It’s time to reevaluate what has been a rather circumspect dance with a progressive christian congregation over the past year. There are times I find myself vehemently disagreeing or else saying: “Your concerns have nothing to do with my experience.” And there are other times when I find myself drawn in and noting that this might well be a good fit. Still, the questions and disagreements continue, and I make sure the minister (Gretta Vosper) knows it—nicely. So, for example, when Peter Wyatt, principal for Emmanuel College, wrote a critical column in the United Church Observer, I fired off an email to Gretta saying, in effect: “He’s got a point, you know.” Her answer was, in effect: “That’s all right.”
I think I’ve had a conversion experience—no flash of light—no whack on the head from a wild-eyed charismatic—just a leisurely turning of the heart to a different point of view. What is most surprising to me is the fact that it is a turning of the heart. I would have expected my head to lead the way, since it seems to be the part of me that’s most engaged in this business of spiritual seeking. If there is anything that has happened all at once in a flash, it is my recognition that I’ve had a conversion experience. It happened a couple weeks ago.
I’ll share it with you; but let me set up the story. When my grandfather retired from ministry, he and my grandmother settled in London, Ontario and began attending Metropolitan United Church. It’s a big concern. At that time, there were four full-time ministers and a large complement of part–time staff associates. The primary minister of word and sacrament (but mostly word) was Maurice Boyd, whose job was to prepare 2 sermons for each Sunday—one for the morning service and a different one for the evening service. Whenever we visited, we wanted to go to church. By “we” I mean my brother and I—two teen–aged boys—wanted to go listen to Maurice Boyd preach. He was that good. We loved the way he’d leave his notes on the pulpit and drift away, wandering around the chancel, sometimes closing his eyes and tilting his head up towards the rafters. There was a musical quality to his voice that held us spellbound. But then there was that one sermon that spoiled the illusion. He had been spinning out his carefully crafted argument—citing literary sources and existential philosophers, as was his habit—when a baby started to fidgit. It squawked a little and you could see the mother looking around uncomfortably and trying to shush her infant. Then it squawked again. Maurice Boyd stopped. He looked down at the mother and told her to leave. He couldn’t preach with a baby squawking.
On Sunday October 22nd, we celebrated infant baptism at West Hill United Church. And during the meditation, the same thing happened. A baby squawked, a mother looked around her, feeling uncomfortable, trying to shush her child. The minister stopped speaking—but the response was altogether different. Gretta picked up the child and kept right on talking. The child became part of the service. At that moment, I became a convert. It’s easy to breeze into a church service for an hour or so and then pronounce upon it in a magazine editorial. It’s easy to sit on one’s academic perch and use terms like “neo-literalist” and justify positions by comparing the historical strands of Methodism and Deism. But if you never spend time on the ground, then you miss moments like these.
What seems to go missing in conversations about progressive christianity is the pastoral dimension. All this intellectualized academic wrangling doesn’t mean a damn if you don’t care about people. I don’t want to be taken as implying nasty things about Peter Wyatt. He is warm and decent individual and he is a wonderful presence at Emmanuel College. I do want to be taken as implying that Peter Wyatt belongs to an institution (the academic seminary) that privileges a particular mode of doing things, with its specialized vocabulary (words like soteriology and exegesis) and its unique powers (to grant degrees and publish expert articles). It is a mode of doing things which I enjoy. In fact, until recently, I was seriously contemplating the Ph.D. program. However, I fear what I might become. I might be in danger of becoming an expert. And while the world needs experts to think deeply about important issues, I would most likely become the sort of expert who believes his is the best, or even only, way of doing things.
Here are some examples of pastoral need which progressive christianity answers and for which the expert theologian seems acutely ill-equipped:
• Recovering fundamentalists. These are people who have spent years believing a lot of bafflegab. What they crave most is acceptance and healing; not more bafflegab.
• Recovering clergy. These are people who are well equipped to think critically about theological issues, but feel they have to suppress it all on Sunday mornings to offer “safer” accounts. They feel like they’re leading double lives and their sense of personal identity suffers just as much as it does, say, for gays who feel compelled to stay in the closet or for abused women who stay in the relationship to keep up appearances.
• The average person who has drifted from institutional religion. Let’s face it, church attendance is at an all–time low. The principal reason is roughly five hundred years old—the shift from the medieval to modern world view has rendered traditional terms of belief incompatible with the dominant lens through which most people see their reality. The incompatibility may not be true. For example, faith and science may well live together comfortably. But the issue for the average person is one of perception. And Christianity has managed its public image abysmally.
Personally, I fit into none of these categories. I have never felt that my mind was abused. I have always felt free to speak and think whatever I please, and have often taken full advantage of that freedom. And I am definitely someone who has remained within the rituals of believing. Why would I care to participate in a progressive community of faith, when, essentially, I am happy to unpack my believing wherever I find myself and set up camp? I suppose it comes down to this: I deeply respect people who are secure enough to answer a direct challenge with “That’s all right.” What is most important to me is not the content of the believing (since a healthy believing is always changing, or why would we talk about spiritual growth?), but rather ensuring that the conditions exist for a vigorous and open-ended conversation.