[Dialogue] UC of Canada Spong's discussion

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The United Church of Canada Strikes  Again 
I have long admired the United Church  of Canada. Born in the prairies of our 
northern neighbor in the 1920s by a  merger primarily of the Presbyterian and 
Methodist Churches, consistently it has  been willing to try new things that 
defy typical ecclesiastical expectations.  The original decision to bring 
together two ethnically diverse traditions, one  of a Scottish and the other of an 
English background was a very bold step for  that time in church history. 
People had to embrace the reality of their life in  the "New World" and to lay 
aside much of their tribal history. It also meant  that many small towns in 
central Canada did not have to face the specter of  competing denominations. 
Slowly, from that bold beginning, this Church has  evolved into a uniquely Canadian 
expression of Christianity. Today the United  Church, the Roman Catholics and 
the Anglicans, form Canada's three major  Christian traditions. The Roman 
Catholics and the Anglicans, however, are much  more deeply bound by their ethnic 
history. Centered in French Quebec, the Roman  Catholics are consequently not 
as national in scope as the other two. The  Anglicans, while national, are 
too closely linked to their English roots to  reflect adequately the growing 
diversity of Canada's population. By merging the  Presbyterians and the 
Methodists almost 90 years ago, The United Church of  Canada created a tradition in 
which diversity became a virtue and with it the  necessity of being open to the 
realities of an ever changing and expanding world  of thought and action. Today 
it is prepared to give leadership in Canada, which  is probably the most 
socially aware democracy in the Western world. A brief look  at its 
decision-making history will reveal how this Church has become what it  is.  
In the 1930s, the United Church of  Canada passed a resolution declaring that 
its ordained ministry was open to both  males and females. This step was 
taken long before a woman had presented herself  for ordination. That would not 
happen until more than a decade later. It was  also at a time when rigid 
patriarchy was unchallenged in the western world. The  only pressure that brought 
about this ruling was the pressure of living out this  Church's vision of what it 
means to be a church and its resulting willingness to  step outside 
conventional ecclesiastical boundaries. Many years later, when  women did become a 
major force in the ranks of the ordained, not surprisingly,  this previously 
settled issue resulted in no great battle. Women have now served  this Church not 
just as pastors but also in its highest elected office of  Moderator.  
In 1988, once again dramatically  leading the way for institutional 
Christianity, the United Church of Canada  declared that sexual orientation was not a 
barrier to ordination. This was done  while the Anglican Church of Canada was 
putting a priest named James Ferry on  trial for disobeying his bishop. He had 
been outed as a gay man and had refused  to leave his partner as demanded of 
him by his bishop. The Canadian Roman  Catholics were also moving in an 
increasingly homophobic direction, a situation  that has only worsened over the 
years. For the United Church of Canada this was  another preemptive strike, and as 
one might imagine, it was not greeted with joy  in its conservative wing. 
There were significant defections, but this Church did  not waffle, apologize or 
play on the bogus 'unity of the church theme' that the  Anglicans worldwide 
have turned into an excuse for doing nothing. Instead, it  stood firm in its 
witness and conviction by printing thousands of bumper  stickers that appeared on 
automobiles across Canada proclaiming, quite simply,  "Proud to be United." 
The defections soon ceased and this Church began to  recover from its losses but 
of far more significance, its integrity remained  intact.  
Later the United Church of Canada  began to debate publicly the effectiveness 
of many of Christianity's pre-modern  theological assumptions. This effort 
was led by and focused in the work of the  Rev. Dr. William Phipps, the 
Moderator at that time. Almost single-handedly he  made rigorous and open theological 
discussion an acceptable part of the life of  this Church. When the 
'Progressive Christian Network' was formed in Canada, it  was, not surprisingly, a 
United pastor, the Rev. Gretta Vosper, who became its  head.  
Now, at the very end of 2005, the  United Church of Canada has acted once 
more in a bold, provocative way.  Officials of this Church have purchased a piece 
of land in Markham, a suburb of  Toronto in order to start an experimental 
congregation. This entity will  deliberately and self-consciously seek to 
develop a new model of what it means  to be the church in the 21st century. It will 
be dedicated to theological  openness, discussion and debate. It will seek to 
create new worship forms and  practices that do not force post-modern 
worshipers to say meaningless or  unbelievable liturgical words that may have made 
sense in the first century when  the Bible was written, in the fourth century 
when the Creeds were adopted or the  13th century when worship forms were set in 
their traditional context. A goal  for this new community of believers will be 
to discern an essential theological  distinction between the experience of 
God and the explanation of that  experience. That distinction is not normally 
acknowledged in ecclesiastical  circles. The Bible, the Creeds and all church 
dogma and doctrine are in the last  analysis explanations. The God experience 
is, I believe, both real and eternal,  but every explanation of the God 
experience is time-bound, time-warped and  destined to die as inadequate. So, no Bible 
can ever be inerrent, no pope can  ever be infallible and no creed can ever 
be eternally true. A Church that  recognizes this reality will inevitably be a 
new thing. For an ecclesiastical  body to make a strategic decision to use its 
funds to develop such a  congregation that will inevitably challenge 
'headquarters' is a remarkably bold  act. My sense is that it could only happen in the 
United Church of Canada, where  the words of the poet James Russell Lowell, 
"time makes ancient good uncouth,"  seem to have taken root. At last, some part 
of the Christian Church recognizes  that when we speak of God today we cannot 
do so in the same way that believers  did in a previous era when they thought 
that this planet earth was the center of  the universe, basking in the direct 
gaze of the supernatural deity who lived  above the sky. In our day we cannot 
believe in a miracle-working deity who, if  we pray fervently, will break 
into the ordered world of natural cause and effect  to accomplish a divine 
purpose. We cannot think of human life as a little lower  than the angels when we 
know that it is really just a little higher than the  apes. We can no longer 
assume that because people are religious they are not  either neurotic or evil, 
nor can we pretend that religious truth, like all human  truth, is eternal 
rather than relative truth. This new experimental entity will  deliberately seek 
to introduce the people who choose to worship there to  biblical scholarship in 
which critical historical findings will not be hidden.  Moses did not write 
the Torah. David did not write the Psalms. Paul was not a  Trinitarian. The 
Christmas stories are beautifully crafted interpretive myths.  The Easter 
narratives are not only deeply contradictory but are deliberately  shaped by 
liturgical concerns rather than historical events. This will be a  Church dedicated to 
listening to the questions people raise far more than to  pretending that it 
possesses all the answers. It will be open to the radical  diversity in the 
human family and therefore to differing expressions of  religious truth. There 
will thus be no claim made here that there is only one  way to journey into the 
mystery and wonder of God.  
This congregation will not use such  phrases as "Jesus died for my sins." It 
will discourage the self-hatred and  self-loathing that are so much a part of 
contemporary liturgy with its universal  calls to repentance, pleas for mercy 
and assertions that "there is no health in  us." It will not require its 
adherents to remain dependent and childlike by  suggesting that they must be "born 
again." It will rather assist its people in  the hard human task of growing up 
into emotional maturity. In these and many  other ways, this new congregation 
will seek to appeal to those who have been  turned off by traditional 
expressions of Christianity. It will seek to attract  those for whom the God met in 
church is simply too small to be God for them any  longer.  
I have known individual congregations  to move, ever so delicately, in these 
directions. The individual leaders of  these efforts at reform, however, are 
always looking over their shoulders to  check on the response from their 
respective hierarchies. I have never known any  ecclesiastical group that itself 
constitutes 'the hierarchy' to move in this  direction. I am amazed at the 
imagination of these United Church of Canada  leaders and am stirred by their 
courage.  
The last public address that I made  in the year 2005 was at the inauguration 
of this new church just outside  Toronto. The opening service was held not in 
a sacred building, but in a  theater. Singers known in Canada's theatrical 
circles entertained the assembled  host of over 300 people. The newly appointed 
pastor, the Rev. Mary Joseph,  identified herself and gave a brief statement 
outlining her vision of why this  new congregation was necessary. I spoke on my 
understanding of the nature of  Christianity and why it cannot be forever 
bound by the traditional limits that  have come to define it. Then I engaged the 
audience in a question/answer format  for over an hour. For the first time, 
many of them discovered that their deepest  questions could be articulated 
inside a 'religious' setting and that they could  be dealt with sensitively. When 
the evening closed, 73 family units agreed to be  part of the inauguration of 
this new venture.  
A gifted Canadian singer closed the  evening with a stirring rendition of, 
"I'll Never Walk Alone." It seemed  fitting. We then went into the coldness of a 
Toronto December night with a light  step and a warm heart. Someone inside 
official church circles was willing to  walk where ecclesiastical bodies have 
historically been afraid to walk. Perhaps  the Christianity to which I am so 
deeply committed can reform itself from inside  and become a force in humanizing 
our increasingly inhumane world. That is my  hope. That is my prayer.  
— John Shelby Spong  
Note: If any of my readers want to  know more about this venture they may 
write mary at maryjoseph.ca.  
I will ask the Rev. Mary Joseph to be  a guest columnist later in the year to 
bring my readers up to date on this  project. 

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Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong 
Lee Wetherington of Goldleaf  Technologies writes:  
Like you, I've long been skeptical of  the supposed "benefits" of 
circumcision and feel it is nothing more than  religion-endorsed genital mutilation 
performed on unconsenting infants. Because  of this, I continue to have sharp pangs 
of remorse and regret over allowing my  two sons to be circumcised at birth.  
This week, much to my surprise, a  landmark study, published in the journal 
Plos Medicine by the French national  agency for AIDS research, confirms that 
circumcision reduces the risk of HIV  infection dramatically, by as much as 
60%. If similar studies now underway in  Kenya and Uganda corroborate the 
results, circumcision could become a powerful  weapon-with condom use and other 
measures-in the fight against AIDS. If valid,  would such research change your 
position on circumcision?  
Dear Lee,  
In a word, no!! Mutilating the baby  instead of teaching each child the arts 
of good hygiene is bad practice, bad  ethics, bad theology and a bad idea. I 
do not understand how any religious  system could ever endorse that. Female 
circumcision - I prefer to call it  "female genital mutilation" is still 
practiced in parts of Christian Africa. It  too is said to have health benefits. I 
think not. Both of these practices  represent control tactics and guilt laden 
castration rites born out of the  superstition and ignorance of the past. I 
regard circumcision in both sexes as a  barbaric act with no redeeming features. I 
find it almost laughable that the  same religious voices that oppose the use 
of condoms would now support  circumcision as a health practice.  
— John Shelby Spong 

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