I worked on Methodist history, for over twenty years I was a Methodist local preacher, and I even had a stint as the director of a Methodist museum. All this made me pretty Methodist!

Given all this, I am finding the process of change from Methodism to Unitarianism challenging. Of course, I am still me, and my thinking has not changed very much since I was leading worship in Methodist pulpits. Certainly the jokes haven't improved. My final Methodist service was a harvest festival in which I picked vegetables out of a box and said things like 'turnip' for church, 'squash' injustice and, most irreverently, 'peas' be with you. The last thing out of the box was a lettuce and I asked the congregation how that might work. "Lettuce out of here, now!' a critic shouted from the back.

So I am still me, bad jokes and all, and so far the only major changes have been the chance to meet some new people, most rewardingly the Unitarian community at Chester, and a change in denominational label. Such is the case on the surface at least.

The idea for this blog came to me whilst sitting in a service on Sunday morning. This sounds like I was distracted but I wasn't - honest. It occurred to me that it might be useful to write down my shifting impressions of Unitarianism as someone new to the church. In this first entry I want to set the scene and establish why I left Methodism. It seems to me that the most effective way to do this is to reproduce the letter of resignation that I circulated last October:

Dear Friends,

As you are aware, for the last three quarters I have been attempting to take time out from preaching to ask myself (as I periodically do) awkward questions about where I've come from, where I am, and the direction I am going in. Inevitably, dates in the diary prevented this from being a complete break. Just this weekend I had a harvest festival on Friday night and a day leading a course on history and the Bible. The events were received well and it was good to be a part of them, not least because both attracted good Methodist friends who have long encouraged me with their kindness, wise words, and, occasionally, bad jokes. It was particularly nice to be back in among the people of the church formerly known as Broomhill Methodist Church in Sheffield, a community of healthy irreverence, serious thought, and good, lasting friendships.

As I think of those people now I am slightly anxious, as this is my letter of resignation both as a Methodist local preacher and a member of the Methodist Church. I am writing this letter in the hope and expectation that it will be circulated to anyone who may be interested because the one thing I don't want to do is give the impression that in making this decision I am rejecting everything Methodist. That is not my intention at all and, indeed, I have no doubt that I will carry a lot of good Methodist ideas, questions, and culture in the next phase of my faith journey. Since childhood, I have found in Methodist churches in this country and the United States, a reliably warm welcome, a sense of belonging, inspiration in worship and much more. I am told that Methodism has even equipped me with the ability to carry a tune (although not everyone might agree with that).

For many years, however, I have felt myself to be, in some respects, on the fringes of Methodist life. Whilst Methodism rightly prides itself on being a broad church, it is often the case that those of a particularly liberal persuasion can find themselves in a rather lonely place. In recent months, I have spoken to several Methodists whose theology is not a million miles from my own. These have been good, helpful conversations. However, it seems to me that in preparing worship, some of us (myself included) have been guilty of taking some really helpful ideas and putting them through a process of translation into language that we deem acceptable to a wide evangelical base, and in so doing, we don't just phrase things differently, but distort our meaning. The problem is exacerbated for me by Methodist hymnody. I am not comfortable with celebrations of bloodied sacrifice (i.e. 'blood of the lamb' type references), 'kingdom' metaphors (for me they seem medieval and unhelpful), depictions of human beings as 'wretches' or references to Satan and the threats of hell.

Writing in the early 1960s E.P. Thompson, who grew up in a Methodist household and sadly found the experience to be quite traumatic, saw in nineteenth century notions of the threat of eternal punishment, the means by which the elites in society could control the masses. There is no doubt that he overstated his case but he did have a case and the fact is that within Methodism, hell has never quite gone away. I have met people who fear they have the wrong belief and are consequently not acceptable to God in some way. I recall feeling that way myself as a teenager, at a revival meeting in a Methodist Church that would have been just as much at home in the 1880s as the 1980s, when I steadfastly but very uncomfortably didn't go to the front (the area early camp meeting organisers called the 'mourning bench') because something told me that a loving God couldn't possibly require an individual to sign up to such an exclusive set of theological principles to find acceptance. Whilst I appreciate that for some people, an idea of some kind of eternal punishment or separation from God is biblical and necessary, I do not wish to be associated with such an idea. As I put it in a recent sermon, 'There may be times when you don't believe in God, but God always believes in you.'

Rather than boring you with lots of detail I will just outline a few other issues that I have focused on in recent months that have led me to my current position. I do not believe in substitutionary atonement. The divinity of Jesus has become a slightly fudged issue for me, in that I see Jesus as demonstrating the ultimate potential for a human being to be connected to, and, in a sense, part of the divine. In other words Jesus is the ultimate example of the spiritually-filled life. Resurrection is a powerful idea, and a useful one, but not to my mind, a literal bodily experience. My concept of God is abstract rather than personal in the sense that I struggle with the idea of God as a Being (and thus the Trinity is rendered problematic for the second time in this paragraph). I have, in this, found Paul Tillich's ideas on Being and God as the Ground of all Being useful. When it comes to scripture I find that the Bible has useful universal principles that stand the test of time but I also am very much aware that different people in different historical periods have interpreted the Bible in quite different ways. In the nineteenth century, for example, some American Methodists used the Bible to try to oppose slavery but more used the Bible to uphold it. The Bible has also been used (and continues to be used) to keep women subservient to men and to justify homophobia. Whilst many Methodists oppose homophobia it is still a part of church life despite the Derby Conference resolutions of 1993. Such issues as these have led me to a more postmodern sense of the Bible as a document that is constantly re-interpreted by different people living through different experiences of life in different places and times. In the words of Spencer Tracey in the film, Inherit the Wind, I also believe that, 'the Bible is a book. It's a good book. But it's not the only book.' To me the Bible is inspirational but it is of its time and, occasionally, offensive. Such passages (e.g. those inciting violence, demeaning women, upholding slavery or condemning homosexuality) only make sense as a record of ancient belief systems. I do not believe that they are the 'word of God' in any meaningful way and to treat them as such is potentially quite dangerous.

Reflecting on my own experience over the past few months, what I have discovered is that whilst I may have a strong call to preach, I am not really a Methodist except by tradition. I have tried to make my ideas fit into Methodist doctrine but I am trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It is time to be more fully myself.

Having set out my theological stall in a very brief way I should say that whilst my decision to move on from Methodism is tinged with some sadness, I have no doubt that it is a positive and necessary move. I have found a new lease of life in a Unitarian congregation and have already been invited to lead worship there. This is an important opportunity for me as I have always found the process of preparing worship an excellent discipline for spiritual exploration. As I depart, I look forward to continued friendships with Methodist people and I am grateful for the many meaningful worship experiences, conversations, study groups, and chapel teas that I have enjoyed. Methodist people have always been good to me and with this thought foremost in my mind I wish you, the leaders of worship in the Cheshire South circuit, and all my Methodist friends who may read this, every blessing.

Yours sincerely,

Kevin Watson.