Yesterday I had the chance to preach at St. Mark’s Unitarian Church in Edinburgh. It was a great experience. The congregation in many ways reminded me of my own. The demographics were similar–a fairly even split between young adults and elders with only a smattering of middle aged folks in between. I also felt right at home theologically–there were plenty of both humanists and more theistically minded people.

One of the things that struck me as we have travelled around Europe is how similar the three European Unitarian congregations I have visited are to American and Canadian congregations. As I mentioned in a previous post the liturgy at the Prague congregation was familiar. The same was certainly true of congregations in Edinburgh and Croydon. The Edinburgh congregation even uses the same hymn book that we do (they also have an exclusively Bristish hymnal).

The most exciting thing I learned about the Edinburgh congregation, and something it shares with some Unitarian Universalist congregations in North America, is that it started out as a Universalist church. It started to call itself a Unitarian church when it became legal to be a Unitarian in the UK. And today it calls itself a Unitarian Universalist church because it has roots in both movements. I don’t know but it is possible that it is the only actual Universalist church in all of the British Isles. From I understand almost all of the others were founded as Unitarian or Free Christian churches. For more information about the history of Universalism in Scotland click here.