Some things never change. The April/05 issue of the United Church Observer [named changed to Broadview in 2019] features an extended letters–to–the–editor section because of the huge response to an article from the February/05 issue — “Believing Outside the Box” by Jennifer McPhee. The article is about a minister, Rev. Gretta Vosper, who decided to come clean with her congregation about her struggles with the orthodoxy of the United Church. McPhee reports: “Vosper believes that all religions are human constructions—attempts to explain life or best guesses at what God is. She doesn’t believe that God answers prayers, or that the Bible is the word of God. She doesn’t accept the divinity of Jesus, or know what happens to us after we die.”
The article has attracted a deeply polarized response. Clearly, Vosper is giving voice to the quietly held views of many within the membership of the United Church. But she gravely offends many others. For example: “Gretta Vosper doesn’t believe that God answer prayers or that the Bible is the word of God. She doesn’t accept the divinity of Jesus or what happens to us when we die. What she calls living outside the box is actually living with Satan. Ruth Dawson, Tupperville, Ont.” Well, I guess you have to expect a few like that. Or more thoughtful: “I am not aware of any remit that rescinds the requirement that candidates for ordination be in “essential agreement” with the Articles of Faith in the Basis of Union. When I declared my assent to these beliefs, I meant it. I had this naîve assumption that other candidates meant it also. How can someone who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus remain with integrity in a position of leadership within the United Church? … (Rev.) Jack Lindquist, Cranbrook, B.C.”
This resembles (on a much smaller scale) the Arian controversy which arose in the 4th century. To quote a brief description from the Catholic Encyclopedia: “[The Arian heresy] denies that the Son is of one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, and therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or co-eternal, or within the real sphere of Deity.” And Arius was by no means the first to propose such a view. Gnostics of every stripe had been advancing all sorts of theories about the identity of Jesus (or ignoring the question altogether). Almost from the instant Jesus expired on the cross, right down to the present day, people have been struggling with the question of Jesus as Christ.
There is a theory that the heresiologists of the early church were so rabid in rooting out questionable doctrine because these alternative theories arose at a time when the church was still vulnerable. The emperor Constantine had just accorded Christianity legal status in 313 C.E. and five years later, the Arian controversy broke. The only way that Christianity could survive in a hostile world—so the story goes—was to ensure a unified voice. And the only way to ensure a unified voice was to silence dissent. In other words, the heresiologists felt threatened.
I wonder … when people today condemn someone like Vosper, do they feel likewise threatened? Wherein lies the threat? Certainly, many have the perception that their beloved church is in decline, that it no longer enjoys the prestige it once boasted even fifty years ago, that it has been pushed to the margins thanks, in part, to an influx of immigrants who do not share their convictions. Vosper represents one possible response: the church is in decline because its doctrine is growing irrelevant. Her detractors represent another possible response: a yearning for a rootedness in the traditional values as articulated by their church.
I have two observations:
First, I do not believe the church has ever been in a position of authority except in thoroughly unChristian circumstances. The church enjoyed enormous prestige in the ninth century when Charlemagne gave Saxon tribes one of two options—convert or die. Crusaders presented the same option to the Saracens two centuries later. But the church never looks terribly credible when it assumes the role of oppressor. Political prestige is never a sufficient end for those who follow teachings like: love your neighbour as yourself. No. The church has thrived as a spiritual entity at precisely those times when it is most (politically) vulnerable. That is the point of the Easter story. In the midst of death, new life springs forth. It does not matter whether you believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, because the sole virtue of the account—of any account—is its meaning. Even if a team of scientists could verify that Jesus truly rose from the dead, such a finding would be pointless without the point.
However simple my last sentence might appear, it seems to elude us most of the time.
You can have an event, but unless you ascribe it a meaning, it is meaningless. But the converse is not true. It is possible to apprehend meaning in the air.
Second, belief is a dialogue. All confessions, all creeds (especially the creed of the United Church of Canada!), all articles of faith—all are provisional. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, which meant that I had the annoying habit of saying whatever was in my head at the time. Occasionally, my parents understood me to be making statements of belief, and they would be startled when I contradicted myself in my next breath. But the young are granted liberties; we say that they are finding their way as they rise to maturity. In the matter of belief, do we ever grow up? Need we ever grow up? Is this not part of the childlike view that Jesus demands of us in order to enter the kingdom? We cannot grow if we forever live in fear of condemnation for entertaining—even if only provisionally—a disturbing idea or belief. Nor can our spirit ripen if we insist that we have nothing new to discover, however distasteful it might seem to us in our present situatedness.
I like the story of how Jacob wrestled all through the night. I view myself as wrestling with questions of faith under a black which is forever about to break into the light of dawn. Like Vosper, I cannot say what happens to me after I die. But if my spirit survives my body, I do not want some unending rest, nor do I want peace, at least not the passive peace that comes with being self-assured. Instead, I hope for a place where the wrestling goes on and on.