Oldham Unitarians

NEWSLETTER

July – September 2008

Dates for your Diary …

Sunday Services 11.00 - 12.00

July
06. Service conducted by Rev Dr David Doel
13. Service conducted by Danny Crosby
20. Service conducted by Dr. Aled Jones
27. Service conducted by Bob Pounder

August
03. Service conducted by Sue Pounder
10. Service conducted by Danny Crosby
17. Service conducted by Bob Pounder
24. Service conducted by Hilary Ellis
31. Shared Service

September
07. Service conducted by Rev Dr David Doel
14. Service conducted by Bob Pounder
21. Service conducted by Nicky Jenkins
28. Service conducted by Dawn Buckle – Harvest Service


Traidcraft Lunches & Shop, Thursdays 12.00-14.00
Please note, there will be no Traidcraft lunch or shop
available after the 3rd July until 21st August.

A Summer Prayer

O God as we look forward to the coming summer months and see anew the glory of your creation, bursting forth with energy and beauty, we think of the subtle shades in the rich variety of grasses that may blow and sway in the evening breeze and the majesty of the trees that have newly come into leaf. And in the tranquillity of the summer evenings we can still feel the warmth of the day and see the setting sun. As we survey the natural wonders of our world, in quiet solitude it seems like we experience your presence for the very first time in an ever deepening and timeless relationship. We are truly privileged. And as we acknowledge your gift of our life on this earth we give thanks for all we have received and we pray for the world, we pray for others whoever they may be. We pray that our lives may be used to reflect and to bring your love down into our world, where we may care a little more and give a little more, understand a little more and forgive a little more for none of us are perfect. Lord, as we ask for your blessing, we know that it will be given for in our own moments of deep silence we know that you are always with us.

RP

Sunday School Success

by Cathy Hall
Chapel Secretary

Once again the children triumphed in the annual Arts and Crafts Exhibition held at Flowery Field Church. They received a very commendable 2nd Prize in the collage section, the subject being 'Outer Space'.

The adjudicator commented that they had 'produced a very precise picture'. And indeed they had, by showing the solar system and the Milky Way in all its glory. A lot of thought went into the collage. There were many entries to look at on the day. Marian and myself also spent some time in the Chapel at Flowery Field listening to the singing and the choral music.

Because of their larger congregations, many of the other churches put in a higher number of entries for the exhibition than we were able to.

Over the past few years we have been consistent in our number of entries - usually one but once we did manage to double our quota!

Next January when we receive the entry details for the the Arts and Crafts Exihibition 2009, I intend to go for the 'hard sell' and encourage everyone to enter a category.

Maybe we could challenge the other churches who regularly come away with silverware for the number of entries they submit. As Oldham Athletic fans say, "Keep the faith!"

When we were told in April 2007 that it was almost certain that the chapel would be closed down to make way for the re-development of Oldham Sixth-Form College, I cannot say that I was delighted.

Perhaps I should have been, given that we were guaranteed to have a new replacement chapel built for us as compensation. Indeed, the local council even went so far as to commission Seven Arch, a firm of architects, to draw up plans for the new chapel. We received these plans in October 2007.

However, a major problem became clear from the start and that problem centred on where the new chapel was to be sited. It was apparent that none of the suggested locations came anywhere near the desirability of the site of the existing chapel on King Street!

There are a number of reasons for this including access for cars, proximity to the town centre, and a fairly low-level rate of vandalism.

But now, with our chapel site no longer central to the Council's redevelopment plans (see Oldham Unitarian Chapel Newsletter April - June 2008), the chapel committee has decided to go ahead with various renovations. This will include repairs to the chapel roofs, improved ventilation in the main chapel roof void and a better lighting system inside the main chapel hall and reception area. Further to this the chapel ceiling will also be renewed and re-decorated and we intend to finish the painting of the chapel itself before the end of the summer.

Although we are still in 2008 we are now beginning to look to the future with an eye on our bicentenary in 2013. Two hundred years of Unitarianism in Oldham - now that is something to celebrate! With that vision in mind there is definitely something to work towards over the next five years.

On a personal note, from 1 September 2008, Mr Trevor Clarke, will take over from me as Chapel President and Editor of the newsletter. I leave to begin a two year course at Unitarian College Manchester. So I would like to thank Trevor for taking on this important work and wish him every success in his new role. I must say that it has been a privilege to work with him, and all members of the chapel. I have learned a lot, and enjoyed your support. It's always a pleasure to spend time and to talk and socialise with you all. Thanks for putting up with me!

Bob Pounder

Rev John Roberts
Oldham Days
1969 - 1975

The recent uncertainty surrounding the future of Oldham Unitarian Chapel has now been resolved. This means that the congregation can look forward to a stable future as structural repairs and the continued refurbishment of the premises goes ahead.

Back in the 1960's Oldham Unitarians were not so fortunate. In January 1962, Mr Cass, Chief Public Health Inspector of the Oldham County Borough, informed the Chapel Secretary, Mrs Leeson, by telephone that Lord Street Chapel would become subject to a Compulsory Purchase Order.

The minister for Oldham during that period was The Rev S. L. Johnston (1962-1965). He followed the Rev T. E.Nuttall who resigned in 1960 in order to become minister of the Unitarian Chapel in Kendal.

Following the decision of the County Borough to compulsory purchase Lord Street Chapel, a period of further uncertainty followed since there was no indication of when the buildings would be demolished. According to Jane Greaves ('In Search of Truth' – The History of the Unitarian Church, Oldham -1966) "It was unfortunate that the winter of 1962/63 was a particularly severe one marked by snow, ice, broken gas and water mains, abnormally low temperatures, water carts out in the streets and frozen reservoirs. Lord Street's roof and spire were damaged in a gale, the spire later having to be removed, whilst a number of burst pipes in both the chapel and the school meant that evening services had to be abandoned."

The Rev John Roberts who was the minister for Oldham between 1969 to 1975 recalls his first visit to Oldham in 1967 as a student minister: "I went inside and looked at the church which was in a terrible state. I stood there in the doorway and nothing happened. Then about thirty minutes later, somebody came in from the Sunday school and said, 'What are you standing there for?' I said "Well, I have come to take the service." "Oh, we don't use the church any longer - we have the services in the hall." That was my first connection with Oldham church. I think that would have been in about 1967.

After completing his ministerial training and acceptance into the ministry John says that he was persuaded to become minister for both Rochdale and Oldham Unitarian Churches, living in the manse at Rochdale:

"At Oldham the situation was very bad, the church was dropping to bits and the school room was not much better. We managed to decorate and make warm one room in the school which we used for a year or two."

"But eventually even that got to the stage where it was ravaged with dry rot and the vicar of Oldham Parish Church allowed us the use of one of his Sunday school halls, just a bit further up from Lord Street Chapel. We were there for about eighteen months or something like that. We were very grateful to the vicar of Oldham Parish Church."

"During that time it became obvious that the local authority wanted to take over the piece of land that the chapel was on and it was then that I started getting involved. I felt that I had been thrown in at the deep end because I knew nothing about building churches, and all the organisation that that requires."

"Eventually we received notice to leave Lord Street and an acceptable new site was agreed where we could build a new chapel. The amusing part was when I took the keys for the old premises to the council offices, they asked for the registers of the church."

"Bearing in mind all the messing the council has put us through, I was quite pleased to tell them that there were plague victims buried in the graveyard of the chapel! They wanted that piece of land to build a swimming baths on. They had to sift every bit of bone and debis when the the disinternment took place and then place everything in a common grave in the cemetery at Chadderton."

"There was a section of the chapel membership at the time who just wanted to pack up. But the little central group that included Mrs Freeman, Clarice Nuttall, Marian Nuttall and Mrs Sim, all made it clear that they wanted to carry on." "In the end their view prevailed and even those who didn't want to carry on at first came aboard and continued and gave support."

Turning now, to the building of the new chapel, John recalls: "Eric Nuttall worked to draw up plans and we got involved in raising money so that the building could be completed. I was involved in the planning of the chapel from the very start. There were difficulties with access to the new site, there was another church, a Presbyterian one, very close to the new location and we came to an agreement in which we allowed them to use our car park and at the time, we didn't mind the people from the factories using the car park during the week when we weren't using it. On the whole the new site didn't work out too badly at all. We were offered another site which was right down towards Chadderton, in the middle of a filthy devastated area that was being redeveloped. The builder who carried out the work had been recommended to us by the Rochdale MP, Cyril Smith."

It was a very hectic time.

"We were fortunate that the builder discovered that the large area where the chapel was to be built consisted of a solid concrete raft, which had provided the foundation for a previous building. There had been a foundry or workshop of some sort on the site. The building firm also built the new Rochdale Church."

"Rochdale were able to install their old stained glass windows into their new building but Oldham, if they did have anything to salvage, did not have the funds to carry out such an operation. Even the organ pipes at Oldham's Lord Street Chapel were destroyed by vandalism."

"Halfway through the process with Oldham Rochdale Unitarian Church began to rebuild so I had to deal with the upheaval in both of my churches. It was a very hectic time as you can imagine. In spite of all the upheaval that both my churches were subject to during my time as their minister, I have to say that this period of my life as a minister was one of the most satisfying."

"The new chapel at Oldham was alright, it was modern, warm and comfortable, and this meant that the congregation survived and experienced some moderate growth. There was a social life and I was sorry to leave in 1975. But my son had left school, he needed to seek employment outside the area, and perhaps I had been there long enough."

"I moved on to Dean Road Unitarian Chapel in Bolton, taking over from The Rev Arthur. J. Long minister there for the previous twenty years."

By then members of both Rochdale and Oldham were enjoying their new chapels and the period of uncertainty was over.

The Rev John Roberts was succeeded by The Rev Arthur Latham.

Munazza Hassan and her three children have resided in the UK since 2004. Escaping the brutality of domestic violence in Pakistan, the family continued to live as asylum seekers.

Always living in the shadow of the threat of deportation, living in fear, of uncertainty and without the same rights of other UK residents, life was very difficult.

Following a meeting of the Manchester District Association of Unitarians and Free Christians a campaign was launched to bring an end to the family's plight.

As we go to press we are delighted to inform readers that we have been contacted by the family who have now received confirmation from the Home Office that they hav obtained indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Mrs Hassan, who is a Shia Muslim, was subject to extreme violence from her husband, who is a Sunni Muslim. After their marriage in Pakistan, Munazza's husband became a religious extremist. Forbidding the education of his daughters, he planned for them to enter into arranged marriages, whilst his son was to be sent away from home for 'Jihad Training'.

The subsequent disagreements led to beatings that were meted out to the children as well. In fear of their lives, Munazza and her children left the family home in Karachi and escaped to Lahore. Knowing that her husband would eventually track her down in Pakistan, Munazza fled to the UK.

For The Beauty Of The Earth...

In this edition of the Newsletter our secretary, Cathy Hall reports that the Sunday School won second prize by producing a collage on the theme of 'Outer Space'. She went on to say that the adjudicator had commented that the children had produced 'a very precise picture by showing the solar system and the Milky Way in all its glory'.

If we had displayed such a collage in a medevial church hundreds of years ago, it would have been a different matter entirely. In those days the church held that the universe was a closed space, bound by a spherical envelope, beyond which was nothing, and that the earth was the centre of the universe.

But Nicolas Copernicus reasoned that this was not so, and in his great work, 'De Revolutionibus', explained that the earth rotated on its axis and travelled around the sun.

In 1616 his book was placed on the Catholic Index – a catalogue of prohibited books, forbidden to Catholics by the highest ecclesiastical authority. Copernicus' work was only removed from the Index in 1833.

Copernicus lived to be 70 years of age, but others were not so lucky.

Giordano Bruno, born in Naples in 1548, was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600, by the Inquisition for expressing belief in the Copernican theory that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe.

Galileo was brought before the Inquisition in Rome, and was made to recant all his beliefs and writings supporting the Copernican theory in order to avoid being burned at the stake. He was imprisoned from 1633, and died in 1643.

The great German writer, philosopher and scientist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote "Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the privilege of being in the centre of the universe. Never perhaps was a greater demand made on mankind, for by this admission, so many things vanished in mist and smoke. What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, of piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of the poetic religious faith? No wonder his contempories did not wish to let this go, and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which, in its converts, demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of."

425 years after the death of Copernicus, on Christmas Eve 1968, a spacecraft, Apollo 8, carrying James A. Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman, became the first manned spacecraft to circle the moon, coming as close as 69 miles to the surface on one orbit. On the 9th orbit, the astronauts sent photographs back to earth describing their awe and wonder at the comparison between the desolation of the moon and the beauty of the earth.

In his autobiography "Countdown", Frank Borman later wrote:

"There was one impression we wanted to transmit, our impression of closeness to the creator of all things. This was Christmas Eve, December 24th 1968, and I handed Jim and Bill their lines from the Holy Scriptures."

Bill Anders read from Genesis 1 – 4, Jim Lovell took the next four verses and Frank Borman finished with:

"And God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas; and God saw that it was good."

Seen from 240,000 miles away, the earth was a "grand oasis in the big vastness of space" – and Bill Anders commented "How finite the Earth looks – there's no frame around it. It's hanging there, the only colour in the black vastness of space, like a dust mote in infinity."

"Look again at that dot!" said astronomer Carl Sagan. "That's here, that's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions and ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter, every forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and every sinner in the history of our species lived on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam! This blue planet seen from the moon as the only colour in the black vastness of space. Such superlatives, such descriptions do not in any way invalidate the brilliance of scientific progress and discovery. But is it not part of the human condition that when we come face to face with the glory of creation, that we revert to poetry, to grandiloquence, to praise, and that our awe and wonder lead us to worship, and to acknowledge our finite selves in the vastness of the universe?

Danny Crosby

Becoming a Unitarian Student Minister...

Danny Crosby is a member of Cross Street Chapel. In the past few months he has been a welcome visitor to Oldham Unitarian Chapel leading worship on a regular basis.

In September, Danny will become a Student Minister and begin training for the ministry at Unitarian College Manchester (UCM). UCM is a member of the Partnership for Theological education, based at Luther King House, Rusholme.

Danny became a Unitarian some five years ago, following a period of involvement with The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

But Danny felt that he had not found exactly what he was looking for and continued in his spiritual search - via the internet! He found a website known as Beliefnet [www.beliefnet.com] and completed an on- line questionnaire which suggested he might be a Unitarian Universalist.

Wondering what this actually meant, Danny did a little more internet-based research and found out about Unitarianism in England. "I heard about the famous Unitarian, Joseph Priestly who came from Birstall, the same village as me," said Danny.

"He also went to the same school I went to, Batley Grammar School and of course I remembered that he was the discoverer of oxygen and that there was a big statue of him in town centre."

"Then I just turned up at Cross Street Chapel one Wednesday lunch time. Peter Sampson (the chapel secretary) met me at the door and I heard John Midgley preach and I felt at home instantly. I only came on Wednesdays for a while, I was still going to the Quakers on a Sunday at Friends Meeting House, Mount Street, and then I started coming on a Sunday. When I was no longer able to attend on Wednesdays I continued to go to Cross Street on Sunday. The Wednesday services at Cross Street Chapel in Manchester were of course my first point of contact and I know this is true for others who eventually became Unitarians. There are some people who only attend on a Wednesday".

Danny found that Cross Street chapel was indeed very welcoming, here he felt a positive encouragement that would lead to personal and spiritual growth. Danny recalls, " I first got involved in singing with the group known as Roundelay, Alan Myerscough, the chapel's director of music said, "You can sing, why don't you join our choir?".

"They were very encouraging, very patient, and I was somehow able to stick with it even when it was really, really, very hard. They had to be patient to somehow drum the music into me. Alan was definitely very helpful to me."

On a pastoral level it was the Rev John Midgley who gave Danny a lot of support, helping with a bereavement issue. "It was the humanity of the man", said Danny.

"His patience, his calmness, his willingness to give and his understanding. John was the first person I told him about my wish to enter the Ministry. At first he did what I understand he does with everybody at first, he told me all about the pitfalls of Ministry but he was also very encouraging. The advice he gave me was to be myself, don't try to be anything that you are not, just be you and that will be fine; that was helpful to me." Danny began to preach at Cross Street Chapel. "At first I just looked at the format that John used and developed my service around it," he said.

"I'm just one of those people that jumps in the river and learns to swim. I think that delivery and technique can be learned and improved but you cannot escape the fact that in the end your own level of spirituality and your personality is what will come through. Having said that, I am currently on the Lay Worship Leaders course that is being held in Sheffield. I have learned such a lot and I think that anyone who would like to take the service at their own church or chapel on a regular basis, would benefit tremendously from going on one of these courses."

Ministry is not just about leading worship of course, and with an eye to the future as a minister, Danny sees a role for himself in the field of pastoral care, something that he has already had considerable experience in. Building the denomination is also important to Danny: "I would like to help in attracting people to Unitarianism. I think a minister is the focal point of a worshipping community with an important role in all these things."

"I'm looking forward to the start of my course, and training for the Ministry, it's an exciting time and I've got a lot to learn."

Whit Sunday: Unitarians meet at Oldham Parish Church and share in worship in the town centre

Oldham Unitarian Chapel founded in 1813

is open to all who wish to worship with an open mind,
in a spirit of freedom, reason and tolerance.

We do not all hold the same beliefs, rather each person is encouraged
'to develop his or her faith in a continuing search for truth.'

Unitarian Chapel
Connaught Street / King Street
Oldham
OL8 1 EB
Tel: 0161 620 1810

Lettings Officer: Mrs M. Nuttall – Tel: 0161 287 3371

Registered Charity No. 1111295