SERMON 3. PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY

3. INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY: Believable faith

I was sitting recently with a group of male friends when they began comparing their mobile phones. Slim models they were, which flipped open to reveal the screen.They could send emails, take photographs, even make a phone-call.When I produced my ten year old Nokia there were howls of derision.

Imagine now that we could transport ourselves ten thousand years into the future. Assuming that the human race still exists, think of how my 1998 Nokia mobile phone would be received as a means of communication?They would not know what to do with it.In fact, go just ten years into the future and try to imagine how out of date it would appear!

A core problem for the Judeo Christian tradition is how a ten thousand year old religious system can be seen to be relevant in a post-modern, highly technological, scientifically advanced society. Leaving the 'Judeo' bit aside, Christianity has its roots in the soil of first century Palestine.How can this faith speak today?

The answer sadly is often "in a foreign language". The spoken and written communication of the day was Aramaic and Greek.A tiny minority could read and write.Communities were largely rural. Primitive, even superstitious thought forms had evil sprits inhabiting the wind and the storms, and causing illness, so that Jesus' stilling of the storm or performing a healing was viewed as a victory of evil forces. The God of Israel had strong tribal loyalties, and was perceived as not being above colluding with His chosen in the invading and occupying the land of rival clans. The sun could be suspended in the heavens to provide a few more hours killing time. There was not an inkling of what is now known as the scientific method.

How do you lift all of this, place it in our context, and practice this religion in a way that is going to be relevant to the modern woman and man?

My answer: with serious reinterpretation!

Progressive Christianity is about attempting this task of reinterpretation in order to allow people to approach the Christian faith with their intellectual integrity intact- to present a believable faith!

It is not a new endeavour.Through the centuries there have been many brave souls who have sought to challenge outdated thought-forms and primitive aggression, always under fire from those with a vested interest in the status quo. Just one example is the persecution of Galileo and Copernicus by the Roman Catholic Church for their 'heresy' that the sun is the centre of our solar system; another, the burning at the stake of Servetus by reformer John Calvin because he questioned the doctrine of the Trinity.

I see the modern struggle to do this beginning with the popularizing of the work of theologians such as Bonhoeffer and Tillich by Bishop John Robinson and the so-called "Death of God" group.In Robinson's major work Honest to God, he challenged the idea of God as an old man in the sky, a God 'up there' or even a God 'out there'. Robinson has been effectively sidelined by his church.Less effective but no less strenuous has been the efforts to sideline his present day equivalent Bishop John Spong, former Bishop of Newark. (Or is that 'new walk'?)We had firsthand experience of this last Sunday when were invited to an afternoon tea to meet Spong and his wife Christine. We realized why our invitation had been a little last minute when it became apparent that all bar two of the Heads of Churches in The Hunter had not responded to the invitation! The only one to attend was Shirley Mitchell, Chair of the Hunter Presbytery of the Uniting Church.

What are we so afraid of?

Hal Taussig identifies three areas in which the quest for intellectual integrity is taking place.I have one to add.

1. Names for God

Until very recently it has been standard practice to personalize God as Father.Feminist theology then introduced the idea of honouring the feminine nurturing characteristics of God by using Mother.In today's hymn (TIS 182) Brian Wren ascribes four different human characteristics to God.This helps us because in our limited understanding we need to attach to God ideas that we know and understand.But these are only metaphors.God is not male or female.God is not old or young.God is unlimited mystery beyond all our descriptions. Modern science has given us new metaphor- energy. This is how With Love To The World commentator Keith Rowe describes God: "God is creative energy at the heart of life, 'pure unbounded love' present in every part of life, drawing humanity towards life in community, and inviting us to choose peace, generosity and forgiveness in moments of decision."Modern people who cannot conceive of God as an invisible person can live with the idea of a powerful presence; and can experience that without violating their intellect! Brian Wren says it beautifully in the last verse of hymn 182 in TIS "Great living God, never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer still than breathing, everlasting home: Hail and hosanna, great living God".

2. Understanding of Scripture

This is a huge and controversial topic, and I can do no better than refer you to any of John Spong's books, especially his earliest one "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism"; or Marcus Borg's work, including "The Heart of Christianity". A key question arises about what we need to take literally, and what we can accept a metaphor and myth; even what now needs to be rejected on the grounds that 'time makes ancient uncouth'.In this last category I would included outlandish laws and guidelines from the Hebrew scriptures such as putting children to death for disobedience (Deuteronomy 21:18ff), or making a woman drink water mixed with the dirt from the floor of the tabernacle to see whether her husband's suspicion that she has been unfaithful is correct. (Numbers 5:11ff).If she is guilty her uterus will drop! Did God really tell Moses to write that? The whole genre of literature that aligns God with the plan to invade, plunder and subjugate other groups is now being called into question as a very limited understanding of God as a tribal deity. As Val Webb comments in her recent Insights article "What would our justice system do to a God who accepted the slaughter of Jephtah's only child in payment for a victory in battle?"

This questioning does not diminish God. It simply calls into question the view of God's nature through the eyes of primitive societies. So too the unquestioning acceptance as literal of prehistorical accounts such as a six-day creation, or Noah saving all the animals in the world by putting them on a boat in pairs! Anyone whom has ever read a Gerald Durrell zoo-stocking adventure or watched a wildlife documentary on relocating large animals will know what it takes, with modern equipment, to locate, capture, subdue and then transport just one such beast, let alone keep them accommodated and fed afterwards! We alienate questioning people unnecessarily by demanding that they take this literally, rather than delve into the deeper truth that such myths want to teach us.

The New Testament also provides major challenges of understanding and interpreting, and scholars have done a wonderful job in unraveling some of the mysteries they contain. This is a whole course of study in itself and I urge those who are interested to take it further.Suffice it to say here that we can help modern people to an acceptance of the way of Jesus when we remove the roadblocks of demand for literal acceptance of all that is contained therein. Did a moving star literally guide wise men to the birthplace of Jesus? Did Jesus really tell Peter to pay tax for the two of them by catching a fish with a coin in its mouth? (Matthew17:24ff).Did evil spirits literally inhabit a herd of swine and rush into the Sea of Galilee? And the big one- did Jesus literally and physically rise from the tomb? Many of us will continue to hold that as a central article of our faith, but why demand that everyone who wants to walk the way of the life and teaching of Jesus have to hold to a literal physical resurrection when their intellectual integrity demands that they cannot?

Another Christian dogma which many now legitimately question is called the penal substitutionary theory of the Atonement; that God required Jesus to be punished in our place before he could forgive us! I have never understood substitutionary atonement, never been able to align it with a God of love, never seen any sense in it all.I can see how the idea has arisen but my faith in no way depends on it.

Progressive Christianity tends to shift the focus from the death of Jesus to his life and teaching as the way we come to know him, love him and follow him.

3. Science and Religion

A most bizarre incident was shown in a recent TV documentary about Christian fundamentalist indoctrination of children in the USA.A very persuasive teacher was trying to convince his pupils of the literal six day creation of the world, and the falsity of Darwin's theory of evolution by claiming that dinosaurs lived in the time of Job.His proof? Job 40 verses 15-18 "Look at Behomoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox.Its strength is in its loins and its power in the muscles of its belly.It makes its tail stiff like the cedar; the sinews of its thighs are knit together.Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like bars of iron." This is what happens when one starts from the assumption that the Bible is a foolproof science textbook, and everything is literally correct. Everything else, including the existence of dinosaur bones, must be made to harmonise with its ideas.

We can hold to creationism if we choose, and deny the theory of natural selection as Darwin and others have explained it.We can deny the science behind the big bang theory of the origin of the universe, but we should not claim Biblical authority for these views.The Bible is not meant to stand over against scientific knowledge, and when we deny the views of those who hold them with intellectual rigour and integrity, we close doors that Jesus requires than we keep open with radical inclusion and unconditional hospitality.

Why do we continue to want to put thinking seekers after spirituality in an impossible bind as they consider the way of Jesus; "Leave your brains, leave your critical faculties at the door, all who enter here.Believe as we do, or be damned".I would prefer to offer believable faith.

Taussig puts the Progressive position like this: "One of the most important ways in which Christians over past decades have been claiming a stronger intellectual integrity is their integration of science into their self-understanding as people, of faith …many thoughtful Christians…assume that one can see the common methods and conclusions of science as both compatible with and enhancing of their faith."

4. Embracing Doubt

Publication of Mother Teresa's private letters have revealed "…a complex woman who was tormented by her faith and suffered long periods of religious doubt and spiritual emptiness" (SMH, 13/9/07). For many the most admired person of the 20^th Century, Mother Teresa's doubt has been touted as a reason for people to change their view of her and call her a hypocrite.I think the opposite is true; that more people will be encouraged than disillusioned, because we all know what it is like to go through periods of doubt and spiritual emptiness. Progressive Christianity asserts that we "…find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty; more value in questioning than in absolutes". Alongside that is the conviction that "…the way we behave toward each other and other people is the fullest expression of what we believe."By those criteria, Mother Teresa continues to be a Christ-like role model for Christians be they Conservative, Progressive or anything else.

Ways we talk about God, how we view the scriptures, the relationship of religion and science; living with doubt and times of spiritual drought; these are all important issues when modern people approach the Christian church in order to respond to an inner yearning for deeper spirituality.It is good news that we can offer them the way of Jesus that embraces them heart and mind, body and soul.We might even see in the Progressive way the possibility of growth for our own minds and our own faith.

I am not happy to give up my mobile phone just yet.It works really well for me.It does everything I require of it. If I need to email I can use the PC.If I need to take a photograph I will use my camera. It would be silly though if one day, when technology has moved on to the extent that I can no longer use it to make phone-calls, I persist in holding it to my ear and pretending that I am still having a meaningful conversation.

Brian Brown