During a recent assembly with Rev Kate Dean, Minister at Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, talked about what being a Unitarian means, starting with a picture of the beautiful Chapel building on Hampstead High Street, which they call a ‘spiritual home for open minds’. She told the school that Unitarians tend to be agnostic, which came as a surprise. It’s certainly unusual for a religious group to begin with the belief that it is not possible to know whether God exists!

Rev Kate shared that Unitarians were at the forefront of the campaign to change the law so that same sex couples could marry. Even now, 9 years later, Rosslyn Hill Chapel is one of the few places in London where same sex couples can have a religious or spiritual wedding ceremony. You would expect Unitarians to be open and tolerant, so there was some surprise when the campaign wasn’t supported by everyone. Even now, not all Unitarian churches hold a licence to conduct same sex weddings. But, Rev Kate went on, “We like to say ‘we need not think alike to love alike’ and we have to accept that we’re not always going to agree on everything, however uncomfortable that can feel sometimes. It doesn’t mean that we don’t like or even love each other any more. It just means we sometimes have to agree to disagree, and do it respectfully. If we put up walls or barriers, that’s not going to help anyone.”

This was the theme of her entire assembly and she illustrated this point with a photo of two gravestones in Het Oude Kerkhof (The Old Cemetery) in Roermond, Netherlands. As she explained, in 18th century Dutch society people lived separate lives according to their religious background, and this continued when they died. This cemetery has separate sections for Catholics, Protestants, and two sections for Jews. The gravestones, known as the Grave of the Little Hands, are those of a Catholic noblewoman and a Protestant colonel who, against everyone’s wishes, fell in love in 1840 and got married - even though there were differences in their religious background and their class. On his death she arranged for him to be buried on the edge of the Protestant section, so that his plot was right next to her family's Catholic plot on the other side of the wall. Later, when she died, two matching headstones were made with male and female hands bridging the religious divide, symbolising an eternal connection and the unity of love.

Rev Kate also talked about the origins of Unitarianism in Transylvania, which holds the particular honour of being the only country that became Unitarian - briefly - back in 1538, as a result of the Edict of Torda. According to Rev Kate, the Edict of Torda was a legal statement and a public declaration which affirmed that “in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well. If not, no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve.” The declaration concluded: “For faith is the gift of God and this comes from hearing, which hearing is by the word of God.” In other words, the Edict gave the preachers of Transylvania the freedom to interpret the bible according to their own understanding and said that the authorities should not punish preachers for speaking their mind, giving religious freedoms unheard of in other parts of Europe at the time.

This freedom to question, to challenge and to be curious is at the heart of our Unitarian ethos at Channing. The key, as we all know, is to help teenage children understand the true meaning of ‘tolerance’ when we talk about kindness, respect and tolerance at school. We share here the last part of her assembly verbatim:

 “We are really lucky to be living in a time and place where we are able to express our opinions freely. But with this freedom comes responsibility. We are responsible for our actions and our words. If we start from a place of kindness, even when we disagree, we can find ways to co-exist, to live together. This is what it means to be tolerant. This is what it means to practise acceptance.

Now, there is a possibility that if we remain in our cosy cliques, surrounded by people who agree with us, we can form echo chambers. But we have our Unitarian tradition of spiritual inquiry, of questioning and soul searching, which encourages us to reach out beyond our own cosy community, to explore the views of people who are not like us. So, how do we build the bridge between differences of opinion? We hold in the balance a wish to belong - to a country, to a community - and yet a yearning to explore our ideas, our faith, our own individual path.

I am a Unitarian but I am not here to tell you what to believe. What I think I can do is to remind you to be your best self. You know what that is. The ‘Golden Rule’, to treat others as you would wish to be treated, is one thing, but going that step further to treat other people as they would wish to be treated is sometimes known as the ‘Platinum Rule’. That is showing true empathy and kindness.

When you encounter someone for the first time, it’s a natural instinct to notice what’s different about them – whether that’s physical appearance, accent or something that they say. We can make that path of friendship smoother when we recognise the similarities rather than focussing on the differences. When we seek out the common ground, it is going to make someone feel much more comfortable than pointing out differences, othering them.

We are living in times where our society is being increasingly divided. Holding a particular view or political opinion seems to draw a line which is difficult to cross. We have lost the shades of grey and we must try to work harder to find that common ground. In those moments perhaps we should be asking, where is God, or if you prefer, goodness, in this conversation or situation? Perhaps that is the way in which we can find the highest power of goodness to help navigate the distance between us.”