Richard Boeke and Imaoka Shin’ichiro-sensei — making a further connection with “a free-and inquiring religion,” the yeast that lies at the heart of the British Unitarian movement’s objects

Budapesti Unitárius Egyházközség, Belváros — Egy Az Isten, ‘One is God.’

The Revd Dr Richard Boeke was personally very kind to me on the first occasion I met him at a British General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches shortly after I had been accepted to train for the ministry in 1997. He took time to talk to me because he enjoyed the morning service I had been asked to conduct as one of the new intake of ministerial trainees.

Anyway, it was in this conversation with him that I first heard mention of the figure who, since then, has become for me the most important spiritual and religious influence in my own life as a Unitarian minister, namely, Imaoka Shinichirō-sensei (see links at the end of this post).

Richard got to know Imaoka-sensei in the early 1960s through their shared work in the International Association for Religious Freedom, and were especially connected with a shared desire to transform that organization into the International Association for Free Religion. Alas, this is a dream that has not yet been realized, but under the presidency of George Williams (who also knew Imaoka-sensei and is a friend of Richard’s), perhaps, just perhaps, it will happen one day soon. If you want a glimpse of the current vision and possibility, then please take the time to watch the following video:

Now, in my various bits of background research to accompany my own work translating Imaoka-sensei’s book of essays from 1981, “One Hundred Years of Life” (Jinsei hyakunen 人生百年), I have just come across an online copy of Richard’s 2007 book of sermons, “God is No Thing,” published by the Horsham Unitarian Church in the UK, and in it there are a few passages that mention Imaoka-sensei.

I reproduce them here, primarily, of course, because they are interesting to me and, secondly, because they may be interesting to those keen to find out more about Imaoka-sensei’s wider influence. 

But, I confess, I also reproduce them here because I have experienced from a few British Unitarians a very strange reluctance to consider and engage with Imaoka’s ideas and example because they are perceived to be somehow alien — both alien in the sense of “being foreign” to the British experience and also “not properly Unitarian.” In turn, this has occasionally meant my own work on, and passion for, exploring and sharing Imaoka’s thought with my own congregation and more widely through this blog, has sometimes been described as simply being a personal “hobby” that has nothing to do with my role as a Unitarian minister. However, I hope that the following words about Imaoka-sensei, written by an eminent, senior Unitarian figure who, although an American minister, has also served for many years in the UK (including one summer at Cambridge in 1981) will help reassure anyone who needs reassuring that, far from being merely a personal “hobby,” the ideas Imaoka-sensei tried to promote, and which I am trying to share through translations of his unpublished essays, are ones central to the kind of  “free-and inquiring religion” — the yeast, as our Chief Officer, Liz Slade, puts it — that lies at the heart of the British Unitarian movement’s objects.

On p. 31, in a sermon called “Spiritual Journey”, given to the Horsham Unitarian Church, Richard writes:

“In Japan [in 1962], I climbed Mt. Fuji, made a pilgrimage to Hiroshima, and was blessed by Dr. Shinichiro Imaoka. Dr. Imaoka lived to be 106. He inspired Buddhist and Shinto commitment to interfaith friendship. Some called him a living Buddha.”

On p. 58, in a sermon called “The Oneness Church,” Richard writes that Imaoka-sensei

“ . . . called his little Unitarian Church in Tokyo, THE ONENESS CHURCH [Kiitsu Kyōkai 帰一教會]. It was not a church worshipping a solitary God in the sky. His church celebrated our human connection with the whole universe. His church saw the Holy as worshipped in Shinto Shrines & Buddhist Temples: the interdependence of all things. To me, as to Dr. Imaoka, Unitarian is not the worship of the ‘Father’ instead of the ‘Trinity.’ To be a Unitarian is to discover the ‘Spirit’ in all things. It is to sense the ‘Oneness’ of Reality. To affirm with William Ellery Channing: ‘I am a member of the great Church of All Souls, from which no one may be excluded, save by the death of goodness in his own breast.’”

And, in a sermon called “Towards Oneness,” again given to the Horsham Unitarian Church, Richard writes (p. 65):

“In 1962, before some of you were born, I met Dr Shinichiro Imaoka, a Japanese Unitarian minister who lived to be 106 years old. His tiny congregation could not pay him enough to support his family. He started teaching school.

He became Principal of a Boy’s School in Tokyo.... On Sundays the Congregation met in the School Hall. They called it . . . the Oneness Church [Kiitsu Kyōkai 帰一教會]. In his daily meditation, Dr. Imaoka sensed a universal reality within all life and all religions. His faith was not bound by dogma. He called it “Free Religion.” On school holidays he would visit Buddhist Associations and Shinto Shrines. He led in bringing several of them together in the FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION, and then into the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF), which remains in Japanese, Imaoka's words, ‘the International Association for Free Religion.’  

To me, our Unitarian Church is the Oneness Church. Not One God in some far off heaven: But the sense of oneness in all existence. In Transylvania, over the door of every Unitarian Church are the words, Egy Az Isten, ‘One is God.’”

—o0o—

You can find out more about Imaoka Shinichirō-sensei and his thinking at the following links:

Jiyū Shūkyō — A creative, free spirituality

Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei’s (1881-1988) “My Principles of Living (revised)” (1973), two, important, associated essays, and one the last iterations of his “Principles of Living” (1981)

The Purpose of Tokyo Kiitsu Kyōkai by Imaoka Shin'ichirō (September 1950, “Creation” [創造], Issue No. 1)