Universalist Christian Spirituality

The central insight of Jesus of Nazareth was that you cannot love God without also loving the people around you. When God's love flows through us we become more able to love our neighbours. But the more we think about what it would really mean to love our neighbours the more we realise it will involve a truly radical way of life. Loving our neighbours means following God's universal love for every person in the world. But the structures and systems of our world mean that many people face prejudice, racism, poverty, and many different forms of oppression. To love our neighbours means to side with those most oppressed. A Universalist Christian spirituality is a spirituality of liberation, a spirituality of activism. This often means standing against powerful forces in the world, including government and big business. Sometimes campaigning, arguing, and signing petitions is needed. Sometimes nonviolent direct action is more appropriate. Modern prophets such as Mohandas Gandh

Universalist Christian spirituality is rooted in the teaching of Jesus, a human prophet who taught a gospel of love and a radical way of living. Universalist Christians do not worship Jesus as god but rather pay attention to his core teachings on love, justice, prayer, equality, forgiveness, money, and non-violence. We follow the lead of modern historical scholarship which demonstrates that Jesus was a radical Jewish prophet not a divine being who wanted people to worship him. As such we recognise that much of the Bible was written by people who lived long after Jesus, or never met him, and therefore can distract us from his core teaching. It's not important to “believe” in Jesus, or to believe in things like the “virgin birth”, his death, or “resurrection” - what's important is following his core teaching. We believe that historical scholarship is fairly clear in showing what that teaching was. Which is not to say that Jesus' words are either easy to understand, or e

God is not something to experience second-hand, by only reading about God in a book, or hearing about some other “holy” person who has experienced God, rather we must experience God for ourselves. Universalist Christianity is not about “believing” a set of ideas, but about experiencing the Divine and experiencing a way of life rooted in the Divine. There are many ways to experience God's universal love. And other religious paths have all developed their own ways of knowing God. But for Universalist Christians God is known in the different activities that we label “prayer”. Many people get the idea of prayer wrong. They think it is almost the same thing as “wishing”. They think it is asking God for things as if you are reading a shopping list. Although we might sometimes express our desires and needs to God, that's not really what prayer is about. Prayer is simply the practice of being in the presence of God. Of course God is always present so it's really about openi

Universalist Christianity is a spiritual path based on the experience of the universal and unconditional love of God for every person. This really means every person regardless of religion, race, gender, class, nationality, or sexual orientation. This universal divine love is not a belief or philosophy but something to be personally experienced in your own heart. Universalist Christian worship and prayer practices are designed to open your heart to experience the love of God directly. God dwells within every thing and every person, therefore loving God means loving the earth and the people of the earth, especially the most oppressed. Love must lead to justice and peace for the earth. We follow the teaching of Jesus, a human prophet who taught a radical spiritual path of love. Universalist Christians do not worship Jesus as god but rather follow him as a teacher and prophet. We also acknowledge there have been many other prophets in human history, and we learn from their teaching