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Last Sunday, whilst driving up to speak / perform at a church in Manchester, I heard a radio interview with a representative from The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. He claimed that the Fellowship represented the true Anglican position on Holy Scripture i.e. that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God etc. (you know the story).

Well my philosophy has always been ‘each to their own.’ I believe wholeheartedly in the fullest expression of inclusivity so that, when faced with the narrow exclusivity of particular groups, I must always include them within my vision of the all-embracing love of God, even if they do not include me within theirs. Love is the cornerstone of genuine spirituality and love must always be our goal.

However love does not mean that we, liberals, have to be silent. Our vision of divine love is powerful good news – gospel – and needs to be proclaimed, not as a narrow evangelistic attempt at conversion, but as a sign of light, hope, grace for the many out there who have been hurt and disempowered by the hard line preachers of certainty and biblical literalism etc. So I am going to speak out. I am going to challenge our brothers and sisters of the Fellowship. Why? Because too often the loudest voices are negative. And I have something positive to say.       

As I listened to the radio interview it became clear that while this new group is clearly not a ‘single issue party,’ it has already spoken out on the current ‘hot potatoe’ of homosexuality. And one Bishop support of the Fellowship was quoted as saying, “We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed.”
So I guess that, along with the massive gay percentage of our population who need to ‘repent and change,’ are the divorced (like me), the heretical (like me), the law breakers (like me), those who believe un-Churchian doctrines (like me), the pagans who see ‘gods’ in nature (yep, ditto), the agnostics and rationalists (been there too) and the many non-church goers who’ve concluded that the divine is often better able to be glimpsed out there, far away from man-made religion (yes sir, me again).
And so the crumbling, dysfunctional and ever increasingly irrelevant, yet dear, sweet and essentially inclusive C of E, slowly suffocates itself under the weight of more and more theological and moralistic baggage.
Come on folks. Where have all the Liberals gone? Where are those who still feel the Church of England has a genuinely inclusive and loving message? Where are all the grace-filled-voices? Surely this whole thing began (Christianity I mean, not Anglicanism) with a wandering radical who was so loved up in God-energy that he wanted to share it with everyone he met, to show them that this ‘Kingdom of God’ was within them. He never rejected folk like those listed above. No he loved them. His harsh words, ironically, were directed at those who thought they were in God’s good books because they were ‘theologically sound’.
I don’t know how much of a Christian I am any more. I have recently been introduced to the Progressive Christian Network, which seems to be the closet expression of my own battered and tattered Christian faith. You see I do still love the message of the great JC. I know what a screwed up failure I’ve been, but that’s why the Jesus story still works for me. After all, it’s about transfigured failure! Whereas Christianity, when its all about rules and believing that bibles are literally God’s Word simply makes me want to run a mile and go meet up with the wonderful doctrine-free Druids of Stonehenge. BUT the reason I don’t go the whole way, and renounce my Christian Priesthood altogether, is that I still have a hope - a DREAM - a vision that we can re-claim the mystery, the magic, the grace, the wonder and the all embracing love of the original message before literalistic Churchianity made God so heavy, punishing and toxic.
Come on. One more time. Where have all the passionate liberals gone? For God’s sake don’t let the creeping narrow dogmatism steal the gift!
(Rev.) Mark Townsend

Great post. We do need to get our message across and out there. I’m sick of having to defend Christianity to those who hear an intolerent view and think that is what the faith is all about!

You’re not alone my friend. In fact I could have written much of that myself. Hang in there and keep plugging the good news. It is worth it. It is appreciated when people hear it and it can change lives (for the good not like some of the guilt and fear inducing stuff that parades itself as the true gospel.)
Shalom

I think Mark Townsend speaks for a great many of us, both in ministry and lay, as we do our best to serve within the ‘crumbling, dysfunctional and ever increasingly irrelevant’ C of E, as the the Traditionalists and Fundamentalist interests within it become ever more strident and divisive in their attempts to shore up their beliefs.  To me their position is fundamentally unsupportable.  Simple reality is on our side not theirs, as we carry forward our battle to evolve a vision of church which progresses the core humanity of the gospel which Jesus preached (and I do not use the term ‘Christian gospel’ advisedly here) and quietly discards the credulous nonsense which has dominated Christianity for so long.  To me there is no longer a place for the idea of God as some sort of super-cosmic existence with anthropomorphic tendencies - I like John Spong’s ‘Maybe God is the experience in all things… the life that flows through the universe’, as I do experience the universe as a living and evolving entity. To me God is essentially a human means of expression of that life, and certainly not some external despot demanding our worship and service.

On another tack I find it fascinating that so many traditionalists are just not satisfied with just being Christians nowadays - they have to be ‘Confessing Christians’, ‘Bible Christians’, ‘Committed Christians’, even ‘Born again Christians’ - yes, I know that we too have a label, but I hope it’s one that simply says to those outside that they can talk to us on the basis of rationality, reality and common sense, without fear of inappropriate evangelism and outdated moral censure.  One part of my ministry which I much enjoy is doing day chaplaincy in Bristol Cathedral on a regular basis - it’s a wonderful opportunity just to meet visitors, chat with them,and to talk over their problems, if asked, on spiritual ground that they feel happy with, and to show by example that the Church is not necessarily the antediluvian organisation which repels so many nowadays, not least in its official pronouncements. 

The statement one Mark quotes,‘We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed’ is a wonderful combination of an attempt to sound politically correct whilst being judgemental at the same time.  I’m convinced that the church will not have anything new or meaningful to say about sexuality until it is prepared to admit that it and its traditional teachings are part of the problem.  Let’s get rid of the old ‘sin and salvation’ agenda, which more often delivers human judgementalism than help, and replace it with a brokenness and healing one which actually reflects the mind and actions of Jesus which we need to emulate.

Mark does sound somewhat dispirited in his last paragraph when he says ‘I don’t know how much of a Christian I am any more.’ and I know the doubts about continuing one’s Christian ministry, or even whether it is honest to continue one’s ministry in the current ecclesiastical climate.  But my overall feeling is courage, brothers - we may be struggling to make ourselves heard at the moment against the braying of the traditionalists but the victory must in the end be ours - truth is on our side.

mark townsend - 22 July 2009 02:18 PM

And so the crumbling, dysfunctional and ever increasingly irrelevant, yet dear, sweet and essentially inclusive C of E, slowly suffocates itself under the weight of more and more theological and moralistic baggage.

I can identify with this. The problem I think, understandable as it is, is that we don’t send these letters.

In my case it’s usually because it will take time and effort. Either that I don’t have or that I am not willing to prioritise over other easier, more familiar tasks likely be appreciated by people with views closer to my own.

Actively opposing conservative propaganda is pretty well guaranteed to generate some kind of attack in response. So we have to phrase our opposition carefully, thinking through exactly what we mean by the words we use. It seems the main need may be to develop a fairly thick skin, along with a willingness to cough to it and learn when it’s pointed out that sometimes we don’t make too much sense either.

For anyone who has not or does not want to give up on the Church of England, some of us in the Modern Churchpeople’s Union (yes, we are working on a new name) attempt to make a liberal voice heard. This reply to Rowan Williams and NT Wright is one example that was well read online, even if the Church Times refused to print it.

At a more immediate level there is Ship of Fools. It has a very broad readership with posters from most church traditions, and provides opportunities to raise or oppose any point of view on topics someone happens to find interesting. That thickish skin is sometimes required, as is willingness to respect the culture and abide by the (minimal but very well managed) rules. But I find it a rewarding place to engage with dogmatists of all varieties.

That commercial break over, apologies if the plugs are inappropriate. But the only way I can see for liberal/progressive voices to make a difference is to take on the conservatives. In whatever little ways we can, wherever a response can be made, we need to get our alternative heard.

Just want to send a message of encouragement and add - “here here”

Thanks for this thread! What the traditionalists and fundamentalists are keen to protect is their ‘belief’ as being the only correct belief. We should not feel guilty about speaking out passionately against such destructive and corrosive beliefs – we should feel liberated! There’s no place for guilt before the Sacred. We should be dancing for joy because we are filled with the Eternal Spirit that engulfed Jesus!

But what is ‘belief’? It is a set of words. As far as I am concerned it has nothing to do with creeds, doctrines, dogma, or pleasing the Old Man Above the Sky with piety and prayer, etc. For me, the only thing that I need to comprehend is akin to Jack Spong’s mantras – [1] that the more fully human I can become then the more I will experience the Sacred; [2] to accept Jesus as one of us, different in degree of humanity but not in theological substance, gives us all a chance to follow in his footsteps and to make a real difference in this world for all humankind.

To set Jesus of Nazareth on a religious pedestal divides the world. But an open liberal / progressive understanding of Jesus is not about trying to convert people from one religion or from no religion to another, but it is about breathing unconditional love and living sacrificially as servants of all. That, as I understand it, is the Jesus Way. It is the pathway into the Sacred experience for people like me. Belief based upon words - who needs it? Living as best we can by following the Jesus Way - that is what will make the difference and change the ordinary into the extraordinary of the Sacred that is ever present within us and about us.

Nor is liberal / progressive conviction about seeing life through rose coloured spectacles - it is not unrealistic. There is a sense in which we have to know ourselves, warts and all, before we can really know the beauty of the God within. There is a lack of humanity in all of us, and downright evil in some. However, all people are capable of loving more than themselves. I am confident that it was Jesus living Perfect, Sacrificial, Servant Love that made all the difference. As I understand these things, people who wanted to see the God in him found it within his perfect humanity. Therefore, in following the Jesus Way, liberal / progressive conviction should not be built upon the words of creeds or doctrines but upon trying to live as humanly as possible. The more human we become then the more we can experience [and those around us, too] something more of the Sacred.

I agree with Mark’s original posting - more liberals / progressives should be confident in, and passionately proclaim, the way in which we understand, interpret and live the Jesus Way. The life lived by Jesus was one of abundance - not material but of love. The advice that I give to those who ask is, “Don’t try to believe any thing just because some of the Bishops and the fundamentalist Bible-thumping corrupting voices of homophobic and other narrow interest groups have told you that it is true ‘because the Bible tells us so’... just live an abundance of love!” The sleepless nights of narrow mindedness is their problem, not ours – let it eat them away while we live, accept and affirm the Sacred within all people!

I wonder whether part of the problem we liberals have is that we view tolerance and inclusivity as such vituous things.  OK we don’t want to become dogmatic people, we want to be patient listeners, ready to change our minds on things if new, better ideas come our way - that’s good! But should we really count our tolerance as a virtue if it allows the sort of exclusion of others we see regularly in the church?  Jesus got up and shouted about such stuff.

To my mind we should be talking loudly about the homophobia and sexism in the church. We need to be calling it what it is - prejudice, and we need to do this even at the risk of offending other Christians. We need people to stand up and deliver sermons which actually say how wrong, how far from the Way of Love, the church’s institutional homophobia is. Even liberal churches seem reticent to say with conviction, from the front, how wrong and damaging this sort of theology is.

My feeling is that we still have a subliminal acceptance that expressions of homophobia and sexism are not based upon prejudice if the one expressing it attempts to justify their position on religious grounds, but its very clear that even people who consider scripture’s authority to be absolute, are not prevented from taking a different view. There are other non-homophobic and non-sexist readings of scripture which fit entirely within the sort of licence these people set for other topics. 

So IMO homophobia and sexism expressed by the church is not some sort of special case, it’s prejudice just like secular prejudice, and we should be naming it as such, no matter how much of a ruckus that causes.

But this is where I make a distinction between liberal and progressive Christians. Liberals don’t like offending others because they tend not to say too loudly what they do believe [generalisation I know but…]. I count myself as a progressive follower of the Jesus Way, as I understand it, and that means I do openly speak out in the pulpit and elsewhere against homophobia, sexism, poverty, injustice, Israel / Palestine, etc etc. If you haven’t read it yet, pages 59-63 of my book ‘Setting Jesus Free’ deal with the travesty of out of context literal interpretations of a handful of dubiuous Hebrew Testament statements on homosexuality. Or there is an excellent book ‘Living it Out’ by Rachel and Sarah Hagger-Holt. I agree with you that we should be speaking out concerning the damage that is being done to people and to the Christian Church by institutional homophobia on one hand and, on the other, silence from those who should be speaking out.

Gosh,

It’s been a while since I’ve checked this forum (I’m on so many now that I lose track of where I am / so sorry friends).
Anyway thank you all for your very encouraging words.

I guess one reason why I didn’t send that letter was that there was a certain amount of (not-in-control) anger coming through, and I honestly do feel that we must act out of love, even in our most vocal critisms. I know it’s still possible to express anger in love, but I was not in that place when I penned the letter.

On top of that I’d been in more than a little ‘trouble’  with my bishop after something I wrote in local press back then. After being criticised by a local fundamentalist, who hated my book The Gospel of Falling Down, and who said it proved I was ‘lost in the Gnostic marshlands of heresy’ I replied saying that all this arguing over who believes this, and who practises that, and who’s not in the true club etc. is the single most effective way to maintain our current image of eccentric and irrelvant hypocrites. I also (rather naughtily) said that if that man Jesus could have been brought forward 2,000 years, in some Dr. Who Tardis, he’d probably end up saying ‘oh screw the Church, I’m off down the pub for a real conversation’.

It was a joke but did not go down very well at all.

So . . . even though that was clearly tongue in cheek, I’m a little more careful these days - lol.

Blessings,

Mark

A bit more…

Discovering the PCN has helped me remain a Christian and a Priest. And now I am even possibly going to be licensed again (after three eyars ‘exile’). I will remain ‘at the edge’ as a freelance writer, magician, retreat leader etc. but still under the Anglican Umbrella. So thank you - all of you -  for being there and for providing a way of being Christian that really does work!

Oh… and this is why I still adore that human enigma we call Jesus:

He [Jesus] seemed to be able to single out
people who lived the shitiest lives - the beaten up by life, the
marginalised, the unclean, the so called prostitutes and sinners.
He befriended them with compassion and showed them a way
out of their self-despising mess.

And here’s the really important
part of the story. He didn’t say ‘join a religion’. He didn’t say
‘believe in this or that doctrine’. He would not even allow people
to bow down to him, as if to say ‘don’t look at me either’. He
enabled them to find a way out because he changed their view of
the divine and he changed their view of themselves. He helped
them to feel good about who they were - valued, special, loved.

The more I look at these stories (whether literally true or not)
the more I see that Jesus was not a founder of a new religion but
a corrector of a religious mindset that sets up obstacles between
humanity and divinity. Jesus, and many other holy men, women,
gurus and teachers through history, offer this wisdom – ‘do not
look at me, look to yourselves; the Kingdom of God (deity) is
right there’. Monty Python’s infamous hero Brian offers the same
wisdom. ‘You don’t need me,’ he implores the crowds, ‘lead
yourselves’. Yet his followers ignore his advice and do what
many religious folk do – settle for projection instead and make
him their salvation. It’s easier that way. Richard Rohr often says
that one of the most successful ways Christians have avoided
doing what Jesus said was to simply worship him. It’s easier to
bow down and shout constant hallelujahs than to get our own
hands dirty by following him out into the world of brokenness
and mess.

Sometimes it seems as though Church is all about being good,
respectable, pure, clean and holy. Yet the central image of the
whole faith is a god-man who is born, lives and dies in shit. In
Christianity there’s been much ‘in the world not of the world’
mentality, which has led to an unhealthy dualism. I’ve heard
Church leaders say, ‘We Christians live in the light and we must
remain in the light by not having anything to do with darkness,
for God cannot look upon darkness.’ If this is Christianity then it no
longer works for me. But I do not believe it is for, surely, the
whole point of this mythic masterpiece is that the divine is not
separate from us, the divine is not afraid of darkness and messed
up humans. The symbolic god-man Jesus shows us how to find
the beauty - the hidden treasure - by looking right beneath our
feet. If there is one phrase I could use to sum up the glory of the
whole Christian gift it is Transfigured Shit. Honest and real spirituality
is not primarily concerned with making folk ‘good’ but
‘true’ – which means acknowledging and befriending our
shadows rather than repressing them. Simon Parke puts this
powerfully:

‘… the concepts of good and bad will always be secondary to
true or false. The human journey is primarily about becoming
true, rather than good. Truth is primary to goodness, because
without truth goodness can have no sense of what it is. Goodness
imaged by the false is a most terrible thing. Hitler believed he
was good to be saving Germany from Jews, gypsies and
homosexuals. Many others thought him good too. It is more
important to be true than good.’

Hi Mark - good to have you back on the Forum! Agree with everything you say… it is about being true [to yourself, to the ‘god’ within yourself and to the ‘god’ within others]. Church should not be primarily about being good - goodness is the result of being true but being true is not necessarily the outcome of being good. Can I quote your second posting on the 7th in my new book [first draft almost complete!] ‘Dying to Live: Lessons from Mark’ as a follow up to my ‘Setting Jesus Free’? If permission is granted what are the sources? Blessings.  John

Only just joined this forum, so I’m re-lighting this thread after a long break.

I am willing to argue the case, but once you are in an argument it’s difficult to remain calm in the face of great hostility.  You either withdraw, or stick at it as the pincer movement closes in on you, all the while getting hotter and hotter under the collar.

The other problem is that it’s so difficult to argue with people who actually regard holy scripture as the final, inerrant and infallible word.  These are people who actually seem to worship the word, rather than worship God, and cut and paste selected passages from the Bible to bolster their position.  It’s rather like wading through a swamp.

For example, I recently got involved in a debate about the role of gay clergy and questioned the stance of conservatives who accuse Priests/Bishops of hypocrisy.  In response I had passages from Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, Corinthians and Revelation hurled at me to ‘prove’ me wrong.  To be honest, I didn’t have the time or inclination to dissect the arguments line by line and offered a fairly weak response that I wasn’t proud of.

The longer you stick at it, the more heated and hysterical the arguments become and you really begin to ask ‘Why am I doing this?’

I know that sounds lame.

Reading your comment about engaging in argument I was reminded of Bishop Spong’s manifesto when he declared that he would no longer debate the issue of homophobia with traditionalists in the church.  Find it at http://secure.agoramedia.com/spong/34674.asp .  It is quite a statement.

Very grateful to be given access to that manifesto.  Please never take it down from this website so that I can be sure of finding it again.