s m a c a
============================ An e-Zine produced by St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican Church
Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. "A progressive Anglican church with a heart for the city and an eye to the world."
"The Culture of Fear"
This week...
- THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK (A life lived in fear)
- PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY FEATURE ARTICLE
"Addressing and Challenging a Culture of Fear" by Andrew Furlong
- FEATURED LINK "Sometimes I Think God is Not Holy"
- DIALOGUE (Where you write in and tell us what you think)
- SMACA Smiles (Weird Christian Ads & SMACAtoon)
- SMACA NewSpots (The Pope and Pell, Gay Bishops and Ghostbusting Clergy)
- SMACA Prayer (Love and fear)
- How to subscribe / unsubscribe from SMACA What is SMACA?
St Matthew-in-the-City offers SMACA as a forum for progressive Christianity, philosophy and social issues, as well as personal life and faith matters. Visit our web site! http://www.stmatthews.org.nz. New content is added weekly.
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THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
"A life lived in fear is a life half lived"
- Anonymous
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PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY FEATURE ARTICLE
The faith-story of Andrew Furlong, former Dean of Clonmacnoise in Ireland, is one that might be familiar to many who consider themselves progressive Christians. Andrew has written a book about his journey titled Tried for Heresy, due for release in October. We are proud to have Andrew write for SMACA and share some of his journey with us prior to its publication. * * * "Addressing and Challenging a Culture of Fear"
by Andrew Furlong My parents were members of the Church of Ireland in Dublin where I was born and grew up. I read for a degree in Philosophy in Trinity College, Dublin. Then, after I had been accepted for ordination training for the Church of Ireland, I read for a degree in Theology in Cambridge University where I did further studies at Westcott House theological college. As I arrived in Cambridge, little did I realise the struggles of conscience and the profound changes in my understanding of Christianity that would lie ahead in the next three years. I would cease to believe, in a literal sense, in Jesus as the Saviour of the world. I would no longer see him as both human and divine, in the sense required if it were to be claimed that God had entered our environment and become a human being. Should I have proceeded on the route to ordination? At the time it seemed to me, in the context of what I was taught, that this more metaphorical and symbolical understanding of Christianity was the way forward for the church. It kept the commitment to love and caring, whilst presenting it in a way that was fully in tune with modern knowledge. My spirituality changed in Cambridge, from being christocentric to being theocentric. I had moved from a devotional life very focused on Jesus to a meditative life, in which a sense of the mystery and "unknowability" of God were combined with an awareness of my 'vision' of God as love: love without limits and love without end. To me the metaphor "Christ has died for you" was a way of expressing a belief that we are found loveable, forgivable and reconcilable by God, but I did not consider that in a literal sense Jesus' death was a bearing of the punishment for all sin, or that in a literal sense he was God come to live amongst us as a human being. I was ordained on 21st December 1972 (on what was then St Thomas' Day) in the Church of Ireland Church in Glencraig. I had found work as an assistant curate at St Mark's Church, Dundela, Belfast. I enjoyed my four years in Belfast very much and warmed to the people greatly. However, worry and anxiety often beset me because of my theological views. Liberal theology was under attack and its proponents at this time were sometimes told that they were not true Christians and they should leave the church. I used to try to spend some time reading theology each morning and continued to wrestle with the implications of liberal theology for the way Christianity was interpreted by the majority of people. Throughout my ministry I have lived with the tension of feeling unable to fully share the richness of my theological training with the people I was seeking to serve. Sometimes in the course of a conversation, I discovered that a member of the parish, where I was working at the time, had been doing a good deal of their own searching and questioning. Maybe they had listened to a programme on radio or TV, or they had read a book that had challenged the way that they had interpreted their faith up to that point in time. I would find that I could well be more transparent with him or her about my own interpretation of Christianity. Author Jack Good, in his excellent book The Dishonest Church, argues that clergy have gained a considerable amount of important theological knowledge while in training, but that they do not draw on it in their work in ministry. Instead, they revert to the more childlike faith that they had held prior to ordination training. He regards this situation as disastrous for the church and totally disrespectful of its lay membership. Good discerns four main fears: 1) That laity will react negatively if challenged to develop a more mature faith; 2) Clergy are afraid of letting laity think for themselves; 3) Exposing the human roots of religious tradition will mean it will lose its spiritual power; 4) Similarly, the Bible will lose its power if exposed to criticism. While I had talked to a number of my rectors that I was working with when I was a curate about my interpretation of the faith and my struggles with conscience and theology, and also to some of the bishops in the different dioceses where I was working, I had not spoken openly to fellow clergy until 1999 when I plucked up my courage and did so. I had been invited to read a paper to our local diocesan clergy group when I was Dean of Clonmacnoise and Rector of Trim and Athboy. My paper told the story of my faith development and all the worries and tensions surrounding it. Most of my fellow clergy were shocked, though they did not mount an opposition movement against me. In 2000, I read another similar paper to a group in Wales, and in 2001 I posted several radical articles that I had written on our newly constructed parish web site. In a matter of months the media had discovered them and my bishop started to go through them with a fine toothed comb. He thought that some of my ideas on how a religion such as Christianity -- which had come out of a pre-scientific and pre-critical world -- needed to be modernised, were outside the goalposts. In December 2001, he gave me three months of enforced leave of absence so that I could reflect on the serious concerns he had expressed to me about my stated beliefs. I was denounced as a scandal in the church by the Archbishop of Dublin and the majority of my parishioners soon argued that my ministry among them was unacceptable. They stated that I must leave the parish forthwith. After the three-month period had elapsed, I was asked to meet with my bishop again. A few days later, I received his letter inviting me to resign, failing which, he would have no other recourse, he claimed, but to take the matter to the court of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland. I declined his invitation to resign. Among its membership the Church of Ireland has some laity, academics and clergy with similar views to mine, though not everybody wants to put his or her head above the parapet. These clergy are concerned, like I have been, about the consequences of being too explicit and transparent about a liberal interpretation of the faith. My neck was seen now by many as resting on the block; the guillotine had not been used for longer than most people could remember; the blade had become rusty and would need to be sent away to be sharpened. I did not myself believe that I deserved such a fate; others clearly did. I was angry and anxious, desperately uncertain about the future, but determined to fight. After an adjourned hearing of the court of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, I very reluctantly changed my mind and decided, for various reasons, to resign. I did so on 7th May 2002, just three days before the Court was due to sit again. Many people felt relieved. It felt to me as if I had signed my own death sentence. In my working life, I had not known anything else but to seek to serve as a priest. It looked as if I would need to seek a new identity, but what might that be? I remain a priest, but with no authority from a bishop to work as one, I have no licence authorizing me. It feels like being in limbo, people ask me are you still a priest? I have to answer, well, yes and no! It doesn't sound right. It doesn't feel right either. I doubt that I will find work again in an ordained capacity in the Church of Ireland. I have considered moving to another part of the Anglican Communion and people have suggested that I think of other denominations or religions. My bishop thought I should become a Unitarian or a Jew. My book Tried for Heresy: A 21st Century Journey of Faith is in part an attempt to address and challenge a culture of fear that to my mind inhibits faith development for many people. Since my resignation, I have had a most fascinating, challenging and mind-stretching time, interacting with a group of most interesting people from fourteen different nations, giving ourselves to the study of peace, conflict and reconciliation, gender awareness and much more. Where it will all lead to for me I am not sure, but I want to find some way to earn my living again and to make a small difference for good in the world if I can. Andrew Furlong
Dublin, Ireland Website: http://myhome.iolfree.ie/~andrewfurlong/
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FEATURED LINK
"Sometimes I Think God is Not Holy"
by Rev. Beverley Dale
Sometimes I think God is not holy. Sometimes I think God is as absent as my father was. Sometimes I think Father God doesn't know what He is doing. Maybe the plan was to create some wondrous universe and see how many centuries it would take to self-destruct. From a distance, it could be a novel experiment.
Will it be slowly? Would it eat away at the earth's limited resources so the starvation of its inhabitants is so gradual it isn't noticed? Will the die off of plants, frogs and various exotic fauna go unnoticed until all is homogenous and controlled in its sterility, so incredibly boring and unpalatable that the creation simply dies out, whimpering “Is this all there is?” Read more...
http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~upennca/
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DIALOGUE - Where you write in and tell us what you think.
Rev. Durrell Watkins writes from, New Jersey, USA: Re: SMACA "Feeding the Heart"
Since I have a few to recommend, I won't annotate them, but I have to say that these are absolute essentials for every progressive religious person's library. They will actually fuel a passion for religious thinking, historical information, and critical analysis of the doctrinal statements we have inherited. They are all written for the lay reader and none of them are terribly long or too expensive. I highly endorse each of these texts. Happy reading!
Remedial Christianity (by Religion professor and Unity minister Paul A. Laughlin)
Science and the Search for God (by Unitarian Universalist minister Gary Kowalski)
Who Is Jesus? (by historian John Dominic Crossan)
Stealing Jesus (by journalist Bruce Bawer)
Let There Be Light (by Aramaic Language and Culture scholar Rocco Errico)
Treasures From The Language of Jesus (by Rocco Errico)
How To Know God (by Eastern Medical Practitioner Deepak Chopra)
A New Christianity For A New World (by Anglican Bishop John S. Spong)
Why Christianity Must Change Or Die (also by Bishop Spong)
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (by Princeton University Religion Scholar Elaine Pagels)
The Divine Feminine (by Religion and Sexuality writer Virginia R. Mollenkott)
So You Think You're Not Religious? (by The Center for Progressive Christianity president James Adams) Post your thoughts on the SMACA Forum. Robust discussion is encouraged!
http://www.stjohnsnorthcote.org.nz/forums/JohnMatt/index.html We welcome all emails, especially those commenting on articles published in SMACA. Letters to Dialogue may be abridged and edited at the Editors' discretion. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and are not necessarily the views of the SMACA Editors or St Matthew-in-the-City.
Send all messages to
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SMACA Smiles
"Weird Christian Ads"
From the Door Magazine's "Truth is Stranger Than Fiction" files.
http://www.thedoormagazine.com/archives/stranger.html SMACAtoon!
This week: "Holy Communion"
http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/smacatoon11.htm
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SMACA NewSpots
"Pope makes Pell a cardinal" September 29, 2003
SYDNEY'S Archbishop George Pell was named yesterday by The Pope as one of 30 new cardinals. He joins only a handful of other Australians who have been appointed as cardinals of the Catholic Church and will be eligible to vote in a papal election or conclave to elect a new pope.
Read more...
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7402585%255E421,00.html "Episcopal Leader Defends Gay Bishop" September 30, 2003
NEW YORK - With two key meetings ahead that could determine whether the Episcopal Church splits over homosexuality, the denomination's leader, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, defended his support Monday for an openly gay bishop in an interview with The Associated Press.
Read more...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/
ap/20030929/ap_on_re_us/episcopal_leader_interview_2 "Father jailed over 'honour killing'" September 30, 2003
LONDON - A Muslim man who cut his 16-year-old daughter's throat because she had a Christian boyfriend has been sentenced to life in prison.
Read more...
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7417010%255E28217,00.html "Ghostbusting clergy on the case" 30.09.2003
A packaging firm has called in spiritual help to bless its premises because of staff fears that the factory might be haunted. The Auckland company Rapak Asia Pacific has asked five ministers from different denominations to solve its problem.
Read more...
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3526192&thesection
=news&thesubsection=general&thesecondsubsection=
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SMACA Prayer
There are only two feelings. Love and fear.
There are only two languages. Love and fear.
There are only two activities. Love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results.
Love and fear. (Michael Leunig, "A Common Prayer")
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Missed an edition of SMACA? View archived copies at this link:
http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/sermons.htm
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