PERSONAL STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Don
Why I attend a Unitarian Church - The Unitarian Church provides me with an opportunity to celebrate life, an environment to contemplate my spirituality without dogmatic conformity, and encourages my personal desire to provide a small measure of community or social justice betterment.

Margi
I am a Unitarian because I have very definite views on spirituality (like reincarnation – yes) and it’s nice to be able to go to a spiritual event where I can feel at home and so can others whose ideas are different to mine. I appreciate the opportunity for a peaceful time in the week to meditate on my concerns and joys. I usually find something very relevant and moving in the readings or sermon and I love singing even though I’m not good at it. Also I love the coffee time afterwards – there are such nice people to talk to.

Peter
Being a person that's spiritually inclined, and wishing to share positive, compassionate, loving thoughts with other people, I find this Unitarian Church a very good place to do these things.

John
In essence, what attracted me to the Unitarians was, I think, probably the absence of dogma, and their disbelief in the literal rendition of so-called miracles.

Marcus
I came to Unitarianism in the beginning as a Christian, and over the years I've changed my ideas about Christianity, and now call myself a Unitarian.  Here you're allowed to have a blended religion - and my religion is very blended now.

Mavis
When I was young, and for many years later, I believed what I was required to believe.  But eventually there came a time when I did much wider reading and thinking, and I could no longer toe the doctrinal line.  Coming to a Unitarian Church is so liberating - it's just wonderful, and I can have my own sincere thoughts that are not imposed by someone else.

Marjorie
There's affection here - I find nice people, friendly people ....

Jenny
I guess the reason I like coming to this Unitarian Church is to meet people that you can discuss things with, without having to pretend that you believe anything but what you do.  It's very open.  You can discuss spirituality in the same way that you can discuss anything else outside of churches.  The word 'should' isn't used too often.  I feel very happy here.

Daphne
I just came one week, more or less on whim.  And it was so different that I decided I had to come back again the next week.  I've been coming ever since.  I keep coming because I think that you really need some ongoing spiritual thing in the background to keep you going, otherwise you can easily just drift back into taking things for granted.  I find this Church is something that keeps me going.

Mark
Unitarianism, I guess, is a religion that is allowed to take everything from the past that it can possibly take.  The fact that it's very open allows it also to be open to the future and to whatever religion will become.  In that way I guess it embraces a true spirituality that is not bound to other people's beliefs, but to one's own.

Personal Statement by A. Powell Davies (not a member of our Church) speaking of his Unitarian Church
I come to church because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them.  I must feel again the love I owe my fellow men and women.  I must not only hear about it but feel it.  In church I do.
I want to experience human nature at its best - and be reminded of its highest possibilities, and this happens to me in church.
Life must have its sacred moments and holy places.  The soul will always seek its nurture.
Religious experience - which is life at its most intense, life at its best - is something we cannot do without.