Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

The Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth!

As far as I am concerned, you have put your finger on the hot button of the direction the United Church wishes to travel. Great, let's talk about it.

There is one item that crops up over and over again, but somehow doesn't get addressed. That is the issue of Truth to Power. What do I mean?

My wife Mary and I have raised 4 children and have seen our grandchildren being send to elementary school. Nothing spedial about it, it happens all over the place. It is during that time however that I noticed (without paying particular attention) that the curriculum underwent several changes. Nah, not a big deal either, things change, knowledge expands and anybody who wished to keep pace with the front runners better be prepared to provide its offspring with the latest in technical and other knowledge.

Nobody argues about that because there really is nothing to argue about.It all is rather a mater of proceeding by using one's common sense.Till you have to deal with your family religion. Oh boy, now all of a sudden we run into a brick wall. What's the difficulty? The difficulty is that with the addition of new information and related consequences the walls go up and the draw bridges are drawn. Why is that?

I have, and still am puzzling about it, puzzled about that question. I have finally come to the conclusion that religious institutions, including the United Church of Canada, are loath to change. If change is to be entertained it will come slowly and only if the proposing agents are on the up and up, off the top shelf theologically, so to speak.

Why, what happened? During the last 20-25 years more and more people, lay as well as professional, have started asking questions about the traditional Christian message that was preached year after year from the Lexionary. More and more of these teachers, preachers and authors raised more questions on how to read and interpret the contents of the "Good Book".

As the pressure increased to find contemporary answers for an archaic message, more effort was poured in digging up the past. More and more scholars like Bishop Pike, John A.T. Robinson, bishop John Spong, prof Borg, and etc, etc, etc, started finding alternative ways of sharing the Old Time message, and, in doing so, caused more and more lay people to doubt what they had learned. The general result? A loss of trust in the Good Old message found in the Bible. Any number of looming difficulties arose such as evolution, quantum mechanics, DNA, etc and demanded answers. The answers more often than not shook the security of the good old explanations.

What have been the results of the "Shaking of the Foundations"?
Fewer and fewer people went to church on Sundays and the membership of the United Church, for instance, has been drastically reduced.

Another consequence has been that the United Church, for one, has come close to fragmenting into several denominations. The adherents to the "Good Old" tradition had more and more difficulties having conversations with the liberal wing of the church and felt more and more internal pressure to go their own way.

One of the main difficulties of course has been to find a Sunday school curriculum that would satisfy everybody in the big tent. And there looms the question. What to teach the adults in the pews?

The difficulty has not so much been the Sunday School Curriculum but rather what to teach the adults. Teach/Preach the traditional message, or switch to more modern up to date stuff? Like? Simple, at our last Genenral Council we have adopted our "Song of Faith", a "new" statement of faith. If one however takes the trouble to download it from the website and to compare it with the language of its predecessors, one will have to deal with a new set of different concepts such as the belief that "everything, animate or inanimate" is related and that Jesus didn't die on the cross to "pay for our sins".

We are back to the original question: when kids go to school and are confronted by a "new" curriculum, they have no choice but to study it as that is the decision the leaders of the school system have made.

What now is the role of the leaders of the United Church of Canada with regards to the difference between the contents of the old beliefs and the new one. Introduce them in our churches and have the congregation deal with them, or --- what?

This raises some interesting questions and I hope many of you will read this and tackle those questions. What is the Truth and how are we to introduce it?

IMO it is THE issue we have to deal with! Do we insist that our leaders (ministers?) lead the introduction of the new material or are we satisfied to allow our members to live on in their naive understanding of reality?

Shalom,

Peter

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