BBC listeners hear that unity is “in our DNA”

Forty years of “life with unity” within the United Reformed Church was offered as an encouragement to Christians of other traditions, during Sunday Worship live on BBC Radio Four. The Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe, Moderator of the URC’s General Assembly, led the service, marking the 40th anniversary of the coming together of Congregationalists and Presbyterians in England and Wales to form the URC.

She told the congregation and radio listeners that unity had become part of the Church’s  DNA.

This year is also the 350th anniversary of the passing, in 1662, of the Act of Uniformity, and what became known as “The Great Ejectment”. Kirsty Thorpe said that when the Act had been passed “everyone who had got used to saying publicly what they thought about religious matters had to shut-up or get out.”

Around 2000 independent-minded ministers left parish churches and sowed the seeds from which many of the oldest Baptist, Congregational and Presbyterian churches were born. However, the URC and the Church of England had this year re-committed themselves to working alongside one another in a service of reconciliation at Westminster Abbey.

She added: “What matters to people around us is not why Churches may have fallen out with one another centuries ago, but what interest contemporary Christians have in the communities where they are now placed.”

The service was broadcast on Sunday 19 February from Wilmslow United Reformed Church, where Kirsty Thorpe is minister. The church choir, members of the congregation, and some of the children of the church, also took part. The Director of Music was Cliff Crewe and the organist Richard Brocklehurst.

You can hear the service for seven days via the BBC website www.bbc.co.uk