A New Christianity

Section Internet Links	Wayne's Notes	Jock's Notes
Wayne. Ch 11 - But What About Prayer? After all that Spong has said about the apparent decline and fall of the old god of theism, a natural question might be: But what about prayer? Is it still possible, or even honest, to pray? If we have removed God from the heavens, if not from reality, to whom should we be praying and to where should prayer be directed? When we pray, what should be happening and what kind of communication might be taking place? I think Spong has some interesting things to say in this chapter, and I will try to present his points as best I can. At the same time, I believe that others have gone a lot further down the way of answering and more adequately responding to the concerns Spong raises. But our task right now it to responsibly address some of the issues he discusses in chapter eleven. WHAT PRAYER IS NOT It is quite apparent that Spong believes in prayer, and spends a good deal of his day (upwards of two hours) in what he considers prayerful activity. I can respect that. But he is also quite clear about what prayer is not. First, he does not believe that we should be asking God for things to happen, or trying to manipulate the Deity with our requests. He is much too aware of the problem that arises, for example when we resort to prayer, rather than to credible medical practitioners. He is also concerned that we not try to make our concerns "God please gimme what I want" in nature. After all, God, if God is truly God, already knows what we need and desire. Spong wants to avoid the problem of what happens when prayers are not answered - and that is the reason for his reference to the student athlete in the evangelical bible school in Tennessee. He chides those who try to second-guess God and have answers, or rationalizations for when things turn out differently that we would hope, through our prayers. What Spong resents, most of all, is praying with the sense that God has a plan for everything, and if our prayers are not answered, we must somehow satisfy ourselves with the nostrum: "Thy will be done, not mine, Lord." Spong challenges those who think that a loving God would want to see babies die, young people cut off from life in their prime, and good people of any age reduced to becoming vegetables. "The theistic God pointed to in this mindset appears to be manipulative... and even cruel," he says, with no small amount of credibility. "This scenario... presents us with a picture of theism at its immoral worst. God is (being) portrayed as a vindictive demon. (188). Spong honestly struggles with this issue, and for that we owe him considerable gratitude. He says, essentially, that while he continues to pray, his communication with God must have integrity. He does not want to follow prayer in the pattern of our primitive ancestors who are traumatized with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and respond to this plight by postulating the existence of a protector more powerful than the forces that threatened them (191). This kind of prayer is a reversion to the old theistic tenets, he says. Namely that we are not alone, that there is a personal power somewhere, which is greater than the limited power of humanity; and that this personal power can effectively deal with all those issues that lie beyond human competence to solve. Prayer, he says, began as and continues to be a primary attempt to exercise control in those areas of life where we sense ourselves to be out of control, ineffective, weak and victimized... "Prayer, please recognize, is the way a human being plays the trump card of theism" (191). Sickness and death are not punishments. Sickness and tragedy are facts of life. Viruses attack. Wars kill. There is no theistic God directing these processes of cause and effect. This is neither the way life is or the way God is. Frankly, I have to agree with Spong. The secular philosophers have a point here. They have been making it for 200 years. People of the Spirit have been trying, I believe to defend a omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God that does not exist, and in that I have to admit that by laying it out as he has, Spong makes a good case. WHAT PRAYER IS So does this mean that if the theistic God is dead, prayer or communication with a Divine Being is no longer relevant? Not so, says Spong. "I propose," he says "that we substitute words that have, over the centuries, been identified with the mystical disciplines of spiritual development -- words such as meditation and contemplation" (193). These words and concepts help us to begin the task of creating a new definition of prayer. If prayer does not bring results, he continues, does it lose all its worth? Why can we not surrender the need to manipulate and control God by receiving a payoff? Do we need any longer an external, invasive, miracle-working deity who must be implored to come to our aid? If we reject the old theistic deity, do we have to reject the depth of life present within each of us and within the gathered human community that sustains and propels us beyond our limits? Here is where I think Spong is majestic and realistic at the same time. "No one should be sick alone. No one should die along. No one should seek high-tech solutions to medical problems without a community to provide a high-touch environment of love" (195). "Prayer is the activity that enables each of us to be givers and receivers from one another of the deepest meaning of life -- a meaning I call God" (196). So, according to Spong, when we remember each other, during our Sunday morning expressions of celebrations and concerns, we are actually praying. When we read to enhance our spiritual, theological or experiential awareness, we are engaging in prayer. "My actions, my engagement with people, the facing of concrete issues - all of these become for me the real time of prayer" (197). Spong believes that God can be found not only in the quiet places but in the hurly-burly of a busy and sometimes troubling life. God is to be found not only in the stable rocks but also the rushing rapids of that life. Prayer is a deeply personal exchange, and sometimes it is a conversation with myself -- he obviously seems to be saying. "I no longer think of prayer as invoking the presence of an external deity.. I no longer expect to change the mind or the will of a theistic deity... I no longer think of prayer time but of prayer living... I find words like meditation and contemplation to be preferable to the word prayer" (197-8). "I no longer expect a theistic deity to work for me, but I do expect to spend my days working for the expansion of life, for the fullness of love and for the enhancement of being" (198). Then, perhaps one of his most helpful statements: "I am also experientially ready to affirm that the power of prayer is very clear in the profound way that my times of meditation and contemplation have, in fact, changed me... and helped me to solve problems, step across barriers, move beyond my prejudices and fears, and enter a new being; a barrier-free humanity" (199). "I am part of the change process because I am part of who God is" (200). Questions 1. Some would argue that what Spong is really talking about here is auto-suggestion (or talking to myself). How would you describe it? At what point is it possible to take the divine from the heavens and to locate divinity within the self? (as many New Agers and eastern religious protagonists are suggesting, by the way). 2. How do you react to Spong's point that prayer, for him, is no longer a matter of changing some external deity, but of experiencing a change in oneself? 3. Do you find that Spong makes a satisfying distinction between God as transcendent and God as immanent? Between God as deus revelatus (God revealed) and God as hidden (deus absconditus) suggested by St. Augustine? Between God as supernatural and this worldly? Discuss.*
Jock's. Ch 12 - The Ecclesia of Tomorrow "Where all are Christians, the situation is this: To call oneself a Christian is the means whereby one secures oneself against all sorts of inconveniences and discomforts, and the means whereby one secures worldly good, comforts, profit, etc. But we make as nothing had happened, we declaim about believing ('He who knows best, that is our priest'), about confessing Christ before the world, about following him, etc., etc; and orthodoxy frourishes in the land, no heresy, no schism, orthodoxy everywhere, the orthodoxy which consists in playing the game of Christianity." ... Soren Kierkegaard, Attack on Christendom 1946. Fellowship and worship are the basic communal activity of any church, developed over long centuries and held in respect by each generation. The problem seems to come when a new understanding is arrived at by church people in each generation and bothers the majority who accept things as they are. Today the very language of worship is the centre of attention. Such language seems permeated with the theistic language so misleading and irrelevant to many today. Spong notes: "I treat (liturgical words) as poetry, symbols, or illuminating phrases used by our forebears in faith to articulate their deepest yearings." "I treat the language of worship like I treat the language of love. It is primitive, excessive, flowery, poetic, evocative. No one believes it literally." (204) Joanne Anquist put it this way "I can sing what I cannot say." I would wholeheartedly agree. And yet we are familiar with the liturgy and it is easily able to lead us into the mystery and wonder of the divine. For many for whom the language is unfamiliar, some concern and attention is appropriate. Many will find the tradition acceptable, while others will not. Each generation evolves its liturgy in such terms of sensitivity to its society and Spong acknowledges this developmental model. Looking then towards new non-theistic models of worship, Spong considers first what will not be likely. It will not be to sing the praises of a theistic deity. It will not be to confess our sins or shortcomings. It will not be to pray for change in world history, the weather or sickness. It will not be that baptism will erase original sin. It will not be to reenact the divine sacrifice on the cross. It will not direct our attention upward to the heavens. Pierre Berton was commissioned by the Anglican Church of Canada in 1965 to write a frank perspective of the Church in Canadian society - The Comfortable Pew. He himself was not a communicant having left the church. Here are a few excerpts from Ch 1 "Why I left the Anglican Church". As a youth in the Yukon. "Thus began a slow drift away from the church, unmarked by any really violent, anti-religious convictions. Mine was a rebellion born of apathy" As a soldier returned from war, going to church again with his mother. "My head was crowded with questions, ideas, vague longings, half-formed resolves, and some small troubles. Whatever it was I was seeking, I did not find it in that church. Insteaad, I was subjected to a string of religious cliches which, while doubtless comforting to those who seek solace in the repetition of old, familiar phrases, was maddening to me. We were all about to enter a New Age; yet there was nothing in that service to indicate that the world was different, that the language was different, that communication was different, that men were different." As a new parent examining the baptism service of the Anglicans. "I found I could not, without hyposcrisy, take part in it. The very first phrase that 'all men are conceived and born in sin' stuck in my craw, for I simply did not believe it." And having discussed that statement and others like it with many a clergy since. "... if the passage that I was required to attest to in this most sacred moment meant something other than what it seemed to mean, why - in the name of that God who was being invoked - why was not all this stated in the clearest possible English? If the priests of the Church themselves did not believe the literal truth of what they were saying, why were they required to say it?" " ... the Church may be struggling to make a genuine and honest effort to join the twentiesth century ... but I wonder if that revolution will come in time?" It is for people the likes of Pierre Berton that Bishop Spong has worked and written. He now takes up the task of considering what the new church might look like. For starters, he doesn't like the word 'church' and tries on the word 'ecclesia' - meaning 'those called out'. I think he's being a bit too offensive and even silly here. Even the most extreme of reformers and founders have been content with the understanding of the people that a 'church' is a place of meeting for 'those called out'. He sees: a community called into life, love, being, wholeness, God. a community that gathers to celebrate who they are, what it means to be human, and how they can be agents of life. a liturgy that includes the sacred stories of our past. a liturgy that celebrates the long human journey. a liturgy that remembers the connectedness with all living things. worship that honours the gift of self-consciousness worship that helps those gathered in community to enhance their self awareness worship based on the conviction that the pathway is a path that develops a fuller humanity. worship will deal with the issues that scar our humanity: self-centereded tribal behaviour, failure to consider future generations, the need for responsible family planning, issues of equitable world development, the gap between rich and poor, the failings of human prejudice. the ecclesia will include rituals: of birth, puberty, marriage, parenthood, sickness, aging, death. the ecclesia will not condemn or denigrate other faith traditions, though it will honour its Christian traditions. the ecclesia may evolve different calenders and traditions reflecting the whole modern world and not the ancient mediterranean world. the ecclesia will be a centre of caring, offering people opportunities to grow. the new liturgy will recognize that survival instinct will no longer be the central value of humanity. the new liturgy will not be based on guilt. the new liturgy will include the works of all God's people even to the present time and not just the Bible. the new liturgy will not be the fiat of a central order nor the priviledge of a leader, but derrive from a people gathered. I think we should note that these good objectives are not so distant from churches who through the ages have made the gospel central tin their community. Perhaps to some degree we will find what we are looking for not far away but ready at hand. Then he concludes this tentative description of the future with these stirring words: "...we live, love, and have the courage to be because only through such living, loving, and being can we make sense out of our experience of the divine. Living, loving, and being thus ultimately relates us to the holy God. That is the gospel which will create the ecclesia of the future."(217)

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