Faith Journey (part 1 of about 10)

In the next 10 or so posts I want to recount my faith journey, especially focusing on the changes that have taken place over the last 5 or so years. Obviously it involves other people, but as much as possible I’ll keep names out of it, except for published authors. It’s not a comprehensive autobiography – just a bare bones account to help you understand how I’ve arrived at where I’m at now.  

I grew up in a Christian household which included regular church-going and occasional involvement in other church activities. I was exposed to a devotional piety which included bible reading and personal prayer—my father in particular had been influenced by a deeply spiritual and evangelical lay leader in our Latvian congregation, and also by one of Billy Graham’s crusades.  We joined the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA) when I was 10 years old, and this meant I could at last understand what was going on in church. I attended Sunday School and eventually confirmation lessons, where I did quite well.

As a child and young teenager, Christianity, in its Adelaide hills Lutheran manifestation, was simply part of my background. In these early years and right through (public) high school, I don’t recall making any conscious or deliberate effort to ‘follow Christ’ or grow in my faith. However, it left its mark in a few ways. The first was a basic moral framework, which I didn’t always follow, and a fairly sensitive conscience, to remind me of the fact. The second was a belief in a hidden spiritual world and the danger of occult powers (witchcraft, Satanism, etc.) which ‘spooked’ quite a bit. A third was the conviction that God could be called on to provide help in trouble, which I considered validated in a few experiences.

I underwent a kind of spiritual awakening around age 19-20 and became involved with youth and study groups, both Lutheran and Baptist. The latter was quite significant, as there, for the first time, I encountered a vibrant youth spirituality, and made some friendships which remain current to this day. I also developed a piety based on bible reading and prayer, and began thinking about a future vocation. An aimless liberal arts course became a teaching degree, which then led on to a year at Lutheran Teachers' College. It was at this time (1988) that I became completely ‘taken’ with theological study, something that would consume me for years to come, and in some sense is still with me.

However, I had no idea at the time how deeply conservative and untouched by modern thought was the theology I was imbibing.  Premised on notions of biblical inerrancy, my education gave me no real opportunity to engage with contemporary theological trends. And if it did, I wasn’t interested. In those rare moments when I did encounter modern theology, I didn’t understand it, and still less accepted it. Whether by upbringing or temperament or education, the theological worldview I was passively adopting and actively constructing could be described as an ‘uncritical naive realism’. At an age when people often question their faith for the first time, I was busily building defenses against such questions. I was becoming quite dogmatic, and loved it.

So when I received a teaching placement in a Lutheran Primary school on the Gold Coast, it soon became apparent to myself and those around me that I’d rather be ensconced in theological studies than starting a classroom career. To my delight, I was accepted into Luther Seminary, and after seeing out two long years of teaching, I began my training for the ordained ministry.

The next five years were very formative. I was impressionable, eager, and competitive. As well gaining a basic theological education I also became aware of the supposed battle lines drawn across the church. Labels such as ‘confessional’, ‘liberal’, ‘pietistic’, ‘church growth’, ‘orthodox’, ‘charismatic’, and ‘liturgical’ would start taking on significance for me. (We even invented a few, like ‘caftan theology’.) At the end of 1995, when I was ordained, my theology and practice was still conservative, but I should stress, not fundamentalist or biblicist – at least by our church’s standards. For unlike my earlier entree into theological education, this time it was impossible not to engage with a range of theological opinions, and to some extent, my teachers did represent a broad-ish range of views on the theological spectrum. Nevertheless I prided myself (in a humble way, of course) on being ‘orthodox’, ‘confessional’ and ‘liturgical’.

Half way through my degree I married Jeanette, who comes from a committed and conservative Lutheran family. As a semi-outsider, this was possibly more educational than I realized at the time, for while I was strong on theology, the realities of rural Australian Lutheranism was something I had little exposure to.

As it turned out, my first parish was in Hamilton, Victoria, where for the next five years my existing theological inclinations would be encouraged and confirmed by conservative mentors and members both locally and throughout the district. Responding to what I perceived as both liberal and ‘church-growth’ threats to orthodoxy, I would become increasingly aligned with the ‘confessional’ wing in the church. During this time I also become interested in, perhaps even enamoured of, the more catholic expressions of the Lutheran tradition. This was exacerbated when some friends and colleagues themselves joined the Roman Catholic Church.

In late 2000 I accepted the call to serve the congregation in Pasadena, Adelaide. Here I encountered a more ecumenical (but still conservatively Protestant) congregational culture, which meant that my confessional and liturgical commitments met with occasional resistance, or at least disagreement. It’s hard to say whether some of these differences were a matter of theology, piety, or personality. But on the whole, my ministry was accepted and supported, even if a few were relieved when I finally left. I worked with many fine people, and was guided and assisted by colleagues whose advice and friendship I genuinely valued.

Even though I was starting to contribute to the life of the wider church (e.g., through its liturgical commission) and pondering the possibility of further study, it was also in my later years at Pasadena (2006-2007) that my thinking and beliefs first began to change. But before I start describing that, I want to reflect on what prevented those changes from taking place much earlier. That will be my next post. 

Why blog?

I’m not a natural born blogger. I also take a long time before I press the ‘publish’ button. And since I also keep my own diary of thoughts and ideas, why blog?

I’m aware that my decision to leave the ministry, and especially the reasons for doing so, have caused some consternation, sadness, and perhaps also a sense of betrayal. Even anger in a few cases. This could well be the case if you are one of my former pastoral ministry students, or if I was once your pastor in the congregation. If I taught you, prayed with you, and led you in the service of word and sacrament, how can I now seem to turn my back on that?

It’s for this reason that I’d like to keep blogging. I do care about the effects of my decision, and I don’t want you to think that all we shared was meaningless. You are important! Hopefully you’ll gain a glimpse of my reasons, and while not necessarily agreeing with them, you’ll know  they don’t come from ill feeling or lack of regard.

There’s another reason I’d like to blog. I believe there’s a need for more exposure to the ideas which have been part of academic discussion for decades and centuries, but have barely begun to trickle down to the pews. I can understand that you might be saddened by my defection, but I don’t think you should be shocked. For my journey is not at all uncommon, and the conditions and ideas that made it possible are all around us.

So here’s my plan for future blogs.

First, I’d like to share my own journey: how I got from the pastor you once knew to the person I am now. The change which you became aware of suddenly, did not for me come out of the blue. There is a story to be told, and I want to tell it as helpfully as I can. There’ll be nothing dramatic or scandalous in it, but nevertheless, in reading it you might find experiences and perspectives that you can relate to. That might take a few posts.

Second – and this will be more ongoing – I want to take up specific aspects of Christian faith and belief and examine them with the kind of openness I could not when I was under ordination vows. If I’ve received questions from you, hopefully I can also weave them in. To some this might sound like I’m ‘attacking’ the faith, and I don’t deny that there will be a critical side to what I write. But it won’t be criticism out of hostility. Rather, I will simply and honestly state how I see things – but without the need to censor my statements or make them acceptable to a confession I no longer hold.

However, this critical aspect will also serve a positive purpose. From critique, I’d like to move to restoration, that is, to recover how the beliefs of the Christian worldview might look if taken as symbols, as expressions (or constructs) of the religious imagination. In short, how might beliefs that are no longer regarded as divinely inspired still have human value? If no longer received as revelation, how might core convictions still be revealing of who we are as religiously oriented beings?

I’m not envisioning that I can actually do this for every doctrine or belief.  And so there will be a third kind of blog entry in which I mull over the value of Christianity and religion in a far more general way. Here I’m guided by a number of (post)Christian authors who, while arriving at conclusions similar to many agnostics, atheists and sceptics, choose nevertheless to spin it differently. Such authors agree that many beliefs in literal or realistic sense  are no longer sustainable, since they are products of another time and culture. But they also recognize that we in the 21^st century are not so different from the people in whom those beliefs first arose. Even if dogmatic orthodoxy is losing its grip on us, we are not less religiously susceptible.

So that’s what I think I’ll have a go at. These may not be your kind of questions or concerns, but they are mine. I don’t for a moment claim to have arrived at ‘the truth’, nor is anything I write beyond criticism. So feel free to respond as you will.

For now, here’s a signature quote by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, whose long career traversed the tensions between faith and philosophy.

Does that mean that we could go back to a primitive naïveté? Not at all. In every way, something has been lost, irremediably lost; immediacy of belief. But if we can no longer live the great symbolisms of the sacred in accordance with the original belief in them, we can…aim at a second naïveté in and through criticism. In short, it is through interpreting that we can hear again (The Symbolism of Evil, 351).

A short statement of 'belief'

In my opening post I mentioned that I could no longer reconcile my personal worldview and beliefs with the confession of the church. In this post I’ll try and summarize my position as best I can, leaving the details for future entries.

In essence, I’ve come to the view that Christianity is an entirely natural and human phenomenon. Like any other religion or worldview, it is a product of human culture, and like culture, it continues to grow and change. It is just one way that one group of humans came to understand their place in the world and live in it. Along with an increasing number of Christians, I hold to a ‘non-supernatural’ view of the Christian faith. In other words, I don’t take the miraculous and mythical elements in the bible and creeds as literal facts or historical events, but rather, as a product of human faith and belief.

Just to be clear on this score: all the things Christians are traditionally assumed or expected to believe, I now regard as entirely human constructs,  and no more: the bible as divinely inspired, Jesus as divine, the virgin birth, the literal resurrection, interventionist miracles, angels and demons, heaven and hell – all these I see as products of human religious communities. Of course, that is not to dismiss them as irrelevant or stupid. On the contrary, there is much to be gained in reflecting upon these beliefs as powerful symbols of the Christian worldview, and indeed, the Christian world is the soil from which our modern western culture has emerged. But that’s for other posts to discuss in detail.  

So to return to the main thread...what am I then? Rather than trying to find a neat religious label to wear, I am content to simply state the following: as one of 7.37 billion poor mortals on this fragile planet, I am amazed by the miracle of existence, of life, of consciousness, and of the human spirit. There is such a profound mystery to this natural universe that I don’t need to believe in any further supernatural realities. Everything in life is already the most profound miracle you could ask for. Many people (and theologians too) give the name ‘God’ to this mystery, and that is something that I can live with.

For me, the best response to this mystery is to be as honest as I can about what I do and don’t believe, to try and understand other viewpoints as fairly and as charitably as I can, and to always be willing to revise my opinions, no matter how sacred or securely held they are. In my opinion, it is far better to remain agnostic about life’s greatest mysteries, rather than accept beliefs that you secretly doubt simply out of loyalty to one’s church or tradition. I just don’t think you can ‘wear’ someone else’s belief unless that belief has its own inherent power to convince you.

I am content to regard myself as a listener to the Christian tradition. And as we know, the purpose of good listening is not to rush to conclusions about who is right and wrong, but to better understand. Even by traditional standards, listening is the greater half of faith. But at the same time, I am also a listener to other traditions, in particular the secular and philosophical tradition of Western culture.

Another way I like to think of myself now is a friend of the Christian tradition. A friend cares, a friend takes an interest, a friend chooses to see the best in another. But a friend does not have to agree with everything you say. It is the mark of friendship that you might view the world in completely different ways – any many fine novels and movies are based on this observation.

One more term that could describe my position is that of secular Christian. On the one hand, I am secular because my worldview and understanding of reality is shaped by modern science, history and philosophy – not the supernatural assumptions people held in biblical times or previous centuries. On the other hand, I have been irreversibly shaped by the Christian tradition, and I resonate with many of its key symbols and values.  

I believe that how you live is much more important than what you happen to believe. Beliefs are inherited from our specific respective traditions. But kindness, generosity, respect, and friendship – are understood by people everywhere, and celebrated by all the great traditions. I’m not saying I excel in any of these – I wish I did! – but they are the things worth aiming for.

If we are to talk about ‘beliefs’ or ‘believing’, I would understand it in terms of what one cares about, or what one thinks is important. So on this basis I ‘believe’ the following:

• life is an irreplaceable gift and a precious endowment;
• we humans are flawed, our own worst enemy, curved in on ourselves (as Luther said), forever creating and being enslaved by idols of our own making;
• we often resort to ‘the law’ to bring our unstable and selfish natures into line, but far better is when we experience true, inner transformation, which we  (along with many other traditions) describe as ‘grace’;
• often we are brought to a point where we must ‘die’ to ourselves if we are going to experience newness of life;
• life can be understood as a pilgrimage that leads one in a three-steps-forward two-steps-back progression from bondage to freedom; 
• at the end of our lives we realize that love and the quality of our relationships matter far more than our achievements and material possessions;

All these ‘beliefs’ are emphasized by Christian faith, and one can value them (as I do) regardless of what we believe about stories and doctrines that serve to express them. 

Another way of putting this, one that I have come across countless times in my reading, is the distinction between belief and faith. Beliefs are certain views you hold about what is actual or real, about what ‘really happened’. Because beliefs grow out of a certain time and culture, they will inevitably change. But faith is a particular approach to life which is marked by how you live and what you care about, as I’ve just described above. The person of faith I have in mind could live within their religious tradition without accepting its beliefs as statements of fact. As many Christians are increasingly doing, inherited beliefs which can no longer be held literally can instead be taken as symbols which provide a means for reflecting upon and deepening one’s life of faith.

More on these things to follow...please feel free to comment.

What is the Second Naivete?

Check out my newly uploaded paper on Academia: What is the Second Naivete? Engaging with Paul Ricoeur, Post-Critical Theology, and Progressive Christianity. Click on the Academia link to get there.

Statement for LCA members, pastors, church workers

Hi, and welcome to this blog. If you are reading this, it probably means you’ve received a link to it via an LCA notification. For now, this no-frills site simply serves to share some information, and receive any comments you care to make. Hopefully it will grow into a more active blog as time goes on. We’ll see.

By now you have probably heard that I have resigned from the pastorate of the LCA, and hence from my teaching position at ALC. Naturally, this may have raised questions in your minds as to why this has happened, so I’d like to give a brief explanation of my decision.

In short, I have left the ordained ministry of the LCA because I can no longer reconcile my personal worldview and beliefs with the confession of the church. On the one hand, I continue to share many of the church’s values and aspirations, and consider myself a friend of the Christian tradition. But on the other hand, I no longer hold many of the specific doctrinal claims and assertions of the Christian faith (at least in the way they are traditionally understood). Arriving at this position has not happened overnight, but has been a journey spanning at least half a decade, and possibly longer.

For some time I managed to keep my private intellectual position separate from my public responsibilities, and despite where my own thinking was, continued to support and promote the objectives of the church. In particular, I was mindful not to compromise the pastoral and educational formation of students at ALC. In my professional capacity it was as much my desire as my colleagues’ to ensure that students progressed to the fullest possible understanding and appreciation of the Lutheran tradition. Even now, I value this objective. Nevertheless, you can also appreciate that maintaining a ‘double act’ between private views and public calling could only last for so long, and for the sake of maintaining both my own and the church’s integrity the time eventually came to step aside.

In order to put to rest any other speculations that may be circulating about my decision, there are a few other things worth mentioning.  First, my decision to resign is not a result of any marriage or family difficulties, but is solely the result of my own intellectual journey. My family continues to worship in the LCA, and I myself am not planning on joining any other denomination, group or faith. Furthermore, I am not hurt by or angry with the church, or its leaders, or with any of my colleagues. On the whole, I feel well treated by the institution of the church, and in particular will always remember my time at ALC with fondness and gratitude. In fact, it is with some grief that I end my time there, as I am leaving a wonderful team of people, and I sincerely wish the best for this institution.

While many of you will be content with the information I’ve supplied here, others may be interested in the details of my personal and intellectual path. As I said at the start, I hope to post some more in-depth accounts of my journey before too long, as the world of philosophy, faith and worldviews is an abiding interest of mine. But in the meantime, if you ask or email me directly, I would usually be happy to share some of my reflections with you, keeping in mind that it's not my intent to foist my views on or proselytize anyone. 

I wish you all the very best in your work of service and ministry, and look forward to maintaining friendships with you, albeit under different circumstances.