On Sunday July 27th, 2008, Pastor John Mahaffey of the West Highland Baptist Church in Hamilton, ON preached a sermon about the woes of the United Church of Canada. Evidently, he was raised within the UCC and, while he doesn’t feel called to a ministry within this denomination, nevertheless he continues to feel fondness and concern for it. So, if you have 55 minutes to spare, you can hear what he has to say at WHBC’s podcast site, livechurch.ca. Or … you can spend 2 minutes and read my post instead. [Site no longer exists.]
Pastor Mahaffey gives a balanced and concise summary of both the UCC’s tendency to be a spawning ground for radicalized theology, and of Gretta Vosper’s career as a UCC minister. He cites Connie denBok, a more conservative UCC minister who describes Gretta as a symptom of deeper problems. (Gretta and Connie recently went head-to-head on Winnipeg’s GodTalk radio in a segment called “Should the United Church of Canada Throw in the Towel.”) Gretta is evidence that the UCC is a house divided and doomed to ruin unless it begins to present a more unified (and doctrinally correct) presence to the world at large.
My own view is: so what? So two ministers disagree with one another? So a hundred ministers disagree with another hundred ministers? That in itself is no reason to engage in doomsaying. Disagreement is a red herring. All families experience disagreement. A more fruitful question is to ask: how does a family handle its disagreement? If we consider the Anglican communion, there is cause for concern. Schism is a real possibility. But the UCC? There’s plenty of room for two ministers to carry on a lively and respectful debate without worrying that either will be kicked out on her butt.
Mahaffey traces the whole problem to the “essential agreement” clause in the UCC’s 1925 Basis of Union (i.e. candidates for ministry are required only to be in “essential agreement” with the twenty articles of faith). This wiggle room was the work of the Congregationalists, a tiny group of people from the Maritimes who had joined in with the Methodists and Presbyterians. In other words, it was my grandfather’s fault, and his brother Reggie’s fault, and their cousin Arthur’s fault (Arthur Moore, former moderator of the UCC & principal of VicU). They were all Congregationalists growing up on the St. John River at the turn of the last century and all ended up as ministers at the time of Union. Kind of makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
In any event, it’s because of people like my grandfather that the UCC is now so vexed by people like Gretta Vosper.
Notwithstanding Mahaffey’s careful account of things, I regard the wiggle room as a strength that should be celebrated. I felt compelled to post a comment on the good pastor’s podcast site. Here’s what I wrote:
I’m webmaster for West Hill UC where Gretta Vosper serves as minister. I thank you for an even-handed account of her views and a concise summary of events within the United Church of Canada which have moved a significant portion of it to a radicalized notion of Christianity. You refer to Gretta as “the United Church of Canada, the Next Generation” (I assume you’re a trekkie). I tend to regard her as “the United Church of Canada, two generations ago.” I don’t think her agenda is to push the envelope of doctrine, but to create a dialog between theological colleges and the scholarship they’ve produced on the one hand, and the average person sitting in the pews on the other hand. The scholarship which we tend to identify now with the term “Progressive” was introduced by Tillich sixty years ago alongside other discoveries such as the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. What Gretta is doing is demanding some integrity from our ministers. They attend seminary, learn all about ideas that have been floating around for years, but then pretend it doesn’t exist once they’re ordained. The result is: when church-goers learn from other sources about these things, they feel they’ve been duped or patronized. I don’t know. You tell me. Can average church-goers be trusted to examine controversial scholarship and then decide for themselves whether it’s meaningful? Or should we trust the clergy to filter our information for us?
My comment was never approved which means you can’t read it on their site. I guess I have my answer.