Duncan Park runs the Pilgrim Network and is a member of the SoF steering committee. He and David Boulton will be debating the "10 hypos" at the SoF conference next month. "Sea of Faith is not a clarion call to the Humanist Diaspora (or even a Humanists Anonymous rehab programme). " SOF 48 / July 2001 DEL STEWART, its director, introduces SnowStar: a Canadian institute for radical religion, informally linked to the Westar Institute's Jesus Seminar in the USA and SoF in Britain seeking a credible faith Canada's SnowStar Institute has hatched an interesting new egg, indeed. More than that! This group has taken the resultant young fledgling and hundreds of human others on a "magic carpet-ride" across Canada's vast geographic and complex religious terrain. From Vancouver Island on the Canadian Pacific west coast to Newfoundland in the Atlantic east, the institute's members have surveyed the faith-wilderness below and found it woefully wanting.
Having seen, and often experienced first hand, orthodoxy's and neo-orthodoxy's lack of credibility as well as the bungling ineptitude and stumbling inadequacy of institutional religion, SnowStar is raising uncomfortable issues and asking hard questions about religious faith in the global age.
The majority of SnowStar members and others who have allied themselves with the institute's goals are heartened that this particular chicken has been set free from its hardened, old religious shell. They have nurtured this vigorous, new, young life and its activities with their gifts of money, professional skills, volunteer time, morale boosting and moral support.
However, SnowStar has also raised the hackles of conservatives with its challenges to religious traditionalism.
SnowStar's enemies are ready, at the drop of a hat, to wage a "take no prisoners war" with the institute. Their mission and battle strategies aren't limited simply to pushing the chick back into the egg. They're determined to deliver up the hapless bird, once and for all time, to a certain colonel of fast food restaurant fame to be sacrificed on the twin altars of old time religion and private enterprise.
Make no mistake about it! The controversial issues that SnowStar's members find so intriguingly invigorating, and with which they sincerely and genuinely grapple, are the very same ones that the institute's adversaries find so damnably and lamentably maddening. Here are a few examples of what set their teeth on edge and fill their hearts with the fire of holy warfare. • Are 21st century Canadians leaving the institutional church in droves because its teachings are no longer believable? • Is the church's understanding of Jesus and its version of the Christian faith so fundamentally flawed that it can no longer be trusted? • Can the church be reformed or is it beyond redemption? • Does religion have a future in the Canadian and global contexts?
The egg that was to finally hatch into SnowStar and give rise to these and countless other questions about contemporary religion was laid in spring last year at the historic Olde Dominion House Restaurant and Tavern, located on the banks of the Detroit River which separates Detroit, Michigan, from its smaller Canadian urban counterpart, Windsor, Ontario. Having established its reputation as the haunt of University of Windsor intellectuals by day and the working class blue-collar set by night, the institute's three founders, David Galston, Chris Kraatz and Del Stewart, met there many times for lunches and suppers.
For the founders, all of whom were teachers of Religious Studies at the University of Windsor's Iona College and ordained clergy in the United Church, Canada's largest Protestant denomination, the objective of each meeting was clear: the establishment of a dynamic new organization within the Canadian cultural mosaic: one that would have no association with any religious or academic institution and would promote no particular theological point of view.
Over their meals the founders hashed out what SnowStar Institute would become.
The institute's purpose and goals, they decided, are (i) the promotion of religious tolerance and literacy, (ii) education by making readily and easily accessible radical religious scholarship, (iii) advancement of progressive historical and theological exploration, (iv) providing solidarity and support for Canadians seeking a credible faith, (v) establishment of local grass roots SnowStar cells, and (vi) networking locally, nationally and internationally with other similarly-minded groups and individuals. The founders have been successful, more than they had dared to dream.
SnowStar's membership, drawn from several religious traditions and representative of all walks of Canadian life, has tripled its original estimates and is now counted by the hundreds. The government of the Province of Ontario has recognized the SnowStar Institute of Religion (its legal name) as a bona fide non-profit charitable corporation.
SnowStar's twice yearly magazine Axial, which has carried articles by such notables as New Zealand's Lloyd Geering, Australia's Gregory Jenks and Canada's Honourable Senator Lois Wilson, has gained widespread acceptance. "Once the student of religion has launched a magic carpet ride which traverses the complex terrain below, there is no turning back. There is no way that the chicken can be pushed back into the egg... Those of us lucky enough to have been given a 'ticket to ride' on SnowStar's new and invigorating magic carpet are fortunate indeed." (Mary Macdonald, Axial, Fall 20000 INSTITUTE The institute's newsletter In the Meantime has enjoyed similar success. A third publication, Latitude, a scholarly journal, is due off the press within a year.
The institute's website, which has been up and running for only a short time, has been visited over 500 times in the past few weeks. The ever busy SnowStar Bookroom and library carries cutting-edge religious titles by world-renowned scholars and writers. In addition, workshops, seminars and conferences are taking shape on SnowStar's drawing boards. Smaller local SnowStar groups are starting to take root. Rarely does a week go by without the institute being consulted, usually by friendly types, but those whose theological feathers the institute has ruffled don't hesitate to express their vituperation.
To fulfill its mandate, SnowStar has organized itself through three Symposia or Communities of Dialogue.
The Historical Jesus Symposium seeks to promote the entire spectrum of progressive and radical scholarship of the historical tradition. It asks such questions as: • Who is Jesus? • Are the followers of the historical Jesus now on the outside of the church and something different from Christianity? • For the sake of the world, must Christianity lose Christ and re-discover Jesus , the flesh and blood man, and his Higher Good (the Kingdom of God)?
The Inter-Religious Symposium is committed to frank, respectful and tolerant dialogue among the world's great religious traditions. It focuses on the relationship religion holds with culture, history and philosophy and asks such questions as: • What is the proper relationship among the world's great religions? • How ought respectful dialogue among world religions be carried out? • What role can religion play in Canada's multicultural, pluralistic society?
The Global Theology Symposium is dedicated to the question of what constitutes a believable faith in a global era. Among other questions, this Community of Dialogue asks, • In a global era, what are the elements of a credible expression of faith? • What issues can religion address in the face of technology and capitalism? • Where is fundamentalism leading us?
One of the most exciting aspects of SnowStar's growth and development has been national and international networking. A wide variety of formal and informal arrangements are currently in place. For example, while no formal ties exist between SnowStar and the Jesus Seminar, SnowStar's three founders, and other members, have an association with this "think tank". David Galston, Ph.D., is a Fellow of Westar, the Jesus Seminar's parent organization.
Chris Kraatz and Del Stewart, as well as other Canadian SnowStar members, are Associates. The Canadian Historical Jesus Symposium strives to be consistent with the scholarly principles of the Jesus Seminar; and the SnowStar Bookroom and library carry a significant inventory of books published by Polebridge Press, the publisher closely associated with the Westar Institute.
In spring, 2001, SnowStar made arrangements with the Sea of Faith (UK) to purchase subscriptions to SOF magazine for its entire membership. SnowStar is also encouraging its members to consider Sea of Faith membership. The institute's representatives have registered for the Sea of Faith's August 2001 annual conference in Leicester and plan to staff a small display there to introduce SnowStar to others who are attending.
SnowStar dares to hope and dream that over the years ahead both groups will explore the possibility of entering into a closer, collaborative - perhaps even symbiotic - relationship. Even as this article is being written, SnowStar's director's are considering requests from Canadians locally and from the other side of the globe to enter into new networking arrangements and partnerships.
In short, over the past year the SnowStar experience has been and remains an exhilarating one. Mary Macdonald, who is quoted at the beginning of this article, is right about two things. First, the chicken can't be pushed back into the hardened shell of the old religious egg. Second, for more than a year now, the ticket to board SnowStar's magic carpet has provided an incredible, invigorating ride. And she's right about something else too.
There will be no turning back.