Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity

Read Gretta Vosper's address at the inaugural meeting of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity, Nov. 6, 2004.

We come to this moment in time, called by a very long list of voices, and it has been many, many years, decades, even centuries, that those voices have been calling us.  We have been urged here by those who have been examining scripture for years and finding that its origins, together with the contradictions and repetitions within it must explain it as the construction of human minds, the work of human hands.  We have been called here by those who noted that the defence of a document's truth cannot be found exclusively within itself.  We have been called by those who have sifted through the sands of the Middle East, eager to find some kind of proof for the burden of both testaments, and finding, once those sands have filtered through their fingers, few grains of fact remaining.  We have been called by those whose questions about the nature of reality we could not answer or, if we could, our answers held no meaning for them.  We have been called by those who have found too many of the Bible's moral messages, in the light of the call to love one's neighbour, worse than irrelevant, but actually life denying.  We have been called by those who were excommunicated from the established church for thinking outside the church's interpretation of faith, for daring to confront, to argue, to think daringly, and to act bravely.  We have been called by those who, outside of our version of Christian legitimacy, have still lived out the values of love and justice, compassion and forgiveness.  We have been called time and again to meet their challenges, and even when we have listened, too often we have shied away.

Listen to this particular call:

"I suspect that we stand on the brink of a period in which it is going to become increasingly difficult to know what the true defence of Christian truth requires.  There are always those … who see the best, and indeed the only, defence of doctrine to lie in the firm reiteration, in fresh and intelligent contemporary language, of "the faith once delivered to the saints."  And the Church has not lacked in recent years theologians and apologists who have given themselves to this task.  Their work has been rewarded by a hungry following, and there will always be need of more of them.  Nothing that I go on to say should be taken to deny their indispensable vocation.

"At the same time, I believe we are being called, over the years ahead, to far more than a restating of traditional orthodoxy in modern terms.  Indeed, if our defence of the Faith is limited to this, we shall find in all likelihood that we have lost out to all but a tiny religious remnant.  A much more radical recasting, I would judge, is demanded, in the process of which the most fundamental categories of our theology - of God, of the supernatural, and of religion itself - must go into the melting.  Indeed, though we shall not of course be able to do it, I can at least understand what those mean who urge that we should do well to give up using the word "God" for a generation, so impregnated has it become with a way of thinking we may have to discard it if the Gospel is to signify anything."

These words were penned in 1962 as the preface for the small but enormously provocative book, Honest to God, by John A. T. Robinson.  Robinson was the Bishop of Woolwich in South London when he wrote his book, provoked by the ideas of Paul Tillich.  Robinson's words came as freshness upon a bleak and sterile ecclesial back-drop to the many who wished to see his challenge accepted by the church - those passionate about what the church might be and what it could do in a world filled with conflict and strife.  He was vilified for his vision and his challenge to organized Christianity.  Yet he ended the preface of his groundbreaking book with this line:  "The one thing of which I am fairly sure is that, in retrospect, [my words] will be seen to have erred in not being nearly radical enough."

And, those heartened by Robinson, too, have called to us and continue to do so.

Robert Funk founded the Westar Institute in 1986, as an advocate for religious literacy.  It flung wide the doors of academia so that the public could access the quest for the historical Jesus, trying to discover who the man really was who is said to have started all this and what he might have been really been intending to do.  That quest has been engaged in by scholars such as John Dominique Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Karen Armstrong.

Others have sought to understand our faith from a different perspective. They have called to us to consider that the concept of Kristos, a rich and deep expression of the longing for a just and peace-filled world, existed long before it was embedded in the stories of the life of a man remembered as Jesus of Nazareth.  The works of Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, recently remembered to us by Tom Harpur, and those of Susan Adams and John Salmon, these works, these voices, too, call us to this place today.

Brian Swimme and Matthew Fox, for over twenty years, have been calling us to cast aside ecclesial depictions of life as a debased and transitory journey toward everlasting pleasures or tortures, and to see creation, including our human bodies, as a thing of wonder and beauty.  Carter Heyward opens our eyes to equity issues and calls our hearts to recognize that it is God lurching in our stomaches when injustice causes us despair and rage.

Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, argues that human thinking influences our understanding of God, and therefore even the original writers of Scripture. His book, Doubts and Loves, proposes that the ordination of women picked at the fabric of biblical inerrancy and was perhaps what pulled out that first stitch, thus beginning the unravelling of that previously perfect, seamless garment.

In 2002, Andrew Furlong, a priest in Ireland, came before an ancient tradition, in the form of a heresy trial, for making this same call to us.  His resignation, personal preservation from a frightened church, is also a call to us.

Don Cuppitt has bravely and profoundly called to us from many points in his developing understanding of religion, challenging us to make dramatic but deeply liberating and healing changes in our concepts, our wording, our practices.  Lloyd Geering, even into his late 80's continues to provoke us with his insights into the development of Christianity and the world in which we live, calling for honest, open scholarship.  Calls to integrity come from James Barr, David Boulton, Burton Mack, John Cobb and many others.

Jim Adams, throughout his ministry at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capital Hill in Washington, brought practical reality to the words being penned by scholars, building the faith community on progressive principles of Christianity.  And Bishop John Shelby Spong, first recipient of the Westar Institute's "John A. T. Robinson Award" for his unrelenting honesty in both spoken and written word, in the face of the massively difficult ecclesial and social issues presented to the church, continues his call to us this evening.

Over forty years of scholarship and argument later, we cannot shrink from Robinson's vision.  We, too, must look at it directly and rise to his challenge, recasting our understanding of Christianity, examining the structures that have supported it, clearing away those things that would keep us from seeing it clearly; for it's time to step more and more boldly into the realities of this world as we experience them, to open ourselves to an honest critique of our Christian heritage, and to expose ourselves to the light of new understandings that so many have placed before us. It's time.

We see all human beings as having a spiritual dimension to their lives.  And it is within that dimension that we interact with that which we would call the Spirit, the Ground of all Being, the Divine.  When we have constructed dogma about the divine and created rituals with which to relate to it, we have called it "religion."  Religion seems to be mandated by our peculiar human need to make sense of our world.  And so we construct our institutions and traditions, for our time, and according to beliefs, as we understand them.  But it does not and cannot stand that one generation's idea of the appropriate approach to their particular concept of the Divine must hold for the next generation.  Just as every other field of knowledge and wisdom has changed as we have learned, our faith communities have not only the freedom, but the supremely important responsibility to work at our message and our expression of it - to align and realign it with the best, the highest, the healthiest vision we can develop of the sacredness of life, the sacredness of community.  We, too, must take up that task and work to create a world in which each person's right to find their own way is honoured, whether it involves ancient or contemporary rituals or traditions, religious or secular means, and we challenge ourselves to be open to new understandings of the Divine as they are made known to us.

The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity has been created to help us, you and me, meet the challenges that our world presents us.

For generations, working within the confines of traditional Christianity, whether as lay leaders or as ordered ministry personnel, has meant operating in a language of faith that grew out of beautifully rich belief system - a religion known and celebrated through millennia.  The exquisite nature of that language of faith, be it music, prayer, imagery, ritual, art, has brought untold comfort and security to a vast host of believers.  For that reason, it has become very powerful.

However, there exists another vast host of people who searched for meaning in the midst of a chaotic world, who struggled, but failed to embrace the things Christian authorities called "truth," for whom healing and a truth they can embrace may yet be distant from them.  For these people, the view of history held by the church and the language that was intended to bring stability, beauty, and understanding, has been a strong and inviolable barrier to Christianity and its communities of faith.  Even though we on the inside may have derived a certain amount of comfort in glossing over discrepancies, sticking with familiar, if no-longer-believed statements of faith, and trying to explain the peculiar words and requirements to newcomers - I believe, it is no longer helpful or healthful for us to continue to do so. If we are to be an influence for good, for comfort, for strength, for growth, we must use the language of those who come to us, not require that they come to understand ours. It's time.

I am not talking about calling the sanctuary "the Celebration Room" or the narthex "the lobby."  I'm not talking just about inclusive language.  I'm referring to letting go of words and statements and concepts that reiterate dogma we do not any longer, or maybe never did truly believe ourselves, let alone require that others do so.  I'm referring to a conscientious clearing of the house of faith of language that suggests salvation from hell in return for a belief in the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins.  I'm talking about being willing to give up singing hymns - no matter how dear to our hearts - that reiterate that bargain and celebrate Christianity's march across the world, bringing light to all the nations.  I'm urging us to carefully, reverently, stop referring to God as someone who directs or does not direct us, grants or does not grant our requests, saves or does not save a loved one from harm for reasons he or she may choose but that we, most certainly will not understand, yet must accept as evidence of God's wisdom, power, and love.  And I'm suggesting that we boldly, comfortably, write our own sacred wisdom, gleaning from Scripture all that is life-enhancing, but none that is not - and stretching ourselves to discover new expressions of the Spirit, new challenges to our community.  We need to be ruthlessly honest, to state who we are, what we believe or don't, what we don't yet understand, and work together to discover new ways to find meaning in the world, new strength to engage its too inhumane systems, new joy in the experience that we call life.

We have much on which to build.  We hold deeply sacred beliefs about the value of life.  We hold deeply sacred beliefs about the value of community.  We hold deeply sacred beliefs about our responsibility for each other.  None of these will be left behind.  And if, for some of us, this talk is still about stepping into the unknown, then I believe we will find, as Overton says, that there will be ground beneath our feet or we will have wings to fly.  It's time.

Over the course of the next few months, and years, we hope to be able to provide, through our website and, perhaps, publications, accessible tools for use in study, worship and community leadership.  We hope to inspire congregational leaders to let go of their traditional liturgy, or traditional liturgy restated in post-modern language, and to reach within themselves to the core of their being from which can well up incredibly rich and fresh language, imagery, poetry, music.  It will not be easy - many of us have become numb to our own creative instincts - but it is an essential one.

There are so many points in our lives that touch the spiritual realm.  We look to the spiritual to gain strength, to evaluate our lives and refocus on those things we want to place at the centre of them as important, to recognize and give thanks for those who have touched us and brought clarity or peace to our souls, to reconnect with that which is precious to us-to name it sacred, holy.  I speak of birth, coming of age, declarations of love and commitment, the changes inherent in the passing of years, the end of life, as we know it.  We hope to be able to provide resources that will add to those points in ways that dignify our common search and celebrate life's holy moments.

And we hope to offer study resources and ideas for those of you who may yet, for some time, search for and not find, communities of faith that speak a language that is open to your thought, your spiritual quest, your experience of the Divine.  Those resources will encourage critical thinking, the gathering together of groups and the formation of communities that can engage in conversation about the big things, issues that matter-values, meaning, relationships-the things we call "of the Spirit."

In many communities of faith, the guiding light has been some form of church authority, based on literal or metaphorical Scripture, accepted traditional formulas, or official pronouncements.  May we now look to the only light that can guide us into the freedom of faith and the privilege of responsibility - the truth revealed to us in the light of love.  May we see and know that spirit within us, may it shine forth in us, and from us.

(Solo: "The Light of Love" by Scott Kearns, 2004)

There is purpose to our work.  Our world calls us to it.  The earth, so filled with beauty, with gifts of peace and delight, is also filled with misery, with violence, with a futile busyness that steals our time to feel and to care.  Were we to look, we would find in every corner, even in our own homes, places where love is needed in much, much greater quantities than it is ever found.

If we are convinced of the profound significance of each person as an infinitely precious being, and I believe that we can only be convinced of such a thing, we must then dream and plan and work toward positive change to enhance the well being of self, others, and the whole of creation - to be intentional about building love into all those corners of despair.

To encourage the ongoing search for understanding and relevance for our lives, both personal and communal, we will seek out and share resources that challenge us to think, to ask questions, to value spiritual insight.  Reflection can be prompted through many means - contemporary and ancient, familiar and unfamiliar - art, music, nature, literature, and humanitarian effort.

Because we have a vision of peace that cannot be brought about through violence and strength but only justice and compassion, the communities we seek to support and build need to strive to identify and resist injustice in all the places of hurt in the world.  This includes de-humanizing and oppressive conditions, structures, attitudes, messages, and ideas, even when those structures, those ideas have been our own. We must work to create, recognize, celebrate and support conditions that enhance equity, preserve dignity and respect individuality.

The life of faith is seen as a journey comprised of ever-new experiences and understandings of self, others, the world, and the divine.  Everyone is on his or her own journey.  They will make their own choices of resources, discover their own pace, and hold their own understandings of things spiritual.  And though there may be times when we believe we are alone, this is not so, for we journey together in the spirit of divine love.