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The Fringe...
...the Festival
Martin Rowson
News in Brief
Readers Letters
Park Life
News in Brief
Dissent
Tapas Time
Back to the Fringe
Straight to the Point
Royal Bengal
Handy Contacts
Summertime Blues
Summery Justice
Up the Junction
Books/Poetry
The Factory
Summer Allergies
Farmers Market
The Arts
Away Days
A Royal Visit
Coffee Corner
Surfing N16
Man in North Bank
XWord
View from the Lane
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dissent in
newington green
by Rab MacWilliam
A small chapel, sitting anonymously on the north side of Newington Green, has been at the heart of the area’s reputation for dissent and non-conformism for almost three hundred years.
Built in 1708 by the Rational Dissenters (and designed to look like a dwelling place to
prevent persecution by Church and State), it is the oldest surviving non-conformist
meeting house in London.
Over the years, several
distinguished ministers have preached the Unitarian message to their congregations in its
somewhat austere surroundings, with perhaps the most famous being Richard Price, minister
from 1758 to 1791. Price was a noted liberal intellectual, mathematician and writer, whose
congregation included the poet Anna Letitia Barbauld and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A
Vindication of the Rights of Women, local schoolmistress and mother of Mary Shelley who
wrote Frankenstein. Price, whose chapel was also visited by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams
and David Hume, was a supporter of the American and French Revolutions, and his writings
prompted Edmund Burke to compose his Reflections on the Revolution in France, a
conservative rebuttal of radicalism.
In recent years, however, Unitarianism declined in numbers and the chapel was kept going
by the efforts of a small group of local women. When student minister Cal Courtney arrived
last year, the regular congregation members had fallen to just four. A 31-year-old,
amiable Irishman, Cal has had a remarkable spiritual journey. Born in Drogheda, the Irish
Republic’s ‘bandit country’, he joined the Redemptorist order of the
Catholic Church when he left school at seventeen. He believes that growing up against the
background of ‘the troubles’ may well have influenced his abhorrence of violence
and his embrace of tolerance. A liberal, missionary wing of the Church, the Redemptorists
had a presence in Calcutta, where Cal spent much of his time. He describes this period as
a ‘life-changing experience’. ‘Was it the poverty?’, I asked.
‘Partly’, he replied, ‘but it was mainly the profound impact of the
universalism of Hinduism, where God is everywhere’.
He left the monastic life at the age of 20 – ‘They were great about it.
I’ve still got a key for the front door’ – and worked for two years before
studying for a degree in
World Religions at University College, Wales. He then gained an MPhil at Trinity College,
Dublin, where his thesis was on sectarianism in Irish education. He believes,
and argued in the thesis, that the conservative wings of both main Irish churches attempt
to preserve their status by emphasising the need for separate education
in the Republic, a mechanism which perpetuates inegality and negates mutual understanding
and respect.
A radical spirit who is equally at ease with the
French builders currently restoring the old chapel as he is with the more arcane points of
Jungian psychotherapy and
postmodern philosophy, Cal then found his vocation in the Unitarian Church. After studying
at the Church’s Wakefield education centre and then at Manchester
College, Oxford, he took over at Newington Green ‘Why Unitarianism?’, I
enquired. ‘Because it’s religion without dogma and based on human experience. We
free
ourselves from the confinements of creed and believe it’s OK not to conform’.
All are welcome at the chapel, including pagans and atheists, as well as believers in all
the world’s major religions. Indeed, he rarely uses the term ‘God’,
believing that most people find it gender-specific, ie male. Curiously, though, he still
attends Mass every week, on the grounds that although rational, intellectual inquiry is
critical to spiritual understanding, a sense of mystery is also an integral part of
religious life.
Does his radicalism express itself politically? Although he made a decision not to engage
politically as the biggest questions are theological and not political, the two do
occasionally coincide. The evening before the march against the recent Irag War, he held a
silent vigil from 9pm till 9am at the chapel, protesting against the US-led incursion
with, among others, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews present. ‘A Jewish rabbi gave
her family prayer book to a Muslim’, he remembers, ‘as a symbolic atonement for
the Israeli occupation of Palestine’.
Cal’s charismatic stewardship of the chapel has seen the regular attendance grow to
twenty, and the main service is held on Sunday evenings. He has also re-instituted the
annual Richard Price Memorial Lecture, last given in 1981. On 26 September, Dr Barbara
Taylor (Reader in History at the University of East London, feminist historian and author
of a book on Mary Wollstonecraft) will be talking on ‘Rational Dissent and the Rights
of Women’. Check with the chapel for details.
This complex but cheerful man, whose enthusiasm for the Newington Green Jazz Festival and
local life generally rests easily alongside his concern for matters pastoral and
spiritual, appears to be breathing new life into a venerable tradition. Healthy
non-conformism is again alive and well in Newington Green.
what is unitarianism
Unitarianism emerged during the Reformation. The spread of printing, and the consequent
widespread dissemination of knowledge, alerted scholars to the fact that the Trinity - the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a fundamental tenet of Christianity - was barely alluded to
in the original, Greek New Testament and had been adopted much later in the 4th century AD
Nicean Creed. Unitarians subsequently dismissed the notion of the Trinity, arguing for one
God and questioning the divinity of Christ. John Calvin, who oversaw the burning at the
stake of Servetus, an early exponent of the belief, coined ‘unitarian’ as a
derogatory term.
The movement spread across Europe in the 16th century and arrived in England in the 17th
century. King Charles II’s Act of Uniformity banned all religious groups, including
the Unitarians, who did not subscribe to the Church of England and, although the
Toleration Act of 1689 permitted a degree of religious tolerance, it was not until 1813
that Unitarianism was finally legalised through the passing of the Heresy Act. Today there
are around 15,000 members of the Church in England, although the movement remains
proscribed by the World Council of Churches.
what is unitarianism?