Tune in April 2, Sunday night at 7pmCST for our very own Dr. Dustin Smith and Pastor William Barlow defending unitarianism and the true humanity of Jesus in a debate on the Gospel Truth youtube channel.
You can support our debaters by sharing the link widely on social media, watching live, winsomelyparticipating in the youtube chat, and reaching out to encourage Dustin and Will. Please pray for God’s provision for all involved, and that the debate will contribute to the spread of the truth about the one true God, and the human Christ Jesus.
If you would like to participate in future debates, as debater, pit crew, behind the scenes support, or in other ways, please contact me at media@unitarianchristianalliance.org. Many hands make light work, and there is a massive work to be done indeed!
The UCA Board of Directors would like to extend a sincere THANK YOU to the many charitable people who supported the UCA’s fundraising initiative from last December-January. These donations, which exceeded our expectations, were generously matched by The Grace Fund, an equity foundation for unitarian Christian churches and ministries.
Each of your contributions have directly impacted the UCA’s ability to spread unitarian theology, support unitarian ministries, connect like-minded believers, and more. Be on the lookout for the new unitarian videos, publications, and public events which have been directly energized by your generosity. We have all been greatly encouraged and inspired by your vision and commitment to the cause!
Thank you again to The Grace Fund. We can’t wait to see how both the UCA and the Grace Fund continue to support the unitarian Christian movement in the years to come! If you’d like more information on how you can join the cause, please visit https://www.unitarianchristianalliance.org/donate/, and prayerfully consider becoming a UCA Partner with a donation of $10/month or greater (though even the smallest amount means so much).
Thank you again to everyone who has so generously supported this mission!
The main UCA conference can only be in one location each year, so how can we facilitate in-person connections in other regions? Regional UCA Conferences! These conferences will be organized and hosted by a local group or church. The goals:
Introduce the host group and their ministry to a wider audience.
Allow UCA members within a region to gather and connect, experiencing similar elements of the main conference.
A UCA conference, by design, is not a denominational event. It’s an opportunity to connect with people from various backgrounds and practices and to advance the truth of the simple monotheism of our Lord Jesus.
A Regional UCA Conference is a partnership. The host group coordinates the details of the event, location, food, schedule, etc., and the UCA helps to promote it broadly, sends at least one board member, provides registration tools, and helps cover the expenses so the event is affordable.
These conferences will have some of the same features of the main conference, like ample time to visit, at least one scholarly or biblical presentation that advances the movement, and at least one practical workshop. The host group arranges the other activities of the event. For example, they may include other classes, panel discussions, roundtables, brainstorming sessions, Q&A, possibly offering a unique regional experience, other ways to get to know the host group and their ministries, or ways to learn more about each other.
If your group is interested, write conference@unitarianchristianalliance.org. Stacey Berger, our Conference Coordinator, will provide more information and help with questions.
The Board of the Unitarian Christian Alliance is pleased to announce a general call for papers to be presented at the third annual UCA conference in Springfield, Ohio, October 19–21, 2023. (Watch this blog for the opening of registration.)
The submission deadline is the end of the day (U.S. Eastern Standard / New York time) of August 1, 2023.
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.
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, 2023. (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 Friday, August 15, 2023.
The UCA Board is pleased to announce that our third annual conference will be hosted again this year by the Lawrenceville Church of God in Springfield, Ohio! The venue is excellent and the hosts are gracious. Stay tuned for plans to expand the locations and reach of future conferences.
Registration will open in the coming weeks.
Check-in for the conference will begin at 4:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, October 19, 2023, and the conference will end with the last session after dinner on Saturday, October 21.
Last year, attendees had the opportunity to attend church on Sunday at one of the several unitarian Christian groups in the area. It was a positive experience for many, and it will be an option again this year.
If your unitarian group, ministry, etc. would benefit from an opportunity to gather in person (e.g. a board meeting), the host church has generously offered to make rooms available before the conference starts that Thursday. If your team is already coming to the conference, get some extra work done! Please contact us at conference@unitarianchristianaliance.org.
Watch this space for coming announcements about submitting a paper to be presented. The deadline for submissions will be August 1, 2023 (one month longer than last year).
In present day American culture Jesus has to a large extent become an empty, comic character, a guy who occasionally appears in a robe and sandals who seems nice and harmless, and who is often thoughtlessly co-opted for political gain. This is tragic. We applaud the He Gets Us campaign for highlighting the many noble and endearing human qualities of the Lord Jesus Christ. We agree with them that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), who is coming back to rule the world under God (1 Corinthians 15:12-28). Someday every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:11). Jesus cannot remain an irrelevance.
But the He Gets Us campaign virtually ignores the confused and confusing catholic traditions about the Lord Jesus being a “godman,” an eternal divine person mysteriously united to an impersonal human nature (body and soul), the Second “Person” of the Trinity. This they sum up all-too-briefly by saying that in their view Jesus is “fully God and fully man.”
These traditions clash with the Bible and urgently need to be reformed. The New Testament, rightly understood, does teach Jesus to be “fully man,” i.e. a real human being. But it doesn’t teach that he’s “fully God.” Rather, in the Bible, the Father alone is the one true God (John 17:1-3). And being “fully God” clashes with Jesus being a real man, and with his having some of the very qualities which so endear Jesus to us, such as his faith in God, his victory over real temptation, his cooperation with and empowerment by God, and his real death for us.
Truly, Jesus gets us – and this because he really is one of us, a real human being. To help you to see the real Jesus of the New Testament, clearly distinguishing him from his and our God (John 20:17), we’ve created some short new videos inspired by the work of “He Gets Us.” In them we show how the New Testament Jesus is “One of Us.”
In this insightful presentation from the 2022 Unitarian Christian Alliance conference, Anna Shoffner Brown explains a biblical perspective on the dignity and value of human nature. Proponents of speculations about Jesus having “two natures” have traditionally derided human-only christology as involving “a mere man.” She shows why this lazy accusation is wrongheaded.
Thank you UCA members for a great 2022! As the year ends, and you consider you charitable giving, would you prayerfully consider contributing to the UCA?
You can set any monthly or one time amount. We value all donations, including the proverbial widow’s mite. We give thanks for donations of $10/month or greater, by identifying you as a UCA Partner, who receives a free yearly gift from us, as well as a discount to our yearly conference.
And in December of 2022 and January of 2023 we have a generous benefactor, The Grace Fund, who will match your giving – so your monthly or one-time gift will have double the impact! Your $100 will become $200, or your monthly $10 will for the first year be multiplied to $20 a month. If God has blessed you financially and you would consider donating more, either once or monthly, this would be a great time to do it.
The Grace Fund, a charitable equity foundation serving as a multi-generational granting mechanism for unitarian Christian churches and ministries, has already donated generously to unitarian bible translation projects and other unitarian ministry efforts, and we’re all looking forward to watching how the Grace Fund continues to help unitarian Christian ministries do big things!
Thank you again to The Grace Fund for partnering with the UCA, and thank you to all of the UCA members. The year 2023 promises to be fruitful for the unitarian movement because of you!
Living Hope International Ministries (LHIM) is one unitarian Christian ministry with both a global vision and the diligence to bring it to life. A network of biblical unitarian churches and home fellowships, LHIM has passionately pursued Christ’s mandate to make disciples of all nations through its teaching, missions, publishing, and church-planting programs.
One of the most significant aspects of LHIM’s ministry is the wide variety of means by which it engages our world with the gospel, curating a range of educational content in the form of online classes, live-streams, recorded video series, podcasts, articles, and books (both in print and electronic).
From its headquarters in Latham, New York, USA, Pastor Sean Finnegan faithfully leads weekly church services, while large-scale community events welcome both LHIM members and also unitarian Christians from all backgrounds and denominations—countless families have been served by their annual Family Camp, Teen Camp, and Kingdom Fest (fantastic ways for unitarian groups and families to bond closer together and also to meet new like-minded believers!). LHIM also supports local fellowships in the U.S. (in the home and/or online), as well as global communities of unitarian Christian believers. Of special note is LHIM’s progress on the African continent. In the Congo, for example, LHIM directly supports local ministers and coordinates an educational program for children.
How can you get connected to the incredible work that LHIM is doing for the message of the one God and his human son? LHIM’s resources include the Living Hope Webcasts (live-streamed church services), Weekly Bible Teachings, free online classes on a variety of biblical topics—all of which can be delivered to you via email updates so you don’t miss out on new content (sign up here: https://lhim.org/email-updates/).
If you’d like to meet some of the invaluable talent behind LHIM’s efforts, including Pastor Sean Finnegan and Anna Brown (LHIM marketing and publishing), stop by their booth at the UCA Conference. You’ll also get to hear both Pastor Finnegan and Mrs. Brown speak on historical and theological topics related to unitarian Christianity during our Main Sessions at the conference!
A tremendous Thank Youto Living Hope International Ministries for both partnering with the UCA’s 2022 Conference and for standing alongside the UCA and its members to share the unitarian Christian message far and wide!
Another Partner of the Unitarian Christian Alliance and a much-appreciated sponsor of the 2022 UCA Conference is YahwehTV!
YahwehTV is an exciting new unitarian Christian streaming platform currently in development by long-time biblical unitarian activist and friend of the UCA, Gary R. Anderson. The channel will be accepting content submissions from unitarian churches and ministries in order to support its mission to spread the unitarian Christian message to the world. Those familiar with the UCA’s own mission will understand why we are all excited about Gary’s vision of a 24/7 channel constantly showcasing the best unitarian Christian content online!
While at the UCA Conference this year, be sure to stop by and see Gary, who would love to gather interviews with conference-goers! We can’t wait to see where God takes Yahweh TV in the coming years. The channel is currently in development and is now preparing to expand to various streaming outlets. Be on the lookout for future announcements related to this exciting project!
We’d like to thank Gary also for his efforts with The Grace Fund, a charitable equity foundation serving as a multi-generational granting mechanism for unitarian Christian churches and ministries. TGF has already donated generously to unitarian bible translation projects and other unitarian ministry efforts, and we’re all looking forward to watching how the Grace Fund continues to help unitarian Christian ministries do big things!
Thank you again to Yahweh TV and The Grace Fund for partnering with the UCA to facilitate this year’s conference!
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