Faith journey (part 7)

Having taken the step of sharing something of my own faith-orientation, the question I now had to ask myself was this: while maintaining the respect and acceptance of my colleagues (despite my heretical views) did I really believe what I wrote and presented? Did I really intend to make that wager, to entrust myself to the universe of Christian symbols, even while I understood that that’s all they are? Was I capable of embracing a ‘second naiveté,’ that is, a deliberately willed innocence, which says ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in the same breath (or with different brain hemispheres)? Or had I simply found another creative way of tailoring my views to the audience? I came to realize that was probably what happened, and so I found myself in a position not too different from where I was some 12 months before.  

On the one hand, my carefully controlled coming out did reduce cognitive dissonance (a bit like spiritual trepanning), even though it was still something I could only talk about in hushed tones in the stairwell.  But on the other hand, it meant that I ended up arguing for the least disagreeable position available to me, rather than a position I actually agreed with. For on reflection, I really doubted that what I wrote about Christianity as a non-dogmatic pattern of life, rather than a belief system, would hold water, at least in my case.

Let me explain, and I’ll switch to present tense here.

I don’t deny that some individuals can use Christian symbols, narratives and rituals as a scaffold to engage in a personally meaningful and socially generous pattern of life, while also knowing that none of its metaphysical claims are literally true; and furthermore, recognizing that the very tradition that claims to be universal and absolute is in fact contingent and relative. Good for them! But despite advocating for this very position, I find it very hard to engage in Christian practices when I know they are ‘only’ symbolic (I put ‘only’ in quote marks because more generally I think symbols are very important). In the final analysis, it seems to me, that Christianity is incurably dogmatic. Here I find Walter Kaufmann’s critique of Christianity quite to the point (The Faith of a Heretic):

“Christianity defined itself less as a way of life than as a faith, which right from the beginning, involved assent to various propositions” (142). “In the end, a Christian may choose to reject theology...But in that case he gives up Christianity...” (143) “Christianity is inescapably a theological religion, and those who give up the ancient formulations of alleged knowledge about ‘God, his nature and attributes, and his relations with man and the universe’ break with Christianity” (144).

(I would have also quoted Daphne Hampson’s After Christianity here, except that I’ve returned it to the library.)

So the practices arise out of the beliefs, and for the vast majority of people, precisely because these beliefs are taken to be true in some objective sense. In terms of numbers, I don’t know how many believers actually do happily and freely practice the faith without also believing it. Quite likely, those who advocate the ‘willed naiveté’ approach are those who have already invested a lot of themselves in the Christian tradition, and feel bound to it for traditional, family, community or economic reasons. Only someone trying to justify their continued existence in a faith tradition they no longer believe in would develop such an approach. That’s why it seems that conservative, orthodox and fundamentalist churches make the converts, and liberal and progressive churches appeal to those who have lost their beliefs. Of course, there may be exceptions, but they might often be authors, poets, or intellectuals, drawn to the tradition for various aesthetic reasons. 

But the real test of whether or not I believed my own words about a non-dogmatic, praxis oriented Christianity, is how I myself freely and willingly practice it. How do I measure up to (in my own words) “reading and interpreting Scripture, cultivating an inner life, participating in communal worship, practicing reconciliation, listening to others, receiving strangers, engaging in charity, re-imagining a world, accepting discipline, cultivating virtue, avoiding vices, and so on”?

Many I still hold to, or at least seek to enact, feeble as my attempts are. Practices like “cultivating an inner life, practicing reconciliation, listening to others, receiving strangers, engaging in charity, re-imagining a world, accepting discipline, cultivating virtue, avoiding vice”… these are, without a doubt, things to strive for as best we humanly can. But not because they are Christian, but because they’re worthwhile in themselves, having their own intrinsic reward or the well-being of others. And it seems to me that such qualities can all be pursued (if not fully realized) by the light of reason or common decency, or through the resources of other philosophical or religious traditions. Or Christianity, of course.

But there are particular Christian practices that I had long abandoned, dependent as they are on specific underlying beliefs. For example, for some time I had been reading the bible only when I had to, for teaching, preaching or research purposes. Quite apart from dismissing the church’s claim to the bible’s inerrancy (its factual, historical or literal truth), I didn’t find myself hungering to read it, even in a symbolic, imaginative or non-realist way. If it was a matter of personal guidance and meaning, practical help or wisdom, insight into human nature or a realistic accounting of the human story, or just a good story, I was going elsewhere. When I did resolve to meditate on the scripture, it was often out of a kind of loyalty to my vocation, but not because I believe God was speaking to me through it. At best, I found myself approaching the biblical passage as a pretext for bringing out what we already value – much like you can do with a passage from Shakespeare or any other rich and multilayered text. To be honest, I think that’s what most Christians and preachers do anyway…

What about participating in communal worship? With all honestly, this was the worst. Not only because I, the liturgy lecturer, should of all people be actively engaged and involved in this central act of the church, but because in communal worship the disjunction between personal faith and the public confession is intensified. Personal beliefs/faith (or lack thereof) must give way before the assembly reciting with one voice “We believe…” Furthermore, I was finding it almost impossible to sing the hymns of the church which in effect asked you to climb into someone else’s love affair with Jesus. No thanks.  Teaching worship, however, was not so bad, as I focused a lot on the historical development of the liturgy, which is a fascinating subject – and should remind us that all the things theologians and liturgists wrangle over are historically and culturally contingent.

Prayer, I’d agree with one of my former teachers, is the litmus test of belief. If you believe there is a heavenly Father who hears our prayers, or a Jesus who is present where two or three are gathered, then yes, you will pray, or try to. But it becomes a different proposition if you don’t hold these beliefs: prayer than becomes a kind of meditation, which of course may have its own benefit. Here is something I wrote about prayer in a post elsewhere:

Prayer is possibly one of the basic litmus tests for the presence of faith or not. So the fact that personal prayer has become almost non-existent for me is significant, although my job frequently requires me too pray in group or liturgical settings. In fact, I ceased believing a long time ago that prayer has any objective effect on the wider world of nature or humans. Prayer seems largely something we do for ourselves, or more likely, to ourselves. By prayer we reinforce the beliefs we hold, especially if we feel anxious about losing them (“Lord, I believe, help my unbelief”). It is a form of self-indoctrination, which explains why Lutheran spirituality is always going on about the connection between the word of God and prayer (as in Luther’s classic statement on oratio, meditatio, tentatio). Psychologically, I suppose prayer can be seen as a form of processing our thoughts, perhaps by positing God as a silent conversation partner. Prayer in group settings is an interesting case. I think it’s an effective way of binding a community together, precisely by its indirection. That is, by praying to God, rather than addressing each other directly, we can say things via a third party (God) more easily than saying it face to face. Prayer is an effective, yet safe, verbal community binding agent!

More examples could be given. But the point is that having shared and argued for a ‘progressive’ understanding of Christianity with my ALC colleagues, in the following months I would end up critiquing and revising my own position, effectively calling into question the very thing I argued for. At that time, it led me to the conclusion that rather than describe myself as a ‘post-critical’ or ‘non-realist’ Christian, it would be better to not call myself a Christian believer at all.

In my next post I’ll give a snapshot then of where I was in early-mid 2015, and the events that then culminated in my exit (Lexit?) from the ordained ministry. 

Faith journey (part 6)

OK, so it’s been over 4 months since I last entered a post. Being unemployed has actually been far busier than expected, and once you throw in the odd heart attack, time gets away on you. So let’s see if I can finish off this personal faith journey that led me out of ordained ministry to where I am now. Since I’m not going to recap, you may need to re-read the last post to pick up the thread…

Later in 2014, after I had spent time exploring some so-called ‘progressive’ approaches to faith, I shared a confidential 20-page faith statement with four ALC colleagues. It was, in effect, an effort to re-cast my departure from belief as a non-realist faith: I no longer believed, but I could still live by ‘faith’ in and through Christian symbolism, to embed my literal ‘no’ within a symbolic ‘yes’. Drinking deeply from post-critical theology and progressive Christian authors, I decided that this is how I could be honest about my unbelief while at the same time justify my continued employment within the institution.

So, for example, I didn’t hang back in stating what I no longer believed. Expressing my ‘no’ to literal belief, I wrote:

For it seems to me that the Jesus of history, who lived and died in 1^st century Palestine, was only human, like the rest of us. I do not believe in any literal sense that he was (or is) divine, born of a virgin, or physically raised from the dead. Nor do I believe that this same Jesus now reigns in glory, is interceding for us sinners, or that he will return at the end of time to judge the living and the dead. While I’m persuaded that he was a gifted and charismatic religious teacher of his time, it was within the movement that followed him that he progressively became the fully divine Son of God. In short, already for the first Christians, Jesus was the symbol of God, but a symbol that would soon become completely identified and indistinguishable from God’s own self.

But on the other hand, I also made the case for a symbolic and practical ‘yes’ to Christianity: 

Christianity is not about intellectually holding a set of beliefs or signing up to certain propositions. But it is about a particular way of being human and engaging in a particular set of practices which order one’s life: reading and interpreting Scripture, cultivating an inner life, participating in communal worship, practicing reconciliation and forgiveness, listening to and receiving others hospitably, engaging in charity, re-imagining a world, being reflective about life, truth and meaning, accepting a form of discipline, striving to cultivate certain virtues and avoid certain vices, and so on. Taken together, this is what it means to 'live by faith' — faith that this is a better way to live, that this is a way that one can live meaningfully, productively and honestly before God, in the world, and for others. And the medium for generating and sustaining this kind of faith are the Scriptural, doctrinal, and liturgical symbols of the Christian tradition.

Well, after much fear and trembling, I submitted this statement to four trusted colleagues, ranging in theology from more traditional to more liberal.  Without necessarily agreeing with me, none of them condemned me or threatened to ‘out’ me. All this was immensely gratifying, even though I felt I had just formed a kind of secret society. But furthermore, none of this could have a flow-on effect to my teaching (and life in general) unless I enjoyed the freedom to voice these opinions more widely. So the next step was to share some of these views at a regular forum where teaching faculty are given a chance to present their latest work or research. My four confidants became a little more uneasy here, and in the end counselled me to present it, not as my own personal view, but as a view ‘out there’, as something current in the world of thought and theology. So I presented my topic: What is the Second Naiveté? Engaging with Paul Ricoeur, Post-Critical Theology, and Progressive Christianity. As suggested, it was more academic, and less personally committed. I ended with the words by Lutheran theologian, Ted Peters:

A wager is a risk, a bet. In this case…we are betting that a hermeneutic of belief in the Christian gospel will be more fruitful for living in the world than the sceptical conclusions produced by a hermeneutic of suspicion. We will not forget our doubts. But we will press on, trying to understand ourselves and the world around us in light of the symbols of divine revelation. The wager is a form of hypothetical belief, a self-entrustment to the world of meaning created by Christian language (for full paper see my Academia site).

Of course, this wider audience was not fooled, and I think they got a fair idea that to some degree I identified (note the past tense) with this stuff. Most of the feedback was from retired professors, and most asked questions which betrayed the categories in which they’ve thought and taught for decades. One emeritus (probably more) in particular was definitely not happy, but interestingly, has not pursued things further with me. But in the end, I was thanked for taking people into ‘uncomfortable places’, and then life went back to normal.

Good place to stop. Next post won’t be so long in coming.