Radical history, radical theology: a marriage made in heaven?
DAVID BOULTON reports on the 'Once and Future Faith’ conference in California time for a new reformation? "Once and Future Faith: an Agenda for a Radical Reformation". A pretty good title for a conference, suggesting as it does that learning from the past is the key to the future. Four hundred historians, theologians and contemporary churchpeople gathered in Rohnert Park, California, from February 28 to March 3, to figure it all out.
This hugely important conference was organised by the Westar Institute, parent body of the Jesus Seminar.
For the past fifteen years a core of forty or so biblical scholars have agreed to pool their expertise in the Seminar to see if they can reach a consensus view about the historical Jesus: what he "really" said, what he "really" did, and who he "really" was.
That work is now substantially over. It has resulted in several best-selling books combining scholarly rigour with popular appeal. In particular, America's liberal churches, cut off from the fundamentalist /evangelical mainstream, have jumped at the opportunity to ground their own understanding of the Christian faith in the Seminar's re-fashioned Jesus - for in God's own country, where half the population attend church regularly, a faith which doesn't have some model of Jesus at its centre will never capture Christian hearts and minds.
So Robert Funk, Westar's and the Seminar's founder and driving force, decided the next step was to bring his radical bible historians together with radical theologians.
A risky project. Historians tend to see themselves as scientific seekers after objective historical truth, unencumbered by theological or ideological presuppositions. Theologians suggest that the only "real" Jesus we can be sure of is the Jesus of the Jesus stories, and (postmodern theologians would add) interpretation goes all the way down. Would the Jesus Seminarians and the radical theologians meet and mate, or would they circle each other with barred fangs and sharpened claws?
For radical theologians, Funk looked not to the Americal liberal churches (with the exception of retired bishop John Selby Spong) but overseas to the Sea of Faith networks. Invited to address the conference were Don Cupitt of SoF (UK), Lloyd Geering of SoF (NZ), and Karen Armstrong, international commentator and a distinguished contributor both to SoF conferences and to its newly-published anthology Time & Tide. Cupitt, on the eve of the conference, wrote in the Guardian that "the obvious move was from its biblical criticism to criticism of standard Christian theology, and the Jesus Seminar began to look in the direction of Sea of Faith". Was this a marriage in the making? Spong appeared to think so. "The Jesus Seminar is the Sea of Faith in America", he told Cupitt.
Americans think big and do as they think, and the conference venue was a luxury hotel, the climax a luxury banquet. It would have been easier for a poor man to pass through the keyhole of the door of the Doubletree Hotel than to enter this kingdom. But for those who made it, it would prove a heady stimulus to new thinking. And there will be no radical reformation, for either the comfortable or those who need comforting, without new thinking.
Cupitt ‘secularize the gospel' The conference began with an earthquake and Don Cupitt. The earthquake was up the road in Seattle, Don was with the rest of us in the Grand Ballroom. His subject was "Reforming Christianity", and those of us who had read his latest book, Philosophy’s Own Religion, in which he effectively takes leave of a church which he has come to find "disgusting", wondered how he would address an audience which clearly believes Christianity is reformable and that a better understanding of Jesus is the key to reformation.
SOF 47 / May 2001 Wholly human communion SOF magazine organised a well-attended cheese-and-crackers reception for conference delegates, introducing Don Cupitt, Lloyd Geering, and SoF's newly-appointed fiscal representative in the USA, Hershey Julien.
David Boulton, SOF editor, offered one reason why six members of SoF (UK) had come to California. "We didn't mind the Jesus Seminar nicking our best speakers, but we thought we'd better come and make sure you don't hang on to them too long!" Explaining the cheese and crackers, he said that the distinguished biblical scholar Monty Python had clearly established that Jesus had really said "Blessed are the cheesemakers". Further research by SoF experts had produced a clear red consensus for the proposition that New Testament references to bread are best translated as crackers. The reception was to be seen as an act of “wholly human communion".
Don Cupitt looked forward to closer co-operation between the Seminar and SoF. "They are different in many ways, but they have discovered that they are allies". Repeating what he had written that week in the Guardian, he said that "out in the parishes, the clergy say things like ‘Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, even though they themselves learnt when they studied theology that the original Jesus was not a bit like that, and said no such thing, since John's Gospel contains no sayings of the original Jesus. "In the parishes, they just won't tolerate scientific rigour. So, at Christmas, the clergy have to grin and bear the carols and the nativity plays, and must pretend they really think that Jesus was born in Bethlehem amid portents in the sky. Meanwhile, the real Jesus remains unknown and unwanted." It was the job of the Jesus Seminar and SoF to keep asking questions, and never be wholly satisfied with the answers.
Delegates were told that Sof membership and SOF magazine subscriptions were now open to US residents on payment of annual membership of $42 or magazine subscription of $27. Cheques should be made payable to H. Julien, marked "for SoF", and sent to him at 50 Ridgeview Drive, Paso Robles, CA 93446.
Several new members and subscribers were enrolled on the spot and SoF's stock of literature for sale was cleared out, with more than a hundred copies of A Reasonable Faith given out free. "The Christian churches", he said, "are seemingly in terminal decline". Was reformation still possible? It was "possible, but difficult. We must begin by setting aside the ecclesiastical form of Christianity that we have received from the past. Its doctrines, its ways of thinking and its institutions are all now historically obsolete. It is too long-termist, too otherworldly, and too much bound up with a great cosmological myth of Creation, Fall and Redemption. Its theological interpretation of Jesus is very badly mistaken." The essence of reformation was the secularization of the gospel. "We should develop a modern version of Jesus’ own message that the Highest Good - he called it ‘the Kingdom of God' - is ethical and this-worldly. We should begin to choose it and live it right away. It calls for unconditional commitment to this life and to our human world, and it is blessedness right now." But "we are not talking about bringing Christianity into line with today's values. We are talking about trying to formulate a Christianity that is consistent with itself".
That meant a Christianity which revived "the hope for a renewed and liberated humanity", a hope which had "greatly influenced human beings for over two millennia and has inspired every sort of movement for social and political progress, whether on the part of Enlightenment liberals, socialists or anarchists.” Spong ‘beyond the old theism’ Next on, the following morning, was Spong, hero of the liberals and demon-king to all American fundamentalists. Spong is an orator of extraordinary SOF 47 / May 2001 force, as emotionally charged as Billy Graham and as fearless as Joshua. He exudes certainty, and it is certainty and solid ground the liberal churches in America are looking for. And his belief in the reality of "the God experience" is profound. "My experience with God, my engagement with Christ, my life in the church", he said, "have all forced me to make a distinction between the experience of God, which I believe is real and eternal, and the human explanations of God which are always time-warped and transitory... All the God explanations of the past can be jettisoned without destroying the experience of God.
Explanations are only human attempts to put the eternal God experience into finite words. "That experience, | am convinced, is real even if the words by which we try to explain it no longer work. So I seek to find new words, still warped by my time in history as all words are, but words that will move the church beyond the explanations of theism but not beyond the God experience. I recognize that some maintain that God is both a human creation and a human delusion. Because I disagree with that I will plumb the God experience until I can find a new language that will enable a profound theological reformation of the Christian church to occur." The first discussion session inevitably centred on the distinction between Cupitt's nonrealism and Spong's realism. For Cupitt, the end of metaphysical realism meant the end of gods and spirits (which was why his emphasis was on Jesus and his teachings, rather than a "God experience"). Spong, on the other hand, emphasised that it was the God experience that was real, not "a deity, supernatural in power, external to this world, perpetually invading human life in miraculous ways", but an experience rooted in profound human need. The God described in scriptures, liturgies and creeds was dead.
The essential God experience, however, was real and vital.
Spong won the votes on this one: radical nonrealism hasn't yet made the impact on America's liberal churchfolk that it has on Christian and post-Christian thinkers on this side of the pond.
Geering ‘a new trinity’ Lloyd Geering and Karen Armstrong followed. Both looked back to the so-called "Axial Age” (700-200 BCE) when the great world religions became established, and both looked forward to a new Axial Age in which ancient and outworn traditions might again be reformed.
Geering emphasised that the doctrines which emerged in the Axial Age were "no more than human constructions” which, in their classical form, have been made obsolete by modern ways of thinking. But when we reinterpret the old doctrines in the light of our new understanding of history, culture and the cosmos, we find that "it is still a trinity in which we put our faith. It is the secular trinity of the self-creating universe, the selfevolving human species and the emerging global consciousness. All three are manifestations of the one process of cosmic creativity". This trinity, he suggested, coupled with "the modern recovery of the full humanity of Jesus", is the foundation on which a new reformation may be built.
Armstrong ‘past lessons for the future' Karen Armstrong emphasised that the Axial Age saw the rise of Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in the Middle East, and rationalism in Greece. "In our global society, examining the roots of the Christian faith alone is too narrow. Christianity can get a much-needed shot in the arm by contemplating other traditions." The Axial Age was a period of radical reform, when "the traditional gods died, devoid of meaning". The spiritual geniuses who emerged at this time "insist that transcendence or holiness is... beyond the neat confines of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. And a significant number do not see the sacred as in any way supernatural... "The Axial sages all insist that people must think for themselves. They must take nothing on hearsay, but must discover the truth by their own efforts and in their own hearts and minds. They must also test any teaching empirically against their own experience and should get rid of it once it has ceased to be useful. These prophets and philosophers would have been horrified by the churches’ cult of orthodoxy today and their insistence that we accept doctrines 'in faith’, even if they make no sense to us.” Further, "none of the great Axial thinkers, including the most important Hebrew prophets, were at all interested in the afterlife. ‘Salvation’ or ‘enlightenment’ was to be achieved in this world. Each individual must work out his or her own salvation. There could be no Grave reflections — The Westar Institute appointed two SoF ‘Strauss Medal, named after the 19th century © pioneer of historical Jesus studies. Presenting the | award, David Hart recalled that, in the fift his © six Sea of Faith programmes for the ‘BBC, Don is “e seen placing flowers on Strauss's grave. _ Responding, Don recalled that Albert Schweitzer ae had also placed flowers on Strauss's grave. The = quest for a relevant Jesus had a distinguished — past as well as an exciting future. It had Liha a Schweitzer to selfless social action: an veins pana to the se Seminar and 1SoF alike. a vicarious salvation, no abdication of personal responsibility. The challenge to contemporary Christianity is clear." An examination of history showed how "we have slipped back into exactly the type of inferior spirituality that the Axial sages were trying to reform. A new Christianity must take these Axial principles as a blueprint for the future”. But Karen Armstrong added an afterthought: "One of the failings of the Axial Age was its denigration of women, who were reduced to second-class status in all these major faiths. A reformed Christianity must listen to the insights of women, whose sad experiences in the churches over the centuries will give them valuable perspectives on a tradition that claims to speak especially to people who are marginalized by the mainstream".
Every conference has its stars, and Karen Armstrong was this conference's superstar. Her interjections during discussion sessions were wise, witty, and generous in spirit. Of the five platform speakers and ten scholars who presented papers, she was the only woman. She left the men standing - and I'm not just referring to her standing ovation.
Colour me red Talking - and listening So much for the first two days. The remaining two were somewhat different in character. The theologians having been allowed their say, it was time for the history men.
So forty Westar Fellows piled on to an elevated rostrum and spoke both to the presentations and to their own papers, while the rest of us groundlings either listened in respectful but impotent silence or slipped out for coffee and a mountainous turkey sandwich. It felt a little like two conferences abutting each other - as indeed, in a way, it was: SoF conference followed by the Jesus Seminar. But there were breakout sessions when the groundlings were given voice, and the relative merits of history and mystery were warmly debated. Some of us from SoF helped facilitate these sesions, and all of us participated.
The one innovation that didn't work was an attempt to ballot participants on certain theological assertions, like SOF 47 / May 2001 "The Bible consists of historical reports dictated by God", and "Of all humans, Jesus alone is divine". You voted red to affirm, black to deny, or pink or grey to indicate degrees of reservation. This was modelled directly on the Jesus Seminar's controversial procedures for finding out how much consensus there is among scholars about which sayings and acts attributed to Jesus are likely to be historical. Although much criticised by those who mischievously and mistakenly charge that the Seminar thinks it can establish historical truth by means of a colourful voting procedure, it has worked well as a rough guide to scholarly opinion within a strict historical discipline.
But it did not translate well into the theological arena, particularly where fundamentalist propositions were put to a liberal constituency, ensuring masses of black votes that proved nothing.
Funk ‘the myth is the message?’ Robert Funk brought us back to the future. The Jesus Seminar, he said, has become "aware of the collapse of the mythical matrix in which Jesus has been entombed.
Nevertheless, some members retain the notion that the myth is the message so long as it is understood as myth. We must clarify this issue in the new phase of the Seminar. We must also decide whether we think the mythical matrix is a human construction and therefore not revealed truth. And we must also articulate to what extent the historical figure of Jesus is at odds with the mythical frame. "The principle item on the new agenda, in my view, is to identify the elements of a reformed faith that reconciles our need to know historically and scientifically with our need to create symbols and form myths." Funk says "we must clarify... and decide", which suggests that closure is possible and desirable. I doubt that any broad-based group of radical historians or radical theologians will find they can close on that debate. I would rather say "we must explore..." And we'll explore together. The Jesus Seminar and Sea of Faith are unlikely to enter into any arranged marriage, but there's an excellent prospect that we'll happily live together in sin, passionate bed-fellows in the quest for reasonable grounds for a reasonable faith.
Our task is to urge the importance of coming to faith questions with well-exercised minds as well as warm hearts: to encourage "heresy" in its root meaning of "choosing for yourself", rather than blindly following past teachings by past masters. As the immortal Private Willis in G & S's Iolanthe very nearly put it, "When people pack the church inside, If they've a brain and cerebellum too, They've got to leave that brain outside And think just as their leaders tell ‘em to.
But then the prospect of a lot Of honest folk in close proximity All thinking for themselves, is what Few priests can face with equanimity..." That's what we're up against. The revolution that is the reformation will begin when people start thinking for themselves: when, to give the last word to Don Cupitt, people come to faith questions "with their brains switched on". Westar's conference, brilliantly organised by Funk and his team, and deftly managed by Char Matejovsky and her helpers, gave the process a great kick-start. "The land of the free' Stephen Mitchell, chair of SoF (UI) writes:
Sitting in an aeroplane for twelve hours, flying over a white wilderness of snow-covered mountains is a fitting Ash Wednesday penance. I take my first step on American soil and it lives up to its new world promise.
Waitresses do wish me a nice day. Cartoon characters are larger than life for the Santa Rosa crowds watching the unveiling of the world's one and only Snoopy statue. Spring is already in the Californian air and John Klopacz leads us to the new wine of the Sonoma valley.
It seems like the Jesus Seminar is heading into heady territory. Their "On the Road" pilgrimages have taken the scholars to questioning congregations. If this is the real Jesus, then what of the creeds, what of our Sunday School teaching? They ask their questions with passion. :
After three days, I'm left admiring Funk's fearless exploration, amazed at the appetite for Sea of Faith literature. | feel honoured to see David Hart take the title of Fellow, honoured to take my place at the final banquet. Here each new attender is bidden to stand and give their testimony before Don's place is sealed with the award of the D.F.
Strauss medal. Arthur Dewey's commendation is fulsome: "Cupitt asks us if we want to grow up. Can we see beyond the crippling assumption that the world is ready-made and that the human task is simply to be enthralled? Shall we finally enter the land of the free?" I feel I have already, ready to join the swelling chorus: "He writes not to render us silent but to get us up on our feet and into the swing of things, to have us join in on what there really is, to jam along, and to lose ourselves, soaring gloriously, for as long as the music lasts." RONALD PEARSE reports on this year’s conference of sof in the On 28 August 1993, 22 Anglican priests in SoF wrote to the Church Times protesting about Anthony Freeman’s dismissal from a diocesan educational post in Chichester because the contents of his book God in Us were “incompatible with his diocesan responsibilities”. This was the start of what would become “Church Members in SoF”, with an annual conference each spring.