Leaving Your Religion

So in a previous post, I explored the concept of a Christian Humanist particularly ideas regarding non-realism and other associated concepts such as eternity etc. Well I recently discovered that Bart Campolo has become a secular humanist and given up on his Christian faith. See www.bartcampolo.org
One of the podcasts features on the site involved a discussion between Bart and a man called James Mulholland. James runs a website called www.LeavingYourReligion.com and published a book with the same title. I was fascinated by the discussion between Bart and James who both shared a Christian past but who now both inhabit very different places. Following is some commentary on the book.
The book has very helpful questionnaires to complete which help further reflection. It opens with one titled 'should you leave your religion?' Your score is then used to indicate whether you should read the book, or what parts would be most beneficial. Another helpful tool on page 21 is a 'religious loss inventory'. Interesting here you discern between nostalgia and genuine loss. The list of things you deny on page 30 was also very good. I ticked most! Strikingly, the final denial read, 'you confess to believing in God even though you've rejected nearly every common definition or description of God'. On page 39 it stated 'anger often masks sadness'. In the context of faith, I do find myself getting angry. Interesting. James suggests there is a process of Refining, then expanding and then redefining. Theses all resonate with my experience. He provides a list on page 88 which details some of the redefining. In losing your faith, the book encourages you to live in the new non-religious identity, discarding all artefacts related to the previous religious way of life such as books and embracing new ways to live as a non-religious person. James talks about walking away from the shadow of the mountain.
I resonated with so much of this book and it tugged on my heart strings, but just as I could not fully accept the Christian Humanist position (a rejection of eternal life), I could not fully embrace a denial of the existence of something divine and yet again, eternal life.
My next quest is therefore to read a book about spiritual experiences (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1539007324/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1AIZ7Q12HCYEM&coliid=I3REZJ2THOW5RH) and seek to reconcile my spiritual experiences with an ever increasing non-realist/humanist stance.

Mysticism and science

Reflections on a article in theology and science by N.M. Laurendeau entitled 'Christian mysticism and science: the psychological dimension' (Routledge 2013).


In my own mystical experience (labelled the baptism in the holy spirit), I experienced power like electricity in a what I can only describe as outer space, dark and black but without any fear. The author quotes a number of mystics who describe God in the darkness similarly: Gregory of Nyssa, The Cloud of the Unknowing, John of the Cross and Louis Dupre (who talks about ascending the ladder of darkness).


A few quotes:
the inferior temporal lobe and amygdala, in particular, were found to contain dense neuronal fields along the neocortical surface that could fire selectively in response to visual images infused with religious emotions, similar to out-of-body experiences (p.13)
we might say that while the brain is created by God, God is also created by the brain (p.14)
monks experienced timelessness using meditation while nuns experienced unity using contemplation...meditation activates the arousal function and inhibits the quiescent function, whereas contemplation inhibits the arousal function but activates the quiescent function...however, persistent activation of both produces functional disequilibrium resulting in a feeling of no space and time, an altered state of consciousness and trance state (p.14)
Bernard of Clairvaux says there are 4 degrees of love, (1) loving oneself for our own sake, (2) loving God for our own sake, (3) loving God for God's sake and (4) loving oneself for God's sake.

New Published Article

Article

2014 Advent sermon

St Aiden’s

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you this advent service.

The lectionary readings this morning from 2 Samuel and Luke are very interesting; especially in the way that they can be connected. The key connection is the word dwell. In Samuel God comes to dwell among us in an ark and temple, in Luke he comes to dwell among in the person of Jesus.

Israel was a nomadic nation. They were always on the move constantly in danger. They had no roots, no land, and no security. What they did have was superficial and temporary. In this passage King David has finally secured for the nation of Israel land, security and wealth. It is David’s desire to offer God the same. After all an ark within which God dwelled could be stolen, as it had been in the past. David wanted to build God a house, a temple in which Yahweh could dwell.

It is interesting that we can have similar lives; constantly living in fear of financial loss, placing our hope, our roots in superficial things that can be taken away in an instant. We too seek security and ways in which we can feel rooted. It is interesting that we seek to place God as an object of our religion into our boxes, our buildings, restricting faith and religion to a specific time, a specific place, and a specific ritual. It is interesting that God should dwell in man-made structures. It is interesting that the priority is to house our God where we are (God comes to us on our terms) rather than ensuring we are where God is, among the poor and dispossessed. It is interesting in the Christmas birth narratives, that Joseph and Mary are homeless, nomadic, looking for a place to dwell for the birth of Jesus.

The Hebrew word for dwell here is the word shakan which means ‘to no longer be a nomad, to rest, reside’. It has resonance with the word abide as used in John 15 (the vine and branches passage), ‘abide in me and I will abide in you’. It has a sense that we do not go in and out, away and towards, we abide, we remain, we reside, we stay. In that there is a different kind of security and stability. Faith becomes something more than just Sunday religion or temporal belief that we seek to protect, housing God in our religious convictions, creeds or doctrine. The Luke passage about the virgin birth is an example of this point.

There is a legend that Mary was not the first young woman to whom the angel came. But she was the first one to say yes. This legend would be offensive to the Roman Catholic for upon this virgin narrative and other Marion doctrines we have the Immaculate Conception, the perpetual virginity and the bodily assumption of the virgin. In Protestant circles this offensive because the very claim of divinity for Jesus and his status as the Son of God required the literal historicity of the virgin birth stories not to mention the doctrines around sin and atonement.

Luke writing this narrative around 58-63C.E. was writing in a very specific context. Just like David, he was influenced by his context in the way he formulated his understanding of his faith and his God. The first writings we now have in our bibles came from the pen of the apostle Paul, a companion of Luke. Luke, a gentile, would have been shaped by these writings particularly as most biblical commentators agree; by Pauls view of the birth narratives which were more about adoptionism i.e. God adopted Jesus into heaven as God’s agent of salvation. Bear in mind the doctrine of the trinity was only fully formulated by the 5^th century C.E.

Incorporating half of the gospel of Mark into his narrative, it was Luke’s task to show that Christianity, far from being subversive, was a natural development within a recognised and respected Jewish religious tradition. Christianity, Luke was asserting had simply grown past the Jewish limits and had become a worldwide religion. A religion that would later under the crusades justify murder and under apartheid justify racism. This is what happens when religion or faith becomes something we house, dwelling in our confounds and walls. It gets messy.

It is interesting that Christianity now understands God dwelling in fullness in the person of Jesus, and through the Holy Spirit dwelling in fullness in us as living temples.

In Luke, we have a heavenly host in the sky as a herald for all to see the arrival of the Christ child. Simeon, the old priest, announces that this child would be ‘a light for revelation to the Gentiles’ as well as ‘for glory to the people of Israel’ (Lk2:32). In the genealogy of this Jesus, Luke traces the heritage not back to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation (as Matthew had done), but to Adam, the father of the entire human race. This God, this faith is bigger than the temple David built to house Him in. He dwells among humanity.

This faith we celebrate is bigger than we think, broader than we think, more inclusive than we think. As Paul Tillich the theologian said, He is the very ground of being.

From 'And it was good: reflections on beginnings' by Wheaton (1983)

Are you sure you mean -

but I'm unworthy -

I couldn't anyhow -

I'd be afraid. No, no,

it's inconceivable, you can't be asking me -

I know it's a great honour

but wouldn't it upset them all,

both our families?

They're very proper you see.

Do I have to answer now?

I don't want to say no -

its what every girl hopes for

even if she won't admit it.

Bit I can't commit myself to anything

this important without turning it over

in my mind for a while

and I should ask my parents

and I should ask my -

Let me have a few days to think it over.

Sorrowfully, although he was not surprised

to have it happen again,

the angel returned to heaven.

2014 Pre-Pentecost sermon

Desert Sheep

(Isaiah 40:11) ‘He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young’

The use of sheep as metaphor or as symbolism is used quite widely and extensively in the Bible. The lectionary readings this morning all make use of that symbolism as metaphor in various ways. The Hebrew people of course would be quite familiar with such use as seen in the use of the Passover lamb, and as used here in the passage I started with from Isaiah and other such passages such as ‘we all like sheep have gone astray’ (Isaiah 53:6), a rich, layered and vivid metaphor. Of course sheep in a mostly rural cultural world would be a common image and experience for many and therefore a useful teaching tool or method.

But what about today in a culture where Biblical literacy is low, where the mostly urban Western church is at the margins of society and according to statisticians struggling to survive? How do we read, comprehend and apprehend these passages? In fact, how different does the church today look in its practice, culture, belief etc. compared to what we just read about this morning? Did you see the difference?

Let’s look again at Acts 2:46, ‘Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts…’. Not in the church or school hall or someone’s house, but in the Judaist temple courts.

One of the things that fascinate me about where I come from, South Africa, is the way that the wind shapes the landscape of sand dunes along the beaches or sand dunes in the deserts. No sandy landscape ever remains the same but is constantly changed by the winds of change. Unlike a mountain range where you can pin point the best peak, the desert is a constantly changing landscape. It reminds me of the church and our history.

Here Luke writing in Acts gives us a glimpse of the landscape of Christianity. At this point for the most part, these were Jews proclaiming the Jewish Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah and expressing that faith within the confounds of their Jewish faith. Here in chapter 2 we see them practice their faith within the Jewish temple courts. For most of us as Gentiles we somehow have to jump the contextual gap in order to really understand the context, nature and consequences of this landscape. Some writers have attempted to help us do just that such as Philip Yancey in his book, ‘the Jesus I never knew’ and Scott MacKnight in his book, ‘the Jesus Creed’. Others have taken this context and the development of Western thought even further such as Amos Yong in his book, ‘Beyond the Impasse’ and asked, “what the gospel might look like if its primary dialogue partners were not Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, or Whitehead, but rather Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tzu and so on”.

Bishop Shelby Spong in his book, ‘Liberating the gospels’ suggests these Jewish books became Gentile captives! This meeting in temple courts as recoded in Acts 2 became more and more difficult as Jewish animosity and impatience for this then Jewish cult grew. Furthermore, with Jewish tensions rising with Rome, culminated by the destruction of the temple in 70c.e, the new Jewish faith wanted to break ties with its Jewish heritage if it wanted to survive. Spong suggests that by the early years of the 2^nd century, the Christian church had become an almost exclusively Gentile church.

The story of Peter’s vision and the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10 illustrate just the extent of the cultural tension. Murray in his book ‘Church after Christendom’  says “the significance of this incident, of course, is that, for the first time, a full-blown, card-carrying, pork-eating, uncircumcised Gentile had been converted, filled with the Spirit and baptised” (p4). What categories could we place in that sentence today to indicate the changing landscape of faith and church today?

The point I am trying to make or at least suggest, is that the dunes we sheep inhabit today were very different from the dunes of these readings and I suggest will be very different from the dunes of the future. The winds of the Spirit continue to blow and change the landscape of the church. This is hard for sheep like us.

What does the shepherd leading his flock through constantly changing landscapes look or sound like? Are we tempted to ignore his voice and in the hope of false security hang onto that which gives us more security than the faith following action of listening to the shepherd? Such a different metaphor as sheep in the desert is not one that instantly captures our imagination but wait.

John 10:10 says that he has come to give life and life in all its fullness. As part of my role in training curates and the continuing development of clergy in their ministry, what a beautiful and challenging image of a growing and life sustaining church and Christian, of sheep healthy and living life to the full in the desert! What a challenge to our concept of discipleship, that listening to the shepherds voice we can be healthy, growing, life sustaining sheep in the desert!

May we embrace the winds of the Spirit in the days and weeks to come as we approach Pentecost and may we hear the still, small voice of our shepherd in that wind calling us as sheep in the desert to follow him.

A religion of one's own

Moore states, "I was choosing against formal religious life and leaving open the possibility for a religion of my own. Years later I would read about Emerson coming to a similar point of decision, rejecting the formal tradition, and for him, too, it was a matter of becoming more religious, not less" (A religion of one's own, 2014, p.207).
What Moore and others such as Moore demonstrate is a faith that seeks to go beyond a human formed and controlled expression and experience of faith. In a training session for Church of England clergy discussing 'policy/rules' regarding allowing children participation in the Eucharist, all were reminded that baptism is the entrance into the church. Asked whether a Baptist's believers baptism was considered the same as an Anglican baptism, it was stated emphatically 'no'. Of course, Baptists and others similar are not allowed to preside at Catholic, Anglican or Methodist (to name bit a few) Eucharist's! Catholics may receive (participate) in Anglican Eucharist's but not the other way around and so this religious craziness continues. I can understand and sympathise with Moore and Emerson. Perhaps this is why others take it a step further such as Cupitt when he writes in 'The Fountain', "Since we now have no further world to expect beyond this one, and even this one is passing away rapidly, we should spend ourselves completely and be content in due course to pass away and be forgotten along with everything else. Life's a package deal: it cannot be re-negotiated, and there is no alternative. So we should buy into it, and make the very most of it".
How do I, if I want to leave behind silly formal religious ways and views of an out-there, above-beyond God, to 'create' an authentic faith that values my experience and yet draws on my Christian heritage and understanding? How do I create an authentic faith be it progressive or Christian humanism or whatever else it can be labelled as?

Be careful what you pray for

Be careful what you pray for
by Kurt Struckmeyer on August 29, 2014



When we pray
come, Lord Jesus
Do we mean to say
come, you malnourished stranger
come, you unwanted migrant
come, you ragged child
come, you crying crack baby
come, you dirty panhandler
come, you dying alcoholic
come, you addicted whore
come, you imprisoned gangbanger
Come, and join us.
Share our table.
Be our guest.



http://progressivechristianity.org/resources/be-careful-what-you-pray-for-2/

A Religion of One's Own (2014) by Thomas Moore

Page 1 'In one way or another, religion has always been a part of my life, and that, too, is changing in ways I couldn't have predicted ten years ago. The question is: should I try to live without it? Should I resist change and keep my religion traditional? Or should I rethink what religion is all about?' Indeed, welcome to crossingthebar!

Love as Eros, Philos and Agape by Paulo Coelho on April 5, 2013 In 1986, when I was on the road to Santiago with my guide Petrus, we passed through the city of Logroño while a wedding was taking place. We ordered two glasses of wine, I prepared something to nibble on, and Petrus discovered a table where we could sit down together with the other guests. The wedding couple cut an immense cake. “They must love one another,” I thought aloud. “Of course they love one another,” said a man in a dark suit sitting at our table. Have you ever seen anyone get married for any another reason?” But Petrus did not let the question go unanswered: “What type of love do you mean: Eros, Philos or Agape?” The man looked at him without understanding a word. “There are three words in Greek to designate love,” Petrus said. “Today you are seeing the manifestation of Eros, that sentiment between two persons.” “The two seem to love one another. In a short time they will be fighting alone for life, establishing themselves in a house and taking part in the same adventure: that’s what makes love grand and dignified. He will pursue his career, she probably knows how to cook and will make an excellent housewife because since she was a little girl she was brought up to do that. She will accompany him, they will have children and they will manage to build something together, they will be happy for ever.” “All of a sudden, however, this story could happen the other way around. He is going to feel that he is not free enough to show all the Eros, all the love that he has for other women. She may begin to feel that she has sacrificed a career and a brilliant life to accompany her husband. So, instead of creating together, each of them will feel robbed in their way of loving. Eros, the spirit that joins them, will start to display only his bad side. And what God had meant to be man’s most noble sentiment will begin to be a source of hatred and destruction.” “Notice how odd it is,” continued my guide. “Despite being good or bad, the face of Eros is never the same in all persons.” Then he continued, pointing to an elderly couple: “Look at those two: they haven’t let themselves be affected by hypocrisy, like so many others. They look like they are a couple of farm workers: hunger and need have obliged them to overcome many a difficulty together. They have discovered love through work, which is where Eros shows his most beautiful face, also known as Philos.” “What’s Philos?” “Philos is love in the form of friendship. It’s what I feel for you and others. When the flame of Eros no longer able to shine, it’s Philos who keeps couples together.” “And what about Agape?” “Agape is total love, the love that devours those that experience it. Whoever knows and experiences Agape sees that nothing else in this world is of any importance, only loving. This was the love that Jesus felt for humanity, and it was so great that it shook the stars and changed the course of man’s history.” “During the millennia of the history of civilization, many people have been smitten by this Love that Devours. They had so much to give – and the world demanded so little – that they were obliged to seek out the deserts and isolated places because love was so great that it transfigured them. They became the hermit saints that we know today.” “For me and you who have experienced another form of Agape, this life here may seem hard and terrible. Yet the Love that Devours makes everything lose its importance: these men live only to be consumed by their love.” He took a pause. “Agape is the Love that Devours,” he repeated once more, as if this was the phrase that best defined that strange type of love. “Luther King once said that when Christ spoke of loving our enemies he was referring to Agape. Because according to him, it was impossible to like our enemies, those who do us harm and try to make our daily suffering all the worse.” “But Agape is a lot more than liking. It is a sentiment that invades everything, fills all the cracks and makes any attempt at aggression turn to dust.” “There are two forms of Agape. One is isolation, life dedicated only to contemplation. The other is precisely the opposite: contact with other human beings, and enthusiasm, the sacred sense of work. Enthusiasm means trance, ecstasy, connecting with God. Enthusiasm is Agape directed at some idea, something.” “When we love and believe in something from the bottom of our soul, we feel stronger than the world and we are imbued with a serenity that comes from the certainty that nothing can conquer our faith. This strange force makes us always make the right decisions at the right time, and we are surprised at our own capacity when we fulfill our objective.” “Enthusiasm usually manifests itself in all its power in the early years of our life. We still have a strong tie with the divinity and we give ourselves with such zeal to our toys that dolls take on a life of their own and little tin soldiers manage to march. When Jesus said that the kingdom of Heaven belonged to the children, he was referring to Agape in the form of Enthusiasm. The children reached him without paying any attention to his miracles, his wisdom, the Pharisees and the apostles. They came happily, driven by Enthusiasm.” taken from THE PILGRIMAGE http://paulocoelhoblog.com/ I like the term Love that Devours. I like the idea that one can love and be loved with such passion that you are over-taken, over-come, devoured by it. And if it is the kind of love that enhances life and causes one to feel like a hero, like a god because you are so loved, then why not experience such love, why not allow it devour you. It is like the love one has for your children. It is a love that will cause me to anything for the sake of my daughter, even death. It is a love that compels me to keep investing in it for love will have it no other way. It is a love that devours me in the giving of it and it is a love that devours me in the recieving of it. It is a love that will devour me in the losing of it. It is a risk. The more you love, the more you feel at loss when you are not in the presence of the beloved. The more you pursue in enthusiasm, the more you are tormented when contrained due to circumstances you would not wish on your worse enemy. To love with a love that devours is the most dangerous risk you take in life.

Jesus in Disneyland by David Lyon

p43 Beliefs and practices that once were sealed within an institutional form now flow freely over foremerly policed boundaries. p47 Modernity made a lot of the mind, especially as a means of controlling and regulating the body, but in a postmodernizing world, the body itself becomes a site of consumption, of controversy, and of conflict. What Lyon suggests on p43 is what I would consider the conditions for the expansion of knowledge and epistemology. Although orthodoxy may provide a superficial sense of confidence and security, it does not allow experience and epistemology through reflection and enquiry to continue to shape and reconfigure habitus and praxis (by implication). What the postmodern condition allows or gives permission to, is to venture beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy (defined and set by people relative to a context and motivation therefore calling into question the very understanding of orthodoxy) and explore other ways of being, seeing and knowing. It is an epoch in time which could lead to a new reconfiguration of belief and faith. Related to this permission giving is the context in which this new exploration can take place in that it is not focussed around the mind solely but incorporates the body as well. The holistic exploration beyond boundaries is where we now found debates regarding the human genome and same sex marriage.

The alchemist

It's not love to be static like the desert, nor is it love to roam the world like the wind. And it's not love to see everything from a distance, like you do (the sun). Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World...when we love, we always strive to become better than we are...

The boy turned to the hand that wrote all. As he did so, he sensed that the universe had fallen silent, and he decided not to speak. A current of love rushed from his heart and the boy began to pray. It was a prayer that he had never said before, because it was a prayer without words or pleas. His prayer didn't give thanks for his sheep having found new pastures; it didn't ask that the boy be able to sell more crystal; and it didn't beseech that the women he had met continue to await his return. In the silence, the boy understood that the desert, the wind, and the sun were also trying to understand the signs written by the hand, and were seeking to follow their paths, and to understand what had been written on a single emerald.

The ultimate religious sacrifice is to give up God

click here

The main thing, is the main thing

The main bit is at 2:10 to 2:46 in the clip.....listen carefully
- what is the main emphasis in our faith expression?
- what is the priority?
- how can we move others towards such an ideal?
click here

Jay Bakker

I am moved by the emotion in this clip click here

Brian Mclaren answers the million dollar question

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/brian_d_mclaren/2010/07/let_there_be_peace_in_our_individual_identities.html

Barque: Thomas Moore's Work: Give up thought patterns for heaven on earth

Barque: Thomas Moore's Work: Give up thought patterns for heaven on earth

Thomas Moore

There are two ways to be spiritually secure: one is to attach to a fixed and uncomplicated teaching, leadership, and set of moral standards. Another is to be open to life, ever deepening your understanding and giving up all defensiveness around convictions. The first way offers only the illusion of certainty, an illusion that must be maintained by anxious inflexibility. The second is to live from a deeper source, with values that cannot be codified in a list of rules. Central among these values is love, understood as profound respect for others.
Writing in the sand, p.xvi

I am drawn and challenged by these words because as I stand aloof as an on-looker at my own faith, the tradition I am a part of, I see these two tensions exist in futile revelry. Not only do I straddle both these opposing worldviews and philosophies in my working context, I have also colluded with both like a harlot, guilty myself of the illusion it evoked until my reality and the 'shit that happens' rocked me into the reality of failure and rejection. And at that point of isolated vulnerability, it is the latter that has been the most accepting, restorative and the most honest option for me to pursue as a new deeper experience.

john shelby spong

Look at him! Look not at his divinity, but look, rather, at his freedom.
Look not at the exaggerated tales of his of his power, but look, rather at his infinite capacity to give himself away.
Look not at the first-century mythology that surrounds him, but look, rather, at his courage to be, his ability to live, the contagious quality of his love.

p16...in grief situations that i have entered as a pastor, it is inevitably the religious person who is insensitive, who feels compelled to speak surface assurances, who suppresses real feelings with homilies on faith, and who readily supplies pat answers for diffecult and complex questions.

p54...i am glad the realm of spiritual is no more. i am glad that the god identified with this realm is dead. we isolated the god of our religion in a system and located it in an otherworldly ghetto. Now the secular world has killed that god...but a god who could be isolated from the world could certainly not be either the god of the hebrews or the god of the bible. so perhaps the death of that god is only the death of an idol who masqueraded as god for almost 2000 years...for the first time since christianity escaped its jewish origins, we again perceive reality as a whole.

p164...orthodoxy will have no power unless honest heresy is a possibility.

Browning quoted by Drane

Most of us stand on the boundary: religious communities attract us; we may even participate in them; but we also wonder if they make sense.
The McDonaldization of the church

i-revtrev

Exert from new book:
I like to think that one day out side time and space (I know, that is a paradox!) there existed (another paradox because to exist assumes time) this ‘being’ called Love. This Love was not some ungraspable phenomenon like the wind but had a personality and other personable qualities and in its nature being love, seeking to love, Love decided to create a life that would be able to share in this life force of love but also be objects of love, experiencing and being loved by Love. However, understanding the complexities of this mystery love (and truly who today still understands love), Love gave Love a name…God and so we have: God is Love.