From the Guardian:
Don’t cherish the old rugged cross
A Sussex vicar is right to remove the ‘scary’ crucifix from his church. After all, Christians only go there for reassurance
Rev Souter said the traditional Christian symbol was frightening children and scaring off worshippers at St John’s Church in Horsham, West Sussex.
Rev Souter has endured some criticism from more traditional Christians who were under the impression that the agonising death and subsequent resurrection of Jesus is the sine qua non of their religion; that the sins of the world are absolved by Christ’s blood. That may be so, responded the Rev, but the crucifix was “scary”, so it had to go.
And you know what? I’m with the vicar on this one. People don’t go to church to be confronted with the sinewy dilemmas of faith: they go for reassurance, fellowship, maybe the chance to buy a nice baseball cap with a picture of a fish on it. If you just want to pray for Auntie Maureen’s knee to get better, you don’t want to have to think about some poor bugger nailed to a tree at the same time.
For a while now Anglicans in the West have been working hard on a new religion without all the messy and difficult to explain bits: like the cross, Jesus’ Divinity, Virgin birth, bodily resurrection and atoning sacrifice.
So you can’t really fault a secular journalist for pointing to ground that has already been surrendered by a largely apostate church.
The world has seen what bespectacled, bearded and learned clerics are blind to: Christianity without the cross is an irrelevant, archaic social club. Bereft of meaning, power and conviction it has nothing to offer that the local pub cannot do better.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 1 Cor:18-19
It appears that “those who are perishing” are the now clergy charged with revealing to others truths they no longer believe themselves.
