The Anglican Church of Canada is behind the times in competitive coming out. ACoC clergy are still contenting themselves with coming out as gay: very yesterday. The United Church has a clergywoman who has come out as an atheist.
From here:
My congregation belongs to The United Church of Canada, probably the most progressive Christian denomination in the world. It ordained women over seventy years ago and has been ordaining openly LGBTQ leaders for decades. But theologically it remains in the closet about the human construction of religion and all its trapping. I couldn’t stay in that closet.
I came out as an atheist in 2001.
As an atheist, Vosper thinks any experience of God, “commitment, love, engagement, kindness, concern, empathy, humility, wonder” must be attributed to materially enflamed neurons rather than a numinously excited spirit. This, of course, means that her neurons making the following statement are no more valid than mine making the opposite statement. All thought is reduced to nonsense.
“human heart” is used metaphorically – let’s be clear; the experiences we are speaking about, no matter what we call it, are much more likely neurological
All this has been too much for even the United Church of Canada; it has decided to review the Rev Vosper’s “effectiveness” – presumably, other than how effectively she is driving people out of the United Church:
A regional body of the United Church of Canada will interview a clergywoman who is an outspoken atheist to see about her “effectiveness.”
In June, the Toronto Conference of the UCC will enact a formal process known as a review regarding the Rev. Gretta Vosper, an author and founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity who is also a professed atheist.
Internationally, the Rev. Vosper is not alone in her uncloseted clerical atheism: according to this report, 2% of Church of England clergy – that’s around 560 clergy – are atheists. For example, Rev David Paterson said, during an unguarded spasm of random neurological misfiring:
…. there was no conflict in preaching while being unable to believe in God. “Within my congregation I would take the line that how you feel about God is not in the least dependent on whether you think God exists or not. I preach using God’s terminology, but never with the suggestion that God actually exists.
Who needs Dawkins and Hitchens when the church has its very own Vosper and Paterson?
I am shocked but not dismayed. I am reminded that in typical Protestant fashion, the study of theology is way down at the bottom for anyone considering the “ministry”. The United Church has always struck me as the NDP “at prayer”. Just to clarify………the old NDP.
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God'” (Psalm 14:1). The fool says, “No God for me”. Some people try to live without God because they do not want God to be their Lord and Master.
I cannot believe that such people actually conduct their personal and relational life on that basis. Their real basis for those is of course their real religion. Perhaps selfism in this case.
Selfism may be their god then. We all worship something, the triune God or otherwise.
The United Church left Christianity long ago this is just more evidence to prove the point.
But how could they question her effectiveness and still be non-judgmental and inclusive?
I wonder if PETA would still employ someone who ate beef? Or if Greenpeace would employ someone who wore sealskin boots? Heck the Liberal party won’t even run a candidate who doesn’t believe in abortion. Would a University employ a professor who does not believe in academic integrity?
Millstones.
“We didn’t have to ask in the morning if our Creator were in existence.”
Algonquin Elder, Evelyn Commanda Dewache,
Closing Ceremonies of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, June 3, 2015
There is truth; then there are half-truths.
Gretta Vosper’s book, With or Without God, beautifully and “effectively” explains how much she understands and loves the Church and its PEOPLE! She is absolutely qualified to lead a congregation to an “effective” new future. I doubt that her detractors have read and comprehended what she’s saying, but it’s largely about the church serving PEOPLE rather than DOGMA. If Christianity doesn’t find its way through this critical matter, it will continue to slide into irrelevance.
The longest (doctrinal) way round is the shortest (relational) way home:–
‘Of course there was passion there, under the tough analytical mind and the propriety. I could have found the mind (it was better than mine, and differently trained), or something like it, in a male colleague. Not that any medic would have been as interesting: she had read so much of the kind of philosophy and theology which we weren’t allowed to think about at home. I was allowed to ask anything, not merely my old, half-frivolous, “Can I afford to be virtuous?”, but “How do we find love for others in our own hearts?” Once or twice I got glimpses of the fire that drove her powerful head of steam. I was safe, looking at it as though through tempered glass, but if I had opened the door, it would have seared me. I always felt in those days that I had no handle to the door. I was already doing my original work on the mapping of brain-functions which would lead to my breakthroughs in both psychotherapeutic physiology and psycholinguistics, but I could not predict or explain much of her thinking at all.’ [From O Love How Deep p. 30]
Well now, this is interesting but I don’t think what Rev. Gretta Vosper has to say is relevant to anyone other than her congregation, and then only so long as it has relevance to them.
I understand that the United Church, as a group of like minded people believing in God, can find her message and the resources she is using to appear as being hypocritical. It certainly seems so to me, but, and this is a big but, if the greater church were to disrobe her is that not also hypocritical in light of Christ’s teaching.
Who is it that the church would be protecting by banishing an atheist from our midst? What are the real motives for moving against her? Are our beliefs not strong enough to withstand intellectual arguments?
It has been said that the heart makes a better master than a servant, and the mind makes a better servant than a master. All intellectual arguments are therefore a distraction from the desire for God to exist in our hearts, and believing in God is less important than the desire for God.
What has God got to lose?
If we truly believe that God created our world and the surrounding universe then it is all God’s creation, and if there are problems with God’s creation then God will do the fixing because it is not ours to fix. We do not understand enough to be fixing God’s creation and if there is any fixing to do then we can always focus on our empathy and tolerance. The wisest decisions will come from a change of heart rather than a change of mind.