The UCA Board deeply appreciates the financial support from our generous contributors since 2019. We carefully steward your donations to maximize their impact.
Our conference planning has always focused on minimizing costs while maximizing benefits. Thanks to our donors, partners, and local church hosts, we’ve held successful conferences without additional fundraising.
As we prepare for upcoming conferences in the UK, Arizona, and Australia, we’re seeking your support. While attendee registrations cover venue, food, and lodging costs, we need help with travel expenses for US speakers.
We’ve created a donation form with specific thresholds for our three upcoming events:
$20K for the UK UCA Conference, Summer 2025
$40K for the Australia UCA Conference, March 2026
$60K for the Arizona UCA Conference, Fall 2025
If we don’t reach our $60K goal, we won’t be able to hold a US conference this year. We ask you to prayerfully consider donating to help us reach these milestones and spread unitarian Christianity worldwide.
Thank you for your continued support in prayer, donations, and service. With God’s blessing, we can reach more seekers with the life-changing truth about the one true God and His human son, the savior of the world, Christ Jesus.
My wife Candise and I and some other UCA Board members will be there, and the UCA will have at least one session there, but this is not a UCA conference. Rather than being an educational and networking conference, this is a celebration for biblical unitarians, with worship, preaching, workshops, and family-friendly fun, held on a beautiful college campus. The first one in 2019 was amazing – see the group photo at their website. The committee, led by Spirit & Truth‘s Jerry Wierwille, is hard at work on the details. I recommend taking a photo of the QR code below with your smart phone; this will take you to their site, where you get enter your email to get the latest updates! I hope we see you there!
Our amazing UK and European committee have built a site for conference information and registration here. This year it’s in a beautiful conference facility. There is a discounted rate for those who want to arrive earlier and/or stay later; you’ll need to talk to the hotel about that after registering. It’s not far from London, one of the greatest cities in the world!
This year the workshops will be coordinated by Rosalind Frøysadal; you can contact her through the site above – just click on “Workshops,” upper right.
You’ll want to register soon! There is an early-bird rate that ends March 31.
The Unitarian Christian Alliance UK International Conference organisers are pleased to announce a general call for papers to be presented at our second annual conference at the Denham Grove Hotel in Uxbridge, UK, 24-27 July 2025. (Watch this blog for the opening of registration.)
The paper submission deadline is the end of the day (UK time) of Friday May 15, 2024.
Please do not submit multiple papers.
Submissions will be blind-reviewed by a committee of three.
We are looking for scholarly (or at least: informed, insightful, and well-argued) papers which are also accessible to an educated lay audience on topics which can advance the cause of unitarian Christianity. Previous conference presentations can be seen on YouTube and some Model Papers are referenced here.
Topics may include but are not limited to: biblical theology, systematic theology, biblical studies, textual criticism, history of theology, history of unitarian Christianity, apologetics, Christian philosophy, analytic theology.
Authors may submit even if they are neither a member of the UCA nor a unitarian Christian.
Paper submissions must conform to the Chicago Manual of Style (Notes and Bibliography style, with footnotes and bibliography). A fully written paper must be submitted; an outline or proposal is not enough.
The main text should be no longer than 6,000 words, so that the presentation is no longer than 45 minutes. Submitted papers longer than 6,000 (in the main text – so not including footnotes) will be automatically rejected.
Authors should plan on about 10 minutes of audience Q&A after their talk. Papers may be read, although authors are encouraged to present the material in an engaging way.
Conference presentations will be video-recorded and may be posted on the UCA YouTube channel, and our social media committee may also snip out interesting “sound bites” for short videos. By submitting a paper, you agree that your presentation may be filmed and used in these ways by the UCA.
Authors of accepted papers must supply a PowerPoint or Keynote or Google Slides (etc.) presentation to accompany their talk by the end of July 1, 2025. (This should be emailed to the address below.)
After removing any self-identifying features (e.g. your name, references to your other publications or other work), please email your submission to ukconference@unitarianchristianalliance.org. Our conference coordinator will ensure that the papers are suitable for blind review and then pass them on to the committee.
The committee’s decisions will be emailed to authors by the end of May 23, 2025.
Please join us on November 9 for an event to explore how a proper knowledge of the Father and Son affects our understanding of other important topics.
Richard Morgan of the Simi Hills Christadelphian Ecclesia will present on how one-God faith affects the covenants of promise found throughout Scripture.
This event will occur on November 9 at 7:30pm (Eastern) and 4:30pm (Pacific). You can join this live presentation and even ask questions via this Zoom link (meeting id 817 4733 7928)
Thanks to our hard-working workshop coordinator Laura Willenburg, we have an exciting line-up of workshops for the October 2024 conference! Here are their titles and descriptions:
Appreciating the One True God Through Science and Creation – Tony Taylor
Have you ever wanted to know more about how to connect science and the beauty of God’s creation? If so, you won’t want to miss this presentation! In this workshop, you will: learn about the wonders of the created universe, witness visually stunning experiments and demos, examine the benefits of scientific curiosity and thinking critically, and learn how science is useful for testing and authenticating major aspects of biblical history. Whether you are a kid, teenager, or an adult, there will be something to learn and appreciate for all ages!
Becoming Trauma-Informed – Laura Willenburg
Most everyone will experience trauma at some point in their life and will find themselves in situations where they need resources to help them understand trauma and/or get help for themselves or their loved ones. In this workshop, Laura Willenburg provides a framework for understanding trauma and how it affects people, and provides resources for finding hope, help, and healing for those experiencing the effects of current or past trauma. This workshop is designed for people from all walks of life, but will be especially helpful to pastors, lay ministers, people in helping professions, trauma survivors and their loved ones.
Church Planting – Will Barlow and Sean Finnegan
In this workshop, Will Barlow and Sean Finnegan talk about their experience planting the newly established Compass Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky with the help of the seasoned organization Living Hope International Ministries. Together, they share how they turned a vision of a healthy thriving unitarian church into a reality. Topics covered include: pastoral and core leadership selection, finances, vision and mission, location, policies and procedures, and church culture. If you have an interest in being part of a unitarian church plant, you won’t want to miss this one.
Community Building – John Truitt and Timypaul Lupe
John Truitt and Timypaul Lupe share practical ways churches and other Christian groups can grow through various community-building activities. They will share real-life experiences of connecting with those around them through both spiritual and recreational activities that help produce vibrant healthy groups and mature disciples of Jesus.
Evangelism – Nate Swanson
Many Unitarians are looking for practical ways to share their beliefs about the One True God and his son. In this workshop, Nate Swanson shares wisdom from his experience with evangelism. His practical advice will help believers share their beliefs in a way that is winsome to others without compromising the truth. Come ready to be inspired and energized to share your faith!
Hearing God’s Voice – Michele Norton
From the beginning, God desired a family that he can commune with. At some point, you became a part of his family and heard his call on your life. Now is the time to sharpen your “ears” to hear the Creator speak to you in ways that you may not experience currently. It is within the family of God that his voice is most heard. In this workshop, we will explore the tangible and intangible aspects of being sensitive to him. Whether you are a novice or a seasoned believer, all are welcome.
As I write this there are fewer that 20 places left. If you’re quick enough you can register now here.
We’ve got a great line-up of presentations:
Will Barlow, “The Throne Room Problem: Responding to Trinitarian Claims about John 12:41”
Kegan Chandler, “Cult-Rhetoric and Unitarian Christology: The Evangelical Creation of a Christological Other”
Sean Finnegan, “Isaiah 9:6 Explained: A Theophoric Approach”
Susanne Lakin, “Biblical Anthropomorphism: Evidence of a Unipersonal God”
Bill Schlegel, “A Non-Genesis Creation Interpretation of John 1:3-4”
Dustin Smith, “New Testament Portrayals of Wisdom Christology: Meaning, Function, and Purpose”
Dale Tuggy, “Mainstream Christian Theologies in the year 240 and Early Trinitarian ‘Fool’s Gold’ “
These presentations will be filmed and posted on the UCA’s YouTube channel. By the way we’re currently posting the presentations from our amazing UK International Conference in Windsor, England from July.
If the practical workshops are more your thing (and these are not recorded) stay tuned: I’ll post again soon with our exciting workshop line-up.
The UCA is delighted to announce our first ever international conference in New Zealand. Thanks to the efforts of Zach Mayo and his New Zealand conference committee, this has been organized for November 22 – 24, 2024 at the Don Rowlands Centre in Cambridge, New Zealand.
You can register here. Thanks to the generosity of the local hosts, registration is free!
The program is still be developed, and there will be a call for presentations; watch this blog. So far the following have been confirmed as presenters:
trinities podcast host, UCA Board member, and co-author of the forthcoming One God, Three Persons, Four Views, Dr. Dale Tuggy
To learn more about this conference and its organizer Zach Mayo check out this interview for the Restitutio podcast. He is what I call a “whistleblower,” an evangelical Christian who believes that doctrine should be based on Scripture even if it conflicts with later catholic traditions. Like so many, Zach and his wife carefully re-examined the Bible and found that there the one God is the Father only, and that Jesus is his unique human Son and Messiah. Now they have joined our worldwide reforming movement.
We’re hoping to meet unitarian Christians from all over New Zealand, Australia, the rest of Oceania, southeast Asia, and beyond. It will be a place to fellowship, learn, be encouraged, and make new connections with like-minded believers. You can register now here.
The Board of the Unitarian Christian Alliance is pleased to announce a general call for papers to be presented at the fourth annual UCA conference in Little Rock, Arkansas October 17-20, 2024.
The submission deadline is the end of the day (U.S. Eastern Standard / New York time) of August 1, 2024.
Please do not submit multiple papers.
Submissions will be blind-reviewed by a committee of three.
We are looking for scholarly (or at least: informed, insightful, and well-argued) papers which are also accessible to an educated lay audience on topics which can advance the cause of unitarian Christianity.
Topics may include but are not limited to: biblical theology, systematic theology, biblical studies, textual criticism, history of theology, history of unitarian Christianity, apologetics, Christian philosophy, analytic theology.
The committee will favor papers focusing on claims common to UCA members, rather than on “in house” disagreements.
Authors may submit even if they are neither a member of the UCA nor a unitarian Christian.
Paper submissions must conform to the Chicago Manual of Style (Notes and Bibliography style, with footnotes and bibliography).
The main text should be no longer than 6,000 words, so that the presentation is no longer than 45 minutes.
Submitted papers longer than 6,000 (in the main text – so not including footnotes) will be automatically rejected.
Authors should plan on about 10 minutes of audience Q&A after their talk.
Papers may be read, although authors are encouraged to present the material in an engaging way.
Conference presentations will be video-recorded and may be posted on the UCA YouTube channel, and our social media committee may also snip out interesting “sound bites” for short videos. By submitting a paper, you agree that your presentation may be filmed and used in these ways by the UCA.
Still, a fully written paper must be submitted; an outline or proposal is not enough.
Authors of accepted papers must supply a PowerPoint or Keynote or Google Slides (etc.) presentation to accompany their talk by the end of Friday, September 1, 2024. (This should be emailed to the address below.)
After removing any self-identifying features (e.g. your name, references to your other publications or other work), please email your submission to conference@unitarianchristianalliance.org.
Our conference coordinator will ensure that the papers are suitable for blind review and then pass them on to the committee.
The committee’s decisions will be emailed to authors by the end of Thursday, August 15, 2024.
UCA member (and frequent presenter) Dr. Dustin Smith has just publishedWisdom Christology in the Gospel of John with Wipf & Stock. This scholarly monograph surveys and makes accessible an impressive array of recent biblical scholarship on the theme of wisdom Christology, in his words,
where the biblical authors apply various attributes, traits, characteristics, and roles that were originally associated with the personified wisdom of Israel’s God to the figure of Jesus Christ.
(p. 1)
This character Lady Wisdom will be familiar to all readers of Proverbs 1-9. But as Smith shows, this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as personifying wisdom. In his second chapter Dr. Smith surveys, as it were, the “pilgrimage” of this character through ancient Jewish literature, including biblical, deuterocanonical, and other books. Many of these books would have been familiar to the authors of the New Testament and their audiences. Thus, they may be relevant to understanding what those New Testament books really meant. Despite the creative imaginations of trinitarian interpreters, it is what comes before a writing, not what comes long after it, which helps to orient us into the author’s mindset.
His first chapter nicely introduces the idea of Wisdom Christology and surveys how this can be found in the New Testament in the letters of Paul, the letter to the Hebrews, and the first three gospels.
In his third chapter Smith argues, I think convincingly, that the Logos (Word) of John 1:1-18 is to be understood as a personification of God’s Word/Wisdom rather than a literal person. (More on that in this interview.) Dr. Smith provides us with a list of 20 (!) parallels between the language of John’s prologue and earlier wisdom literature (77-79).
The rest of the book (chapters 4-9) argues that the rest of this gospel continues this theme of Jesus as the embodiment of God’s wisdom. Many UCA members will be particularly interested in the treatment of texts in John which are often taken to imply Jesus’ pre-human existence (82-85, 217-18) or his descent from and ascent to heaven (105-7).
I was not as convinced by this portion of the book; he is arguing for causal influence from earlier wisdom literature to the fourth gospel (214-15), but it’s not clear to me that all the similarities support that thesis, e.g. “the hiddenness of Jesus as he escapes his enemies” (174) and “the inaccessibility of the wisdom of God” in Job 28:12-28. But Dr. Smith is taking a maximalist approach, gathering together all the alleged influences in John from wisdom literature that have been urged by recent interpreters. These will of course vary in plausibility, and one can accept the general thesis while rejecting some of the alleged examples of influence.
In sum, Dr. Smith succeeds at his goals of making a lot of recent biblical scholarship accessible to the non-scholar, and showing that earlier wisdom literature is an important interpretive key to understanding the original meaning of the Gospel According to John.
To hear Dr. Smith discussing these ideas check out his presentations below on Wisdom incarnate in Jewish sources at the 2023 UCA Conference and his 2024 conversation about this book on Sam Tideman’s Transfigured podcast.
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