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 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.”
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!
If you were thinking of registering, the time is now. On Sept. 30th the catering order goes in, so we need accurate numbers. That’s only a few days away.
So what can you expect? The longer…and funner(?)…answer is on UCA podcast episode 60, Pre-UCA Conference 2022 Roundtable (below). But here’s the purpose in short form:
Connect with other unitarian Christians
Present academic papers to advance the unitarian case
Share practical knowledge to empower each other’s ministries
It’s shaping up to be a great event. Your feedback from last year’s conference was excellent. It inspired this year’s workshops, the meetups, and a unique program for the closing night plenary session.
If you’ve registered, be sure to download the Eventleaf app to your mobile device and sign in. If you can’t make it this year, follow @UnitarianChrist on Twitter (the official UCA account) and watch for hashtag #UCAcon2022. We’ll have “live” updates and posts throughout the weekend.
We’re excited to see many of you again, and many of you for the first time!
Here’s the roundtable discussion skipped ahead to where we start talking (02:44).
Today’s UCA podcast roundtable is about next month’s conference (schedule here), and it’s brimming with information. Anna Brown, Jake Ballard, and I discuss:
The paper review process
Paper topics listed and discussed
Q&A time information
Affordances of the larger venue
Workshop topics (will run parallel to paper presentations)
Evening plenary sessions
Meetup topics for Friday afternoon
The available baptistry and debate training on Saturday afternoon
There’s more in store than just the UCA Conference!
Gather Your Team
Arrive early on Thursday with your team or committee and use the building to get some work done, in person! Then enjoy the weekend as a reward for your hard work. Email conference@unitarianchristianalliance.org if you would like a space.
Pre-party at “The Abbey”
Also arrive early and drop in at “The Abbey” for the UCA Pre-party, Oct. 13, noon to 5pm. It’s a mile up the road at an 1865 schoolhouse turned church and then turned house. Take in some singing, refreshments, and joy. Alan Cain shows you around in the video below. Fun!
Evening Visits
Gather with others after the evening meeting (ending around 8:30). There are restaurants, a brewery downtown, and plenty of space to just hang out and get to know others.
Baptistry
There is also a baptistry available Saturday afternoon for any who want to use it.
So many good memories here, so many lovely Christ-followers! Will we see you at the UCA Conference this year?
Our venue is better and bigger than last year, but we anticipate that we may fill it up! So don’t delay; you can register now here.
This year we’ll have informative, cutting-edge presentations like last year, but we’ll also have less-theoretical offerings in the form of hands-on workshops and meet-ups. But it won’t be the same without you.
