S10 #06 - What we do- practice, commitment, and liberal, free-religion - A thought for the day

The full text of this podcast can be found in the transcript of this edition or at the following link:

https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2025/07/what-we-do-practice-commitment-and.html

Please feel free to post any comments you have about this episode there.

The liturgy of the Sunday Morning service of Mindful Meditation, Music, and Mucic, and the "Principles of Living " mentioned in this podcast can be downloaded as pdfs at the following links:

https://www.cambridgeunitarian.org/morning-service/

https://www.cambridgeunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Cambridge-Unitarians-Principles-of-Living-2024.pages.pdf

The Cambridge Unitarian Church's Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation can be found at this link:

https://www.cambridgeunitarian.org/morning-service/
 
Opening Music, "New Heaven", written by Andrew J. Brown and played by Chris Ingham (piano), Paul Higgs (trumpet), Russ Morgan (drums) and Andrew J. Brown (double bass) 

Thanks for listening. Just a reminder that the texts of all these podcasts are available on my blog. You'll also find there a brief biography, info about my career as a musician, & some photography. Feel free to drop by & say hello. Email: caute.brown[at]gmail.com

Transcript

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation

—o0o—

My grandmother, Daisy Victoria Brown, was a devout, yet gentle-hearted, Anglican from London’s East End. Although my parents showed no such religious devotion, it was she who encouraged them to send me to church each Sunday to sing in the choir and ring bells in the local, Anglican parish church . Every few years, my maternal grandmother’s sister, Bea, would visit from the USA with her son, Father Eugene. These visits introduced me to a spiritual way of being-in-the-world distinct from my family’s liberal Protestantism. You see, Auntie Bea had married into an Irish-American family, and her son, our Uncle Eugene, had become a Roman Catholic priest. During their stays in Norfolk with my grandmother—that was in North Walsham—instead of attending the local Anglican church, we would accompany them to the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart.

One particular memory from those visits has stayed with me. When we entered the church, everyone dipped their fingers into holy water and made the sign of the cross. Curious, I asked my uncle what it meant. His simple response surprised me: “It’s simply what you do when you enter a Roman Catholic church.” Unsatisfied, my developing analytical mindset sought an intellectual explanation, eventually discovering that it symbolised baptism, acknowledged God’s presence, asked forgiveness, and sought protection from evil. Yet, I came to realise most Catholics don’t consciously rehearse these theoretical meanings. As my uncle knew, it was simply what a faithful Catholic must do.

Reflecting over the years, I’ve seen that moment as marking my early realisation of the danger of privileging analytical dictionary and textbook definitions of the meaning of various acts over their actual use in the world. Such privileging remains characteristic of Western European and North American liberals, making it difficult for them to commit to any religious or, indeed, political, practice, before establishing a clear, correct set of definitions of the meaning of any given religious act. Any lingering doubts render action nearly impossible. Since liberals correctly understand the uncertainty inherent in such definitions, true liberal religious or political commitment often seems impossible, resulting in spaces dominated by endless theorising and hesitation. The most brilliant comic parody I have ever read of just how weirdly and dysfunctionally this liberal characteristic can play out was written in 2019 for the American satirical magazine The Onion:

“MADISON, WI—Taking a moment to reflect on his hard-won personal accomplishment, area liberal Tom Hudson expressed relief Monday that he would never again have to engage in self-examination after finally assembling all the correct opinions. ‘It definitely wasn’t easy, but now that I have all the proper perspectives on the world all perfectly arranged inside my head, I know I’ll never need to question my own thoughts, beliefs, or opinions ever again,’ said Hudson, proudly recounting his previous efforts at researching all necessary sociopolitical issues, conducting a rigorous self-exploration to determine which of his behaviours were problematic or harmful, and finally achieving the proper balance of beliefs to ensure once and for all that he is an indisputably good person. ‘It’s such a huge weight off my shoulders. I never have to consider my place in society or my impact on the issues ever again now that I know exactly how to present myself as one of the good guys. This feels amazing.’ Hudson was then immediately and savagely attacked by his fellow liberals, who insist that his current views are nowhere near progressive enough.” 

Why mention all this? Well, it relates directly to our Sunday Morning Service of Mindful Meditation, Music and Conversation.

Since that moment fifty years ago outside the Church of the Sacred Heart, I’ve been considering a crucial question: what should religious liberals simply do when gathering? What practices should we free-religious liberals commit to, irrespective of their abstract theological definitions, just as Catholics consistently dip their fingers into holy water without going through all those abstract theoretical definitions?

For us, the answer is, I think, our Sunday morning liturgy. We repeat it weekly to embed certain practices deeply into our mental and muscle memory, just as martial artists repeat basic moves. This consistent practice mirrors the way the Catholic Mass, Buddhist or Shinto services, Islamic prayers, or Jewish Shabbat services work. The shared actions done in them are integral to what authentically defines a person belonging to one of those faith traditions. So, these days, if I am asked what our morning gathering means, I often now begin by replying, echoing my Uncle Eugene, “Well, in the first instance, it’s simply what we as liberal, free-religionists must do each week.

Yet, given our liberal, free-religious orientation, we cannot simply stop there. The meanings and truths of our actions do matter deeply to us, and we have also long understood that these meanings continually evolve and remain provisional. This is why our liturgy is intentionally designed also to hold open a creative space, allowing for free, conversational exploration, without losing the capacity for committed action. Michael Oakeshott described such spaces beautifully,saying that, in this kind of conversation, we allow ‘facts’ to appear only to be resolved once more into the possibilities from which they were made; we allow ‘certainties’ to be shown as combustible, not by being brought into contact with other ‘certainties’ or with doubt, but by being kindled by the presence of ideas of another order; we allow approximations to be revealed between notions normally remote from one another. In other words, we provide a space where thoughts of different species are allowed to take wing and play around one another, responding to each other’s movements and provoking one another to fresh exertions. 

Yet we must do this knowing that our creative, inquiring free and liberative thinking must not be allowed to undermine our ability to act and commit—with a clean heart and full conviction—to liberal ways of being-in-the-world. This conversation must be a framed, held, and curated form of free-thinking, one that disciplines us to remain always open to new light and truth, while simultaneously helping to guarantee the holy freedom to become tomorrow what we are not today. This framing, holding and curating is precisely the function of the things we say, responsorially, each week in our liturgy.

All established religions have similar, disciplined ways of forming and shaping their members through consistent actions performed week by week, year by year, century by century. Thus, my constant question for many decades has been: what might a liberal, free-religious discipline look like, one that forms and shapes our members confidently to go out into the world with a deep commitment to liberal, free-religious values, and yet open, always, to new light and truth?

Our Sunday morning liturgy is my, and is our, answer to that question, as is our adoption of the “Principles of Living,” which you can find at the back of your order of service. In other words, our liturgy and principles function for us analogously to the fixed liturgies and creeds of established religions. But—and this is vital—our liturgy and Principles of Living are designed precisely to be anti-creedal. They are, if you like, a creed about how not to have creeds: a practical tool to help us create a cooperative community that liberates us to think, to change, and to claim the aforementioned freedom to become tomorrow what we are not today.

But, a significant internal challenge to this approach arises from a common belief that liberal religion can only thrive when it offers endless variety in the basic form and content of its weekly gatherings. However, constantly changing the basic form and content of our weekly gatherings only distracts us from our basic task of making and forming good, confident, well-informed, thoughtful and committed liberal, free-religious individuals, whilst all around us, illiberal religion continues to gain ground. Instead, I have come to feel that consistency in liberal free-religious practice works best, especially in our highly unstable age. And, increasingly, in conversation particularly, I am finding that liberal-minded individuals are no longer seeking spiritual variety, and even simple entertainment, but something more serious, meaningful, minimal, coherent, and gently disciplined—something that offers real depth, purpose, integrity, and a secure foundation for confident liberal, free-religious action.

This, I believe, is precisely what we are modestly beginning to offer our local community here in Cambridge, and I shall wholeheartedly continue to recommend it to you.