Spirit Quest
By The Reverend Hanns F. Skoutajan
Far be it for me to argue with Gretta Vosper, she is too brilliant as well as a powerful woman. The Reverend Gretta Vosper is minister of West Hill United Church in Scarborough. She has recently hit the press both print and air, Gretta is the founding president of Progressive Christians. Her book with the intriguing title, With or Without God (HarperCollins) focused attention on her. Michael Valpy interviewed her for the Globe and Mail and brought to light her, as some would say, “heretical” ideas and beliefs.
Gretta is on the extreme opposite from the fundamentalists. She does not believe in the divinity of Jesus or that he died for the sins of humankind. At her church she does not indulge in petitionary prayers inasmuch as God already knows what we need. To her it is more important that we carry out what God demands of us: to live responsibly and lovingly in this world. It is her intention as a minister to assist people in doing so,
Vosper grew up in Kingston, Ontario and with her parents attended Sydenham Street United Church. She must have been a challenging Sunday School student.
John Shelby Spong, the famous American Episcopal bishop who has been published widely and has lectured not only in the US but Canada and abroad, has written a glowing preface for her book. He concludes, “For some this will not be an easy book to read, but it is a book that will resonate with many as it calls our generation to new religious authenticity.” She quotes frequently from his most recent book “Jesus for the Non-Religious.” She like Spong has been both celebrated and vilified.
Vosper doubts whether genuine worshippers can continue to sing and affirm their faith in language that is not only dated (Old English) but patriarchal and theistic. The latter refers to a God out there, a god made in man’s own image, rather than a god within. Can people today continue in all honesty to use creeds such as the Apostles and Nicene Creeds that come down to us from the third century after Christ? As long ago as the 1960s the United Church formulated a new creed, or as some would prefer to call it, a creedal statement. It begins with the words: We are not alone, we live in God’s world. It summarizes a more modern faith. The earliest Christians statement of faith was a simple, God is Love.
Will people gravitate to a church like West Hill United? She draws attention to the need for a place of worship that is neither fundamentalist nor mainstream. It is the more conservative, charismatic and literalist churches that are attracting large numbers of worshippers in the United State. To a lesser extent this is true also in Canada. Those people who disagree with them largely drift away from the church altogether. Many today affirm that they are spiritual but not religious.
Recently at my local “watering hole” I had a discussion about religion with a group of friends who claim little or no religious affiliation. The religion they attacked was of a highly conservative and fundamentalist type. They knew no other than that Old Time Religion that they had learned in Sunday School many years ago and heartily rejected.
The views that Gretta Vosper holds are not really new. Biblical scholarship has long ago cast more than doubt on the veracity of the Bible.
Unfortunately these teachings dribbled down to the laypeople very slowly or not at all. Clergy in the mainline churches have been afraid to offend members of their congregations with “radical” ideas. Back in the early 60s the United Church came out with a new church school curriculum including adult studies that caused an uproar. Many preferred the “simple gospel” and opted for educational material from the United States that was conservative and easier to teach.
Progressive Christianity is not simple, it requires thinking and a good deal of courage. Paul Tillich a well know German-American theologian on whose ideas progressives rely, coined the term “Ground of All Being” to describe God. He wrote a small book called “The Courage To Be.” Indeed it takes courage to live responsively and with integrity.
I believe that there is a spirit at work that is bringing about change. Shakespeare has Hamlet speak these words to Horatio, “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will.”
There is a spirit that is a’ movin’.
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