Former Anglican priest Mark Vernon discusses the impact of Honest to God, a book by Anglican bishop John Robinson, when it was first published in 1963.

For Robinson, the problem was the belief that we are “down here” and God is “up there”, as if sitting on a cloud. Science destroys that worldview. Instead, he sought God in life.

 

Similarly, Jesus is an alluring figure not because he saves you from your sins and a wrathful deity, or offers immortality, but because he displays the transforming potential of love.

 

The bishop was part of the demythologisation movement, an attempt to re-describe Christianity in terms that made sense to the non-religious mind.

Of course, demythologization didn’t start in the 1960s. Back in 1935, in an essay called “On Youthful Cynicism”, Bertrand Russell dryly noted that the “God of most moderns is a little vague, and apt to degenerate into a Life Force or a ‘power not ourselves that makes for righteousness’”. This transformation of religion into allegory and metaphor is fair enough if done in a sufficiently complete, honest and clear-eyed way. Yahweh could have an honourable place in our culture as a figure symbolizing cosmic order, for example, provided the clearly expressed consensus was that he was merely a symbolic figure rather than an actual being dispensing commandments that had to be obeyed. The problem is that adherents of “demythologized” versions of Christianity generally seem to want their god to be just metaphorical enough to avoid being too obviously incompatible with scientific knowledge, while still retaining an aura of sanctity and solemnity that a purely metaphorical entity could never aspire to.

However, Vernon notes that demythologization has only gone so far. Even in secular Britain, lots of people still believe in angels, the afterlife and the soul, even if they don’t go to church.

There has been a spontaneous rediscovery of the spiritual dimension, if actually it ever died. The tragedy for the church, 50 years after Honest to God, is that many people no longer feel that Sunday worship and the images of God on offer there has much to do with it.

 

This is a problem because religious practices and theological traditions hold a wealth of insights that are needed if the questing is to deepen and grow. They help ground the speculations of New Age thought and offer means of discernment.

Insights into what? Where is all this questing supposed to lead? New Age thought grounded in religious practices and theological traditions will be more or less as hollow and misguided as New Age thought grounded in the usual mix of wishful thinking and hocus pocus. It could even be said that the two amount to the same thing. Mark Vernon seems profoundly uninterested in whether the “spiritual dimension” describes anything real, but that’s an issue reasonable people should consider before they go off “questing” for holy grails that won’t hold water.

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The “Canadian church” spends far too much money on agitprop.

At the end of February, a Canadian Atheist post alerted the Canadian Office of Religious Freedom to a possible threat to the religious freedom of Steinbach, Manitoba’s Christian citizens. The Office must have read the post because Vic Toews, federal Conservative MP for the area, “has joined the local MLA and religious leaders in speaking out against Bill 18,” the (NDP) Manitoba  government’s Bill 18: The Public Schools Amendment Act (Safe And Inclusive Schools).

Vic Toews, the federal Minister of Public Safety, is putting the health and safety of all Manitoba students at risk.  According to a CBC report,

A minister in Steinbach, the town’s city council and MP Vic Toews all spoke out against the bill and said it violated their religious freedom.

Toews needs a reality check.  He is siding with Steinbach pastor Ray Duerksen, who claims that Bill 18, which is designed to protect all students, not only LGBT students, is

“the biggest challenge the Canadian church has ever faced.” He opposes bullying of any child, but argues the bill protects gay kids more than religious ones.

Evan Wiens,  a 16-year-old student in Steinbach, who is getting attention from local and national media, is bravely holding to his convictions despite slurs and opposition from fellow students.  Weins is

fighting for those who feel they can’t speak out.

“They should not have to feel ashamed, and they should not have to feel like they have to hide themselves,” said the 16-year-old, who was shy, at first, about his fight. “But then I thought about it, and I thought if a church is allowed to vocally oppose a bill, what’s so bad about me standing up for my rights?”

No, students who want to start Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs in their schools, “should not have to feel ashamed.” It is Vic Toews, a member of the Federal Government of Canada, which has little or no jurisdiction over education, who should be ashamed. He is interfering with provincial legislation and is colluding with a bunch of religious, homophobic, bigots who are fear mongering by claiming that “the bill protects gay kids more than religious ones.”

Toews

believes Bill 18 represents an “unconstitutional infringement upon the freedom of religion.”

Go back to Ottawa, Mr. Toews, and read the Constitution. We don’t want to know what you “believe”; we want facts, not support for religious privilege.

Beth Erickson, who blogs at Incongruent Elements, has posted a hilarious video clip from Saturday Night Live: a trailer for a non-existent movie called “Djesus Uncrossed”. You can probably already see where this is going, and as you might expect, the clip is slightly gory and foulmouthed:

Erickson also links to a WorldNetDaily article that makes predictable complaints about double standards:

“If anything in our PC culture should be considered obviously offensive, this is it,” Zahn continued. “Can you imagine the uproar that would occur if SNL made a parody, ‘Muhammad Unleashed?’ People at NBC would be losing their jobs. The ‘sensitivity police’ would be out in full force. It would cause international outcry.”

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My last few posts have been about the antics of militant Islamists in places like Mali and Syria, a topic that I think is pertinent to atheists all over the world for a couple of different reasons. First, some of the militants have global ambitions, and there’s probably a real correlation between their ability to carve out “havens” in Africa, the Middle East and central Asia and their ability to launch terrorist attacks elsewhere. Canada and its allies ought to be capable of foiling most such attacks, and of taking more or less in stride the few that will inevitably get through, but it still makes sense to minimize the problem by interfering with the haven-carving whenever feasible. Second, events in Mali and Syria are a good reminder that the world is still home to fanatics that can realistically aspire to topple secular (or at least secularish) governments in the name of religion. In this sense, the radical edge of Islam is sharper and more dangerous than the radical edge of any other faith.

However, it does bear pointing out that other religions can be nearly as vicious and oppressive as Islam. Take, for example, the Russian Orthodox version of Christianity:

Lawmakers have accused gays of decreasing Russia’s already low birth rates and said they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled. Orthodox activists criticized U.S. company PepsiCo for using a “gay” rainbow on cartons of its dairy products. An executive with a government-run television network said in a nationally televised talk show that gays should be prohibited from donating blood, sperm and organs for transplants, while after death their hearts should be burned or buried.

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Being on the wrong continent to attend this Eschaton thing that I understand is happening in Ottawa, I marked the beginning of December by flipping over a new page of my calendar and putting up the two Christmas decorations that I keep in my solitary little apartment: a stocking, in which I have never received so much as a lump of coal, and a small artificial snowperson of indeterminate sex with a missing nose and a sign that says “Merry Christmas”. At least neither of them is as soulless and aesthetically revolting as the “abstract Christmas tree” that the city of Brussels has chosen to install in its Grand Place this year, a twenty-five-metre green monstrosity of protruding rectangular prisms.

An online petition calling for the hideous thing to be replaced by “un véritable sapin de noël” is pushing 25,000 signatures as of this writing, and the Grand Place is emerging as a battlefield in the Belgian version of the War on Christmas:

Parts of the Belgian press have been keen to suggest that the tree is an example of “political correctness”, designed to be more appealing to non-Christian religious groups than a traditional fir tree, our correspondent says.

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LZ Granderson is one of my favourite journalists and this week he has gracefully and unapologetically called out Christians who use their faith for hate and fear.

For all of the rhetoric about Christianity being under attack in this country, oftentimes it feels no one does a better job of hurting Christianity than the people who call themselves Christians. Especially after a national tragedy.

How right Granderson is. When Jerry Newcombe found a microphone to let us all know that the non-Christian victims of this past Friday’s tragedy in Colorado were going to “a terrible place” I was once again left simply shaking my head. It’s been asked before, but is it possible to be completely shocked and yet not all surprised all at once? Continue reading →