SOF 47 / May 2001 ee ars TESS SS eee ES Earlier this year a discussion on “passion and religion” intruded upon the often abstruse preoccupations of member of the SoF email list. There were 120 contributions in January alone, from e-groupies in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and the discussion continued through February and March. [AN STUBBS has condensed the thousands of wandering words to offer a taste of the debate. The exchanges are real, the contributors’ names alone are fictitious religion, whatever turns.
Sheila: ...anyway if you read Spong’s book Born of a Woman you will see that the Christmas story has done nothing for women.
Smokey: | read Sheila’s piece with interest but what does she propose - ban it from schools, sabotage it, or maybe she has some more creative ideas? After all we are exploring religious faith as a human creation.
Sheila: Perhaps an admission from churches that they were wrong, that this story is a fiction that is abusive to women.
Smokey: Are you saying it’s been abusive to you personally?
Sheila: Surely I don’t need to spell this out, it’s all there in Spong. Women containers for men, flesh whilst men are spirit. The Immaculate Conception of Mary’s mother invented to remove the stain of sex. Countless examples of the Church oppressing women down the ages.
Friendofall: But the Christmas Story is a story, pure and simple. Surely we of all people can recognise that?
Scott: If Mary is tainted, then Jesus is implicated in this.
Original sin is passed through the father. If Jesus is free from the taint of women’s sexuality it is because he is male, not because of virginal birth.
Downunder: Even if we take the story as a symbol, it puts Jesus ahead of us. But we SoFties are happy to take the good bits and leave the rest but most of Christendom is much more cautious.
Smokey: Yes I have read Spong’s book but I asked you, Sheila, how you had been affected personally.
Downunder: Smokey takes me to task and wrongly accuses me of arrogance, that “we know better”. But I do agree that we should respect the creativity of the Biblical writers and SOF 47 / May 2001 be just as inventive with their stuff. Just how many clergy can recite the creeds with a straight face?
Smokey: Downunder misses the point that these texts impart meaning when performed by the aficionados who are passionately committed. Downunder strikes me as on the outside, more like a critic than a theatre- or film-goer, more content to comment than risk a life-changing experience. Where is his passion? You talk about the ideas of the itinerant Galilean healer - let’s hear what they mean for you.
Sheila: Clergy are into performance - parading as true what they know to be non-truth. If I want passion, truth and drama it’s the theatre for me.
Smokey: But Sheila misses the point. When you play a role it’s like virtual reality - you really do get into the skin and world of another - God, Christ, Peter - and when you leave you see how things look now to you and your world. But where’s your passion, Sheila?
Worried: Surely you can’t compare the authoritative religious creeds in a museum culture with a play or a piece of music?
Smokey: OK, so I ask all you on the list whose cultural pursuits now replace organised religion, how are these activities spiritually fulfilling?
Sheila: I think my passions are stimulated in many ways - and I’m not letting you in on them all. I love theatre and poetry, having people round for a meal. I think religion refers to what is of ultimate importance to a person. It’s what makes us better people, develops our capacity. Why should I want to perform a drama that is silly or just untrue?
Friendofall: I like Smokey’s question but wouldn't want to separate religion out from other cultural pursuits as he does. I feel we haven’t really answered his question as to why non-practitioners should want to reform Christianity.
Smokey: All our houses - arts, media, theatre as well as religion - are in need of reform. Everything in culture is up for grabs. You can’t use the Church as a scapegoat.
Blunt: Not everyone is as clever as Smokey. If you are acting a part and don’t believe it’s true, aren’t you being hypocritical?
Sheila: Why can’t churches just change the words and texts they use?
Smokey: I’m not hypocritical. | recite the creeds as historic formularies of my and my church’s faith. Sheila wouldn’t re-write any of our great poets or edit the music of our great composers. Would you rewrite Swan Lake because it’s degrading to women? e a B / ( iss) ie a Sheila: When I go to the ballet I don’t have to believe the story is true, but this is what the Church asks you to do with its stories. I think the whole focus of church worship - that we are here to give glory to and serve this person God - is a lie. I miss the poetry and music, but truth is more important.
Scott: The charge of hypocrisy is too strong. In worship, like drama, you are trying to enter into another way of seeing and feeling.
Blunt: But it’s impossible to be a nonrealist in the Church of England. Is there one bishop or leader that says you can?
Smokey: People in my church have had their fair share of tragedy. They know that religious language is not straightforward. I’m not sure truth is the most important issue anyway - isn’t it more to do with how we treat people, make peace and do justice? I use the ancient texts as a means of challenging me and renewing these perspectives.
And we do use new material too.
Downunder: Then why not a new creed that acknowledges a post-Einsteinian worldview? If Christianity has become impossible to define, such a creed could serve to protect a church from dangers such as the Nine O'clock Service.
Sheila: I feel I’m being told that there is spirituality or something that’s missing in my life. But I maintain this is a search I don’t need. I don’t particularly have any frustrations with the things that are important to me. I don’t see what the church is offering.
Donald: | agree with what Smokey says in a recent posting that we don’t drop religious language because it’s untrue but because it’s no longer useful. I think it’s quite possible churches will go that way in a fast-changing world. I detect a lot of anger towards Christianity and, oddly, towards those on the list who are Christians who say that its beliefs are human creations and that we are not tied in to traditionalist explanations. Some seem to say that there is only one variety of Christianity, supernatural, and if you don’t buy that you shouldn't join.
Sheila: I think the real question is about finding meaning and enjoyment without the church. I think there is no meeting place between the church and other cultural forms - how does that make some of you feel?
Downunder: But Christian texts ooze supernaturalism.
Blunt: I’ve enjoyed this discussion but am confused.
What's so unique about Jesus if he is not God?
Smokey: I think some of you are realists in relation to church texts, but not in relation to others. So far as Blunt is concerned, I say why does something that is special to you have to be unique?
Northerner: Christianity has never been the homogenous institution some of you claim. There has never been universal agreement about the fundamentals of Christianity.
Goodnight: Jesus has been central to the spirituality and worldview of Western civilisation and the parts of the world that have been influenced by the Church. We must get on transforming the religion of our culture.
Northerner: [’m a church member and want to be free to express my own values and perspectives, to describe what excites or makes sense to me, to draw on new or traditional material, in my own tradition or outside, without being defined or labelled as this or that. I don’t think this is necessarily inconsistent with membership of a particular group or movement.
Sheila: I agree with Northerner but for me it’s is no longer possible in the church without being hypocritical.
Friendofall: There are many members of religious traditions who don’t believe that the term “God” refers to something or someone out there, but see it as a poetic and imaginative expression. We need to listen more to each other’s positions... ..continued in cyberspace...
For more information about the SoF email discussion list go to www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/sof.htnl SOF 47 / May 2001 ONE TASJZE IS ALL IIT TAKES. terol ak & vise Fd POEM A COMIC FABLE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF “THE CIDER HOUSE RULES” A novel about the triumph of good over evil? An everyday tale of village life drenched in chocolate? A Sea of Faith perspective on religion wrapped in candy?