The Future of the Past

Part One

We are the living products of our past; walking, talking bits of history. Our bodies contain the elements blasted into being at The Big Bang; they carry the signatures of all the food we’ve eaten and the water water we’ve drunk. We have been shaped by our environment and as humans have evolved, we’ve shaped that environment in our turn, creating a different world for the next generation to grow up in.

Our homes, schools, workplaces; the streets, villages, towns and cities; the countryside we value as natural but which is 99% man-made; it all shapes us every day. We walk in the past.

It’s not just the physical realm which shapes us. By accident of birth, we are born into a human body of some shape and colour, into a family which may be stable or not, which is itself part of a wider society with all its attendant requirements and expectations. In our bid to survive, we learn to conform to the patterns of that society, but there will be many challenges.

Depending on where that baby is born, it will grow up very differently. A female child in some parts of the world can be so unwanted, she is left to die. In many places, she will grow up under the strict control of a male dominated society, never realising her potential. If she is lucky to be born into a fairer society, she may succeed in some field, despite the obstacles in her way. To be homosexual may mean living with anything from personal and institutional discrimination, to being in daily fear for your life because of the beliefs and traditions of the society you live in.

A child of colour may grow up never seeing a white person, or forever be the second-class citizen in a country where they are a minority. Other children may not even have a home to call their own, often unwelcome strangers in a world where artificial borders divide up the earth. The Roma, Kurds, Uighur and Rohingya are peoples whose names we know because of the struggles they face in trying to survive in a present shaped by a history which excludes or persecutes them for who they were.

As more people are forced to leave their homelands to find safe refuge in other parts of the world, they face the discrimination brought about by lessons others grew up with: that foreigners are stupid, unclean, untrustworthy, lazy, frightening and unwelcome. The propaganda of two World Wars, vilifying Jews, Roma and Africans amongst others, lingers long in cultural memory. The echoes of Empire keep some in a false sense of superiority over others.

In religious matters too, we live in the past. For some, religious affiliation is a given: they will grow up within the dominant religion of their country. Others may be born into a family whose traditions see them as a religious minority, such as Christians in a Muslim dominated country. Which tradition is dominant in the present day is a direct consequence of the past: who conquered who, which faction seized power when. The advent of Protestantism in Europe centuries ago, made the creation of the Church of England a possibility when Henry VIII and his cronies wanted to wrestle power and money away from the powerful established church.

As Unitarians, our traditions are part of a long history of religious dissent against past forms of religion dominant at different times. Some of that dissent was based on fundamental disagreements about theology or practice: some of the fissures which fragmented the Christian church changed the very substance of people’s beliefs. Others were ‘fake fights’ over petty subjects, perhaps a cover for personal power struggles. Disagreements and fragmentation seem inescapable where human beings are concerned!

It’s interesting to note that the words we heard from Rev. McDonald Ladd were spoken in 2016, and yet today they seem as relevant as ever: we still hear the same responses to Black Lives Matter, still hear the same tired old excuses of “They were different times” or “You can’t judge historical figures by modern standards” or “But look at all the good things these people did”. Or the best one of all: “You can’t rewrite history”, which is ridiculous as ‘history’ has always been and will continue to be rewritten. The trope that ‘history is written by the victors’ makes the history of the downtrodden no less valid or important.

Part Two

Who knows where the time goes indeed. Time is a funny thing, sometimes stretching out interminably, while at other times it seems to go winging by ever faster! We simplify it in our minds as a single line, past at one end, present in the middle, future at the other end. But I get the feeling it’s more complex than that, as if our place on that line jumps about, or perhaps the line itself gets twisted and we live in this strange kind of past-present. What seems certain is that the tie to our past is unbreakable and that examining that past is important to our future.

But examining history can be painful. It can dig up uncomfortable truths which rock the foundations of our present days lives. And so it should. The pain experienced by people today is a direct consequence of past decisions taken. We think of progress as a never ending trajectory towards improvement, but it’s not. It’s just change, some of it is beneficial, some is not.

Take for instance our way of living. There’s no doubt that the Industrial Revolution, technical innovation and medical advances have given many of us us access to homes, work, transport and a longer, more healthy lifespan. But they have also brought about a decrease in environmental cleanliness, over-use of resources, a disconnect between human beings and the world they inhabit and a still-widening gap between the richest and the poorest.

In recent times, we have as a society been faced with the anger and demands for justice from those who have been wronged or believe themselves to be. When we hear of investigations into ‘historical child sex abuse’ we have to acknowledge both that it happened then and still happens now. When a terrorist commits an atrocity as their way of being heard, we are forced to examine where that level of hatred derives from and our part in creating it. When people of colour and their allies pull down statues of slavers, we have to look at the society which chose to put that statue up and the society which chose to leave it here for generations.

Admitting faults strikes at the heart of who we are, personally and at the level of wider society and national identity. How can we sing of Britannia proudly ruling the waves at the same time as acknowledging that our supremacy allowed us to profit from the use and abuse of so many others? How do we celebrate our heroes while admitting that they were terribly racist or sexist? How do we challenge the order of the society we live in without making ourselves unwanted outsiders? I’m not sure the answers are simple, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask the questions and explore the possibilities.

When we hear the voices of the oppressed rise up, we must listen. We have as individuals chosen to put ourselves under the Unitarian name at a time when we are free to practice our faith as full members of society. It wasn’t always so. Unitarians and others have known the bitterness of being outsiders, of being restricted and even persecuted. Perhaps that should make us more keenly aware of the importance of examining the past and the way it shapes our present.

We have at various times made changes which were not always comfortable for everyone: even the lighting of the chalice, so central to our services and identity now, is a recent addition which some saw as a part of other religions’ traditions, not ours. We are faced with questions about what we want to bring with us to give to those who come after and what we think we should leave behind.

As a faith group we also have to recognise where we stand, where we have done well and not so well. We helped shape the changes to laws on same-sex marriage, but perhaps we haven’t always been as welcoming to strangers as we like to think we are. We pride ourselves on our liberal, inclusive values, but if our churches and meeting houses are largely full of white, middle class, heterosexual people, we perhaps need to check that we aren’t just talking the talk.

As members of a wider society too, we should take a look at ourselves, personally and as a group. Are we prepared to stand by our principles, even if it makes life hard for ourselves? Will we challenge the status quo, call out the people and structures which continue to treat people unfairly? Jesus became the enemy of the establishment, both political and religious, unwilling to change his standards even if that might have out him in a position to make positive changes. We have found ourselves a home in a liberal religious tradition which has a tradition of standing up and questioning what it sees as wrong: members have been arrested, jailed, beaten and even died as they have joined their voices with others to call for justice and change.

I don’t know in which year the Rev. Nick Teape wrote his words. I do know it was before I was born. I find it a little sad that those words are still such a challenge today, but also it gives me hope: hope that the world is still full of decent people who will Stand on the Side of Love, who will be brave enough to try answering the big questions and look to make a new, happier, more peaceful and fair history for those who come next.

May it be so.