In many ways the experience has been like that of someone drowning, reaching the surface of the water, and getting that first glorious gasp of sweet fresh air. It has also been like that experience in that as you surface you become acutely aware that it is cold and you are still in danger.
What I miss is the fellowship, the singing and the sense of belonging; what I do not miss is what they call 'bible-based' teaching. This style of teaching tends to focus on literal interpretation of biblical texts with statements made supported by little proof-texts. The problem I have with this is that it supports a limited and selective understanding of the bible. Nothing is made of the variations amongst the gospels; nothing is made of the unpalatable parts of the Old Testament (cf. The apocryphal Letter to Dr Laura).
I have come to realise that the predominant form of the church today is like a bus. All the passengers are happy singing and praising, but a very large rear vision mirror obscures their view and that of the driver. This is a view which hankers back to a simpler time, when Jesus walked on the Earth, or at least when �everyone� in the known world believed in much the same thing.
The problem as I see it is that they have built their faith not on the evidence but on the premise of biblical inerrancy. The understanding that God is the God of science, of evolution, and of reason, not the God of a two to three thousand year old book seems to elude them. The bible is itself evidence of the evolution of the faith traditions that underpin Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. However, to insist that this is God�s final word is to deny God new revelations. It is like saying that God is dead.
Of course this makes the argument appear polarized. While there are some who fervently believe that this argument is black or white, right or wrong, yes or no, good or evil, I understand it as a range of belief. I believe that many who go to church willingly set aside their everyday knowledge of how the world is when Sunday comes around. Without actually explicitly believing in modern science and modern philosophy, most people operate according to this paradigm in their daily lives. On Sundays, however, they leave this everyday knowledge at the door of the church and believe in biblical inerrancy � creation legends, virgin birth and the rest of traditional beliefs. This compartmentalisation is actually quite easy to do, as it does not make a fundamental difference to what we do every day.
I feel that my minister had taken a position on the side of the conservative, evangelical �pillars of the church� and had rejected the academic and progressive theology of his training at UTC. His understanding of my at the time tentative progressive theology was that of a �lack of faith,� a common enough accusation or dismissal that Evangelicals use for those who question their belief in biblical inerrancy. The congregation was predominantly Evangelical. They are lovely people, but they cling together at the Stage Three level of faith (Fowler, 1981), singing happy songs of praise from such organizations as Hillsong. This, to my way of thinking, is a very attractive source of middle-class, individual wealth and individual salvation �churchianity.�
I would go so far as to say that the majority of worshippers at the Parish Centre services are happy with this, without being aware of alternatives. Evangelical beliefs can be shared proudly; progressive faith is faced with embarrassment. Just like talk about sex or masturbation, progressive faith should be kept to one�s self or only between consenting adults in private.
Why should I care about this? Why should I not keep my faith and tolerate the faith of others?
I was prepared to do that, but when I raised this with my minister he slammed the door in my face, metaphorically. I had asked if I could call for expressions of interest in forming a progressive faith small group; �I will not allow any study of Bishop Spong in my church,� was his answer.
While no-one in the organising committee of the Parish Centre services would call themselves fundamentalists, just like those in Niagara in 1895, or those who crafted the Chicago Statement of 1975, the general beliefs can be reduced to five: (1) the inspiration and what the writers call infallibility of Scripture, (2) the deity of Christ (including his virgin birth), (3) the substitutionary atonement of his death, (4) his literal resurrection from the dead, and (5) his literal return at the Second Coming.
My problem is that from all my study since being shown the door, I reject every one of those �fundamentals.�
In some ways I should thank my minister for, unwittingly, forcing me to move into stage 4 of faith development. However, it has not been a comfortable transition.
I now think that the �God� I used to worship is nothing more or less than a human construct. Any �God� that we can conceive is not God. And this even applies to the �Abba-Father� God that Jesus is supposed to have conceived. The monotheistic big three, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, seem locked into a patriarchal theistic God, with only a few fringe dwellers and academics considering alternative conceptions. Buddhism does not articulate an all-powerful creator, while Hinduism recognises lots of Gods, but with an unknowable Brahmin. Don Cupitt and Lloyd Geering provide something that, at present, attracts me. What we call �God� is the ultimate Unity of All Being, which I recognize in every human being as a manifestation of the Divine. Call it �Life� or �Love� but not an �up-there� father figure.
In 1980 Don Cupitt, Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, published Taking Leave of God, described as �a resumption of the discussion about the nature of God begun by John Robinson (in his seminal book Honest to God) and shelved for too long�. Taking his title from a sermon by the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, who said that �Man's last and highest parting occurs when, for God's sake, he takes leave of God�, Cupitt argued that �an objective metaphysical God is no longer either intellectually secure nor even morally satisfactory as a basis for spiritual life�. Instead, �faith in God must be understood as expressing an autonomous decision to pursue the religious ideal for its own sake�. Theological realism - belief in an objectively �real� God, somehow outside and independent of human consciousness - had to be replaced by a free, agnostic faith - with no certainties and no guarantees.
An intellectually sound reading of the bible reveals it as a series of books written almost exclusively by men (if not entirely) which records the evolution (that �word� again) of firstly the Hebrew and, secondly, the Christian faith story. A reading of The Bible Unearthed (Finkelstein & Silberman, 2001) gives an interesting twist to many of the views of scholars over the years, using new archaeological research to interpret Israel�s sacred texts. Whereas many previous scholars attempted to make the archaeology fit the Hebrew Scriptures, current scholars are working from the evidence to see where the Scriptures fit. The results would probably surprise, even shock many current congregations. Yet I feel that their initial surprise could be replaced with a more mature faith given good teaching.
While those who wrote the different books were �Godly� men, they were also very human. They wrote for a particular audience in a particular time and place. As Finkelstein and Silberman show, much of the Hebrew Scriptures were most likely to have been written during the reign of Judean king Josiah, with a purpose of showing why he was chosen by God to rule over a united kingdom based on Jerusalem. Stirring stuff indeed.
Regarding the divinity of Jesus (point 2 of the �fundamentals�) I see the historical Jesus as fully human, a great teacher, probably an apocalyptic prophet, who was put to death by the Roman authorities, probably with complicity from the Temple sect, for political dissent. Somewhere in Palestine there is probably an unmarked burial site that contains his bones. His resurrection was and is metaphoric, not literal, but no less real for that. If, as literalists maintain, Jesus rose into Heaven, to quote Spong he could only have gone into orbit.
Similarly, the stories of his birth, flight into Egypt, childhood, etc., are more likely to be a political challenge to the divinity claims of the Emperor, and attempts to link Jesus to the fabric of stories in scriptures of the patriarchs. We need to remember that the great majority of Jews and early followers of Jesus were not literate, and that the only place they heard scripture was during synagogue worship. Spong makes a good case for the gospels to have been Midrashim, as they would have been read during worship after the lection Hebrew Scriptures. What better way to show fellow Jews that Jesus was the Messiah than to make parallels with the faith story of the Jewish nation? So, I suggest that the purpose of the Gospels was both as liturgy and as �proof� that Jesus was the longed for king � messiah, which becomes Christ when translated into Greek. Eyewitness accounts of history � I don�t think so.
I seriously doubt that Jesus would recognise, much less approve, many of the things which have gone on in his name, or which he is purported to have said. Society has civilised religion, rather than the other way around. Christianity became the continuation of the Roman Empire, with the Pope the new Emperor. The protestant and reformed traditions have merely replaced the Pope with �The Bible� as the graven image.
Another way in which Jesus� story has been lost is even in his name. Jesus is the Greek translation of Jeshua or Joshua. Surely this is another example of the way in which the story of Jesus was continually being tied back to a golden age. However, I will continue with the tradition and use �Jesus� as my way into relationship with God, one of many ways.
Like Albert Schweitzer, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus went to his death on the Cross, with the hope that this would force God�s hand to usher in the promised Kingdom of God that was central to Jesus� preaching and teaching. Not only that, I believe that we continue to get glimpses of the Kingdom whenever we do something for the marginalised. The successes of the women�s movement, integration, Houses of Welcome for refugees, and increasing acceptance of those with alternative sexuality are examples of the Kingdom breaking through. Refusal to allow the ordination of women, refugee detention centres � concentration camps, racial discrimination, rejection of homosexuality, are examples of where the kingdom is slipping away.
Another way in which �fundagelicals� are continuing the tradition of emphasising the Christ over the actual story of Jesus is in the belief of the substitutionary atonement of his death (Point 3). This links the Jewish Passover festival that forms the basis of when we celebrate Easter, with Yom Kippur, the point in the Jewish calendar in which a young goat or lamb was ceremonially loaded with everyone�s sins, then had its throat slashed ritually, and was driven out into the desert to die, taking the people�s sins with it. This additional interpretation of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb, without stain, taking on the sins of the world has had a lasting effect on the Christian faith. It is the only faith that has such a deep-seated focus on human worthlessness. Augustine and Calvin have a lot to answer for here, particularly in linking sex with sin.
This focus on our sinfulness and worthlessness means that to fundagelicals it is particularly important to utter the name �Jee-suss� to be �saved.� To a modern thinker it is plain that Christianity is but one path to the ultimate reality; all religions are human constructs that speak of different cultures� ways of interpreting communion with the ultimate reality. The trouble is, particularly with the three monotheisms, their acolytes tend to think that theirs is the only true way.
So I �fundamentally� reject the whole notion of Jesus� death as atonement for my sins, or for the sins of anyone else. He did not die so that God would accept me into an up-there Heaven after my death; the notion of an immortal soul is a product of Greek philosophy, it is not found in the bible. If anything, my life force will go back into the Ultimate Reality on my death; I am not expecting to be finding any Pearly Gates. Neither am I expecting any purgatory or hell fires; I believe that when I die there is no other reality or consciousness. For that reason I believe that we should be doing what we can to ensure that the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached should be our driving force for the here and now. That is why I agitate for human rights, for the proper treatment of refugees, for better race relations and for greater support for the poor and needy. That is why I support public education, equality for women, parents� rights, child protection, gay rights and the like. I am not expecting the �rapture� and I do not see the tsunami or other natural disasters as punishment for sin. I believe that these disasters are part of the natural order, which makes me something of a deist, and they are times when we are called to do as Jesus would do � help the sick and the needy, not preach at them. Nor try to �convert� them.
I see nothing in the bible that presages a second coming. The notion that what is in the book of Revelations is going to happen soon and that we have to suffer the �tribulations�, or that it will happen when all the Jews are back in their �homeland� is nonsense. The �beast� was Rome; the destruction took place in 70 C.E. The only thing we can say about the future is that it is in our hands; unless we do something about our wanton waste and destruction of resources and habitat, about addressing the growing gap between rich and poor � both individual and national, and our tribal and national bigotry, then our future is bleak.
I argue that fundagelicals trivialise progressive Christians as only interested in social justice, and that progressives are not concerned about being �saved.� Instead, I believe that it is essential that those in the pews should be made aware that the matter of individual salvation is a useful distraction of those who hold the power, wealth and position to keep those without from agitating for a fairer share if they can believe that they will be rewarded in the afterlife. It worked for the Roman Empire, and for the Holy Roman Empire, and it is working across the world today; the rich and fatuous have an even greater stranglehold on wealth. Poor nations are starving because they struggle to produce cash crops that are sold at subsistence level prices to wealthy nations for conspicuous consumption � coffee and chocolate are two glaring examples. But so are illicit drugs � opium, heroin and cocaine are produced in poor countries for consumption in wealthy countries.
Human rights abuses, pre-emptive wars against �terror�, are symptoms that can only be addressed by those who have gone beyond a tribal loyalty. And it is my argument that stage 3 faiths are marked by this tribal loyalty. Only when people of all faiths have grown to a position where they are projecting the cause of righteousness out into the world, instead of merely propping one another up in a private worship circle can we say we have anything like �Peace on Earth� or the kingdom of God?
The Stages Of Faith
James Fowler proposes six stages of faith that relate closely to Kohlberg�s moral developmental stages and that include, as well, �cognitive, affective and behavioural elements of religious development at different life stages� (Kelly, 1995, p. 71).
In the first three stages of faith development, individuals in one way or another rely on some authority outside themselves for spiritual beliefs.
* Young children, during the first stage of faith (intuitive-projective), follow the beliefs of their parents. They tend to imagine or fantasize angels or other religious figures in stories as characters in fairy tales.
* In the second stage of faith (mythical-literal), children tend to respond to religious stories and rituals literally, rather than symbolically as individuals move through adolescence to young adulthood, their beliefs continue to be based on authority focused outside themselves.
* In this third stage of faith (synthetic-conventional), individuals tend to have conformist acceptance of a belief with little self-reflection on examination of these beliefs. Most people remain at this level (Fowler, 1981; Kelly, 1995).
* Those individuals who move to the fourth stage of faith (individuative-reflective) begin a radical shift from dependence on others� spiritual beliefs to development of their own.
Fowler (1981) says, "For a genuine move to stage 4 to occur there must be an interruption of reliance on external sources of authority ... There must be ... a relocation of authority within the self" (p. 179). Individuals are no longer defined by the groups to which they belong. Instead, they choose beliefs, values, and relationships important to their self-fulfilment.
* In the fifth stage of faith (conjunctive), persons still rely on their own views but move from self-preoccupation or from dependence on fixed truths to acceptance of others� points of view they tend to be more tolerant and begin to consider serving others.
* Individuals who move to the sixth and last stage of faith (universalizing) are rare. As older adults, they begin to search for universal values, such as unconditional love and justice.
Self-preservation becomes irrelevant. Mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi are examples of people in this form of spiritual development (Fowler, 1981).
As I noted earlier, I believe that my confrontation with my minister forced me into a situation where I could not accept the external authority. The self-preoccupation that has been a part of this has not been good for my health; depression and loneliness have troubled me. Pride and stubbornness has hindered me from going back into the worship group that I miss so much. I had been able to laugh at the silliness of the Hillsong music (�Touching Heaven � Changing Earth� or �The Darling of Heaven Crucified�) and still get strength from the worship � if not some of the teaching.
Andrew Pritchard (Reality Magazine, Issue 33) warns, �Stage 4 people may challenge or question accepted group practices or traditions. The enthusiastic expression of their newly discovered critical faculties is easily misinterpreted as rebelliousness or undermining of unity and authority, rather than as evidence of healthy growth.
�Stage 4 is often marked by polarisation. Stage 4 Christians may see things in very black and white categories. Having discovered clearly what they do believe, they also see clearly what they don't believe.
�This may lead them on a campaign to set others straight in their beliefs. Their enthusiasm to �convert� others to their newly discovered sense of freedom can be threatening, if not damaging, to those who have not yet developed the resources to evaluate their beliefs and take responsibility for such freedom.�
I recognise that I am guilty as charged, but I do see that calls for �unity� usually mean that the progressive voice � the prophetic voice, is smothered, while the fundagelical voice is given freedom to trumpet as the only truth.
I remain concerned that we are seeing the fundagelical churches are growing by snaring members from mainline protestant churches, while the current Vatican hierarchy is establishing a heavily conservative leadership across the world of Catholicism. Driven by the conservative African and Asian branches, the Anglicans, too, are retreating into conservative and fundamentalist rigidity. All this is seeing a drift of progressive Christians out of churches where they often feel alone and out of step, into what Spong calls the Church Alumni Association. Others never even enter because what is being preached to the wider world does not speak to them � the rejection of gays, the refusal to ordain women into the priesthood, ugly manifestations of right-to-life protests and the like. I see myself as a �small-e evangelical�, I want others to see a new way, because I see the church dying if we cannot learn to speak with sense and rationality to those outside.
I believe that what we reject as secular humanism is the new phase of genuine Christianity. Humanism has arisen out of Christianity; it is about living the radical caring life that Jesus lived in our own time and place. So I am making a call for Christian Humanism as the only hope for a real future for the church. My God, or Ultimate Reality, is Life and Love. He, She, or It is not �out there� but within each and every one of us � good, bad, rich, poor, black, white, male, female, young, old, heterosexual, or homosexual.
Currently, I find myself more comfortable with my beliefs. I drifted away from church in my teens, and found myself called back some twenty years ago by the openness of a communion service in the Canberra City Uniting Church. While the emphasis was on being welcome despite our sinful nature, and the Evangelical message implicit in the ceremony, I have remained faithful to the teachings of Jesus as my gateway to God.
After my rejection by my minister I explored writings by John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, Brian McLaren. Lloyd Geering and Don Cupitt. I joined The Center for Progressive Christianity (www.tcpc.org), Faith Futures Foundation and the Spong email list. I maintain a subscription to Insights Magazine to keep touch with what is happening to the UCA and I subscribe to Sojourners Magazine from the US. It helps, but it�s not the same as being part of a real worship group.
However, it has helped me to clarify a lot of my beliefs. The fundamentalist Answers in Genesis website was right (after a fashion); as soon as you question the story of creation the whole of your belief structure falls apart. Well I am glad it did, because I have fashioned, with the help of many others, a newer, stronger and better faith; a faith that stands with the world and with rationality.
I think Jesus would share something similar if he were here today.
