ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some of these musings have been read by friends and some have been published, thus reaching a wider readership. These essays, written over many months in response to various stimuli, will sometimes overlap in content. These are therefore best read as

separate articles, rather than as sequential chapters.

For the fearless publishing of these, I wish to acknowledge the great support and encouragement I have received

from two editors: Rev. Alun Thomas of Free to Believe and Rev. Hugh Dawes

of Progressive Christianity Network – Britain. I thank both these tremendous men who are courageously fighting serious ill-health.

Thanks must also go to my fellow contributor to ‘Briefing’ – Carol Williams.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge my enormous indebtedness to my editor and keyboard wizard, my wonderful wife, Margaret,

who is without doubt the busiest woman in the world, and with her three degrees, sounds more like a girl band.

Jack Dean, 2011

FRONT COVER

Church at Augignac, south-west France; from an original by the author

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CONTENTS

1. Can Jesus be found in church?

2. “Are you a Christian?”

3. Can Jesus still speak to our generation?

4. What is this Kingdom of God?

5. What is prayer?

6. What is worship?

7. ‘Jesus is God’? – you can’t be serious!

8. Is theology only for the super-intelligent?

9. Has the church passed its sell-by date?

10. Time for a new reformation?

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1. CAN JESUS BE FOUND IN CHURCH?

Of course, where else? This would be the expected reply, but

in which one? In almost every church you may be confronted by a

different Jesus. The common one is Jesus the Christ, for after all

isn’t that why the organisation that holds its variety of meetings in

churches is called Christianity? By this appellation we are asked to

accept that in his day Jesus was known as the Christ, but this was

not so. The man who showed us more clearly than any other

human being what the nature of the Divine was like was soon to

be seen as God disguised as a human. (This might have presented

a major problem if the male God had been incarnated as a woman,

but I digress.) Had that been the case, Jesus would have had an

unfair advantage over the rest of us. It would also mean that his

death would not be as real to him as ours is to us. It also implies

that mere mortals can never aspire to the quality of life that he

commends to us.

However, if you think as I do that Jesus was fully human,

what was he like? To his contemporaries, he seemed to appear

physically like themselves, even if he did express some odd, even

impracticable notions about human values. At Sunday school we

were taught to sing ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ and a favourite 5

carol used to include the phrase ‘and through all his wondrous

childhood he would honour and obey’. Repetition of this fiction

has blinded us to his true humanity. This docile, compliant image

sits strangely with the angry man who made a whip of cords to

expel the Temple Court traders, who instructed his followers to

arm themselves and who accused the religious folk of hypocrisy.

Could this be the man who walked about with a saintly halo

around his head, as centuries of religious art has depicted?

This man-with-an-urgent-mission is rarely presented to us at

Sunday worship. We are not often reminded that he did not hold

too rigorously to observance of Sabbath laws, that he set little

store by corporate prayer or demand that his followers be pious or

even religious. But he was political in that he charged those who

would be his allies to challenge the inequalities and injustices of

his time. This Jesus seems strangely silent in, if not totally absent

from, the places in which we are called to worship him –

something he strictly forbade. If the vision for the future of our

world was the driving spirit in that remarkable life, and the

Christian church does not clearly challenge us to make that vision

ours, cost what it may, there is no point in church worship.

The realisation of who this Jesus really was compelled me to

write a number of essays which I have collected in this little

booklet. They suggest a few ways in which the church might

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adopt a different approach to the use of the communal time which

might prove more helpful to those looking for spiritual liberation

and nourishment.

Although I fully expect that the views expressed in these

pages will collide with those firmly and honestly held by some

readers, I ask that you recognise that all of us are religiously

informed by received knowledge. What we know has been passed

to us by some authority who persuaded us that he/she was in

possession of the ultimate truth. In his book ‘The Dishonest

Church’, Jack Good clearly states that those who have imparted

Christian truth to those in the pews have not always been totally

honest in passing on the knowledge gained by them in their

seminary training. Jack is one of the many modern thinkers –

scholars and theologians – who, by written and spoken word, are

redefining for our age the Jewish Jesus of 2000 years ago. By

acquainting ourselves with such enlightenment, we might find that

we encounter our Jesus whilst on our way to church.

My hope is that you, dear reader, might even catch a glimpse

of him as you read on.

SHALOM.

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2. “ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN?”

On a fine spring day, I was seated on a bench in Jephson

Gardens, Leamington Spa, when an alcohol-slurred voice directed

this question at me. It was spoken by a man, well into middle age

and well into a bottle of Scotch too! Overcoming my surprise at

such an unexpected enquiry, I replied that whilst I would hesitate

to call myself a Christian, I did try to follow the teachings of

Jesus.

‘I knew it’ he exclaimed, ‘can I talk to you after I have taken

home my shopping?’ With my mind in neutral, I agreed and

watched him tottering away somewhat unsteadily along the path.

I wondered if he would remember to return for the chat. I also

wondered if it would be more prudent to discreetly depart the

scene in case he did, since trying to converse with a drunk in

public presented a daunting prospect. However, we both kept our

word and soon he was sitting beside me, extracting from his coat

the expected bottle of Johnnie Walker which he offered me. I

politely declined but suggested he should feel free. He needed no

encouragement and then proceeded to give me a potted history of

his wretched, ruined life, littered with its multitude of wrong

turnings, many leading to tragic consequences, including a prison

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sentence. This pitiful figure was bereft of hope and was sure that

hell was his unavoidable destination. Guilt was his only certainty

and he was beyond all help.

Some weeks later, again sitting on a bench in that same park,

I was joined by an attractive woman who felt compelled to speak

to me. She confided that she was desperately sad and disturbed

because she was going through a divorce, her life lay in ruins and

life was utterly pointless. Her whole being was overwhelmed by

this oppressive feeling of guilt and she felt that this endless burden

was unsupportable.

These two encounters constantly nagged at my thoughts and I

wondered why I should be the recipient of the deepest concerns of

these casual contacts. Maybe it was because I was a complete

stranger, never to be met again. I also wondered if this sense of

guilt was endemic to the citizens of Leamington. Neither of my

park bench companions felt that the church would accept them

because of their wickedness. I have since become aware that this

feeling is ubiquitous. Jack Spong’s words came back to me – ‘the

church does guilt better than anything’. My musings made me

realise that most of us possess a degree of religious knowledge,

but few of us recognise that this truth, which is often difficult to

square with our secular learning, is received. By that I mean we

have been taught by others whose wisdom we rarely, if ever,

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questioned. From our early years we have learned of miracles

which defy the natural laws; of the original couple who produced

two sons who mate with women of unexplained origins; of a flood

which covered the earth to a level of 30,000 feet. We have lived

with a religious truth which our intellects find difficult to accept.

The Old Testament depicts a critical, vengeful God, capable

of the destruction of his own creation, complicit in genocide and

one to be feared above all others. So deeply has this concept of

God been embedded in our psyche that we are mentally paralysed

and unable to escape it. We have immense difficulty in replacing

such a deity with the image of a God who loves and forgives

without limits or qualification. I fail to understand why Christians

so tenaciously cling to the God of Judaism yet are so reluctant to

embrace the God envisioned by Jesus on whom their faith is

founded.

I return to my story. What does one say to these guilt-laden

folk whose lives are stunted by brooding on a past which cannot

be altered, instead of looking ahead with vision to a future which

can yet be shaped and made glorious? I glimpse a Jesus who

points to a loving Father who forgives us even before we seek

forgiveness. God to me is not a being but the very breath of life

that animates every living being and that energised and

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empowered that pale Galilean, whose life provides a supreme

example of full humanity.

I think I now understand why Jesus was approached by

people, desperately aware of their own unworthiness. This idea of

the innate sin in each of us was also present in them, since they

too had inherited the belief in original sin. In those times,

sickness, both physical and mental, disease and all forms of

disability was believed to be the result of sinning. So when long-

term invalids appealed to Jesus for healing, some of his critics

asked ‘who sinned, this man or his parents?’ This is a clear

example of the supposed genetic link to the downfall of the

mythical Adam, still evident in our practice of infant baptism. The

way in which Jesus dealt with the situation brought him into

conflict with the religious experts who accused him of playing

God. ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ he was asked.

My reading of the gospels leaves me with the impression that

Jesus did not forgive sins but he did say ‘your sins are forgiven’ or

‘you are forgiven’ which is something very different. He was

inviting his hearers to forgive themselves. We must learn how to

forgive ourselves, but this may only be possible if we make

amends for past misdeeds where we can (Matthew 5:24) and to

determine to avoid such behaviour in the future. Living with guilt

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and a sense of utter worthlessness robs us of ‘life in all its

fullness’ shown, by Jesus, to be possible.

There appears to be a growing sense of unrest and perhaps

signs of a search for escape from our stress-inducing frenetic

lifestyle. Could this be indicative of the stirring of an unsatisfied

part of us, that unfathomable layer of our being of which we are

only vaguely aware? Our physical bodies respond to the stimuli of

hunger, thirst and weariness by eating, drinking and resting. Most

of us don’t know how to respond to this indefinable yearning. We

do not recognise the invisible spiritual element of ourselves with

the result that we are spiritually starved. Evidence of this malaise

can be observed in the proliferation of the Alpha courses, a useful

launch pad for those wishing to know more about Christianity.

However, if the object of these courses is to remind the enquirers

of their natural guilt, which is the main theme promoted by the

organised churches, it may fill the empty pews, but it will scarcely

equip any converts to escape the shackles of past mis-information

and liberate them to enjoy abundant life. It is worth remembering

the words of Jack Spong who declared that ‘we are not guilty

people stained by the original sin inherited by everyone because

humanity fell from perfection. Human beings never were perfect,

we still have not reached our full humanity’. This view is

supported by the findings of Darwin.

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Whilst none of us can honestly claim to be equal with Jesus,

the evidence tells me that this secular sage was fully human. We

may not possess his extraordinary powers or his intuitive feel of

the right way to live. We can at least provide some words of hope

and encouragement to those desperate enough to seek us out. How

often do we pray: ‘your kingdom come, your will be done on

earth’? This isn’t a request or an expression of hope. It is a

reminder to all of us who regularly recite those words that we are

the people who are required to make it so. We must point those

who come to us for healing (another meaning of salvation)

towards the liberating words of Jesus, showing them the way to

wholeness, abundant living and the ability to become all that they

were meant to be - still Jesus calls us to tend these sheep.

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3. CAN JESUS STILL SPEAK TO OUR GENERATION?

After almost 2000 years, is it possible for the thoughts and

aspirations of a secular sage to have any relevance for modern

people? Some have said that this person, about whom we know so

little and who left no written documents, cannot be reliably

recalled. Others have claimed that this human being never existed

and was merely a fanciful figure of imagination. Honesty demands

that we have to admit there is scant extra-religious evidence to

support his existence. Biblical accounts very often lack agreement

and were not even records of eye-witnesses. St. Paul, who wrote

more about Jesus than any of the evangelists, experienced

conversion three or four years after Jesus’ death and vanished

some thirty years later, never met him.

It is unlikely that one will encounter the human Jesus inside

the organised churches. Rather, one will be required to worship

Christ, the Divine Redeemer, a creation of Christianity, and

largely a misrepresentation of that fully human Galilean. I contend

that neither the promoted image nor the religion about him would

be recognised by Jesus as bearing any resemblance to who he was

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or what was his ‘raison d’être’. Biblical scholars and theologians

have laboured for more than two hundred years to locate this Jesus

(often imagined as the first Christian) and his genuine

authoritative teaching, but century by century, the church has

devised its own versions by means of dogma, doctrine and

manipulated creed. Although Christianity has its roots firmly

embedded in Judaism, it has become the chief detractor of that

faith, despite its being the religion of Jesus.

My life-long doubts about much of the church’s teaching

have led me to pursue my quest for the man Jesus. I seek him in

the books of my modest personal library and in my conversations

with theologians to find enlightenment but my dialogue with

devout church people, both lay and professional, forces me to

conclude that my interpretation places me among a minority of

adherents to the faith – in fact some regard me as a heretic.

Reading again Albert Nolan’s masterly “Jesus before

Christianity”, I discovered yet another author (among giants like

Crossan, Spong, Borg, Funk and Good) who reinforces my take on

Jesus as a secular sage who challenged the worldly values of his

contemporaries. His call was to seek first God’s realm rather than

worship the gods of the secular materialistic empire, declaring that

the two are incompatible. Jesus foresaw the impending catastrophe

(usually misinterpreted as the end of the world) which would be

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the unavoidable result if men pursued the wrong egocentric values

which he decried. Today many folk I encounter express deep

unease and concern about our present lifestyle.

Rather than promote the idea that Christianity ought to issue

a clear challenge to the way we live, the organised church prefers

to protect its diminishing membership by continuing to preach a

security-seeking, feather-bed religion. This approach promises a

personal god who will not allow any harm or ill-fortune befall

those who hear and believe. Experience indicates that there is no

intervening being ‘out there’ and that we live by our own

decisions and actions.

A later essay sets out my alternative look at the way the

church conducts its communal activities. It examines the various

aspects of its procedures and explores alternative and more

rational means of connecting with the modern mind. Many of the

clergy, aware of the precarious position of their livelihood, seem

afraid to present a modern view of our religious beliefs and

commitments, lest such changes as may be required alienate those

who prefer the comfortable status quo. This ignores the undeniable

fact that those who might depart the pews will do so before long

owing to advancing years and the stark reality that their places are

not being occupied by a younger generation which demands more

honesty. The hierarchy – those in possession of knowledge which

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should be shared with the pastoral flocks – shy away from

delivering what they have learned in seminary training. Continued

failure to do so will lead inevitably to the demise of the church

and indeed to Christianity in its present guise.

In the following essays, first I assert that Jesus called for a

non-violent, political effort to improve the quality of human

existence, necessitating a challenge from the pulpit to actively

engage in working towards social equality and justice. This should

replace the emphasis on the ‘hope of Heaven’ or an endless

afterlife which is the usual understanding of the resurrection.

The essay ‘What is Prayer?’ seeks to separate the imagined

petitioning of a vague and invisible deity from an introspective

examination in order to discern how the person praying may

become the agent for the fulfilment of that which the prayer

requested. The sixth essay questions the use of corporate time

which is not currently used to educate and direct our activities in

pursuit of creating a better world.

We must abandon the Christ figure invented by the Christian

church in favour of the human Jesus of Nazareth who loved and

served his fellow human beings. He demands no less from those

who claim to be his friends. When we find him and listen to him,

we will discover that he is still trying to speak to us today.

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4. WHAT IS THIS KINGDOM OF GOD?

Is it an illusion, a Utopian dream or merely a buttress against

our human dread of ultimate nothingness?

So far as we can tell from the New Testament, Jesus spoke

about this kingdom a great deal and it appeared to have been the

focal point of his whole life. This kingdom is mentioned over one

hundred times in the canonical gospels, nearly half of those in the

second to be written, the one later attributed to Matthew. This

author usually preferred to refer to it as ‘the kingdom of heaven’

and only five times did he call it ‘the kingdom of God’. Could this

be because in this most Jewish of the gospels the use of the word

for God was avoided where possible? The original phrase really

translates as ‘the kingdom of the heavens, easily understood as

‘the skies’ or even ‘above the sky’. Perhaps this is the origin of the

concept of heaven as a place reserved for the righteous when

earthly life is extinguished and whither some (or all) will be

resurrected. (Christianity is not clear on this last point).

This general understanding has not been refuted by the

organised church; in fact, it appears to have been promoted by it,

which seems strange since Jesus spoke of the imminence of this

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kingdom of God, implying a place on earth where the rule of God

was being followed. In Luke’s gospel, we have Jesus saying that

‘the kingdom of God is among you’ (Luke 17:21). The version of

this quotation in the Good News Bible is more specific: ‘the

kingdom of God is within you’.

To be fair to the church, in comparatively recent times it has

sometimes promoted the view that the aim of Christian believers

should be the creation of an equal, just and compassionate society,

at least for fellow Christians. The inclusion of pagans or those of

other faiths is rarely, if ever, emphasised.

When I first read Don Cupitt’s book ‘Taking leave of God’, I

was stopped in my tracks by these words: ‘There was no Eden . . .

there is no upper world . . . there will not be any future kingdom of

God on earth’. Whilst I could heartily endorse the first two

statements, I was shocked into a radical re-think by the third.

I have eventually come to agree with Don Cupitt, who, I

believe ‘terminated his lifelong connection with organised

religion’ in 2008 (see ‘Above Us Only Sky’ p.91). I cannot

imagine the peoples and religions of the world ever being able to

be sufficiently free of self-interest for this kind of society to be

created.

Will Christianity change our world into that perfect place of

which we dream? I don’t believe so, not as currently practised by

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a church intent on self-preservation. Does this mean that we

should stop trying to make this world a more equitable place?

Definitely not. As Christians – or to use a term I prefer, followers

of Jesus of Nazareth – we are called to be compassionate and

tolerant towards everyone, to campaign boldly for justice – the

justice of distribution, not retribution – and to seek the good of

others, whatever the cost to ourselves.

Is this a tall order? Yes, indeed it is, but it is nothing less than

being a follower of Jesus demands. ‘You are my friends if you do

as I command you’ Jesus is supposed to have said, according to

the fourth gospel. Although some scholars claim that such words

cannot be reliably traced back to Jesus, they seem to comport with

his message. If we decide not to live up to his requirements but to

modify his instructions to suit our own desires, we have no part in

him. No-one ever claimed that it is easy to be a disciple of Jesus,

but in attempting to define what that discipleship entails, we

should ‘beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial’ to ourselves,

to quote the final general rule of the Jesus Seminar.

It seems that losing our lives in the service of others brings a

fullness of life that encapsulates God’s reign. Whilst this kind of

action may not change the material world around us, it can

certainly improve the lives of those who experience it, be they

receivers or givers. Surely creating the kingdom of God within us

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is synonymous with finding eternal life, enabling us to attain our

full humanity?

We should recognise that Jesus was murdered, not because

he was said to have claimed to be the Son of God, but because of

his strong vocal opposition to any domination system, religious or

political. If we then set this fact in the context of his times when

the majority of the population was subjugated by the ruling elite,

we may discover that the reported mass response at Pentecost

begins to make sense. Could this possibility throw some light on

the experience of the risen Jesus by ‘over five hundred of our

brothers at once’ about which we read only in Paul’s letter to the

Corinthians? Strangely, this is not mentioned in any of the

gospels, the earliest of which was written years after Paul’s death.

Many of the dispossessed and deprived would rally to the message

of this saviour of humanity. This must surely have been the

beginning of the movement which ultimately brought about the

end of slavery, the accepted practice of the day.

In our own times, we have seen the start of the rejection of

racism through the courageous stand of Rev. Martin Luther King,

which cost him his life. Similarly, the almost lone voice of Bishop

Jack Spong, virtually isolated and ostracised by the Anglican

Communion and who has received numerous death threats from

fellow Christians, has sown the seeds of the end of homophobia.

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When the kingdom or reign of God takes root in human lives

and the ideals and teachings of great sages such as Jesus,

Muhammad (pbuh), Gautama and the like are accepted as a

trustworthy basis for a full humanity, little by little, and painfully

slowly, our world will become a better place. The kingdom of God

starts with us – and within us.

Is this what Jesus meant when he said that the kingdom of

God is among us, or within us?

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5. WHAT IS PRAYER?

Some years ago, my wife and I were surprised to see a notice

on the door of our then church, informing everyone of a prayer

meeting sponsored by Churches Together in the village, to be held

that evening. Its purpose, presumably, was to ask God to stop, or

at least intervene in, the war that was just starting. I say

‘presumably’ because we did not attend what to us was a totally

pointless and self-deluding event. Pointless, since no prayer

meeting had been held before that war in order to seek Divine

approval or otherwise for such an enterprise. In any case, the

decision to initiate hostilities had been made for us all by our

‘Catholic-in-the-cupboard’ Prime Minister of the time in league

with the incumbent born-again American president, who must

have had the ear of the Divine. I think God would have been

entitled to reply “Leave me out of this. It was your idea – you sort

it out!”

This has caused me to examine even more carefully what we

think prayer is or does, and how we seek to use it.

When I was very young, my mother inculcated the habit

(now long neglected) of praying at my bedside. Such prayers were

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for the safe-keeping of my relatives and doubtless she believed

that they were heard and heeded by someone, somewhere, yet

beyond my comprehension. Nowadays, when I sit through a

church service, I perceive that her concept of prayer is still

perpetuated by the clergy. Whilst our prayers of adoration tell God

that he is all-powerful, merciful and all-knowing, we still feel

compelled to inform him, in our prayers of intercession, of

tragedies and disasters occurring in his world. Does this indicate

that we think he won’t act unless or until we request him to?

Again, how do we explain why he ignores our pleas and fails to

intervene?

This confirms my childhood doubts that our prayers are heard

by no-one but ourselves. Our Bibles supply little evidence that

Jesus spoke to anyone when he prayed. We should view with

suspicion the lengthy prayers recorded in John’s Gospel, as they

are more likely to have been the creation of that gospel’s

author(s), written down some 65 to 70 years after they were

supposedly uttered.

I find it difficult to understand why it is mandatory to recite

together, at least once per service, the ‘prayer that Jesus taught’,

since reference to Luke’s Gospel reveals that Jesus was simply

responding to a request from one of his disciples to be taught how

to pray. There are two versions of this prayer, found in the gospels

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of Matthew and Luke. Many scholars claim that the text of this

prayer, which may not have been delivered as a piece, was derived

from a ‘lost’ document called Q (an opinion not universally held).

The Jesus Seminar, in its volume entitled ‘The Five Gospels’

gives the following as the most likely original version:-

Father, your name be revered.

Impose your imperial rule.

Provide us with the bread we need day by day.

Forgive our sins, since we too forgive everyone in debt to us.

And please don’t subject us to test after test.

That seems to be putting the onus back on ourselves, yet I wonder

how many of us, intent on keeping in step in our public recitation,

realise that the ‘us’ in the request for daily bread includes children

dying from starvation and parents fighting over insufficient

supplies of food donated by nations that probably discard more

food than is consumed by their obese citizens. In spite of our

much-repeated entreaties, the hungry and destitute are still ignored

by God.

So I am forced back to my question. Who is listening to our

prayers? I can only conclude that the answer is – no-one. My

stance would have shocked my mother, yet I would venture to

suggest that anyone who watched the recent TV series ‘The

Wonders of the Solar System’ must at least be considering the

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words of John A.T.Robinson: “Not only is there no God up there,

there is no God out there”.

What is prayer? Does the way we use it serve any purpose?

In a booklet published by the Movement of Reform Judaism,

entitled ‘Really Useful Prayers’, Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain

informs us of an important distinction between the Christian and

Jewish understanding of prayer. He states that the English term ‘to

pray’ comes from the Latin verb ‘precare’, meaning to entreat or

supplicate. By contrast, the Jewish term derives from the Hebrew

‘l’hitpalleil’, meaning to judge oneself. Jonathan adds that “prayer

is an act of self-examination, not so much addressing God as

oneself”.

Since Judaism, which was as much a way of life as a religion,

was the faith system of Jesus, a Jew, it is highly likely that this

was the manner of his praying. According to Luke (ch.18: 9-14) a

parable of Jesus tells of two men going up to the Temple to pray,

one boasting of his worthiness, the other despondent in his

worthlessness. That both men were judging themselves resonates

with the Jewish notion of prayer. The Gospels tell us that it was

Jesus’ custom to pray alone and that he condemned the practice of

public piety or prayer. He instructed his disciples to shut

themselves alone in their rooms when they prayed. Could it be

that another law-keeping Jew, St. Paul, followed a similar practice

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of self-examination when he exhorted his readers to ‘pray without

ceasing’?

Thus I have come to understand prayer, not as endless lists of

requests, but times of deep and honest introspection and a serious

attempt to eradicate my ego; an undertaking of an audit of who I

really am; to ask myself if I am really concerned with the well-

being of those with whom I make contact, whether personally or

remotely, and does my compassion for others and my desire for

justice match that of Jesus.

I suggest it is time for the ‘reformed’ church to revisit its

position on prayer. Obviously this would impact on the shape and

content of our worship services – and this will be the theme of my

next essay – ‘What is worship?’

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6. WHAT IS WORSHIP?

Carol Williams, in her article ‘Whispering into Silence’

(Briefing, Autumn 2010, Free to Believe), expressed her deep

disappointment in the church’s failure to respond to the religious

needs of the average person. She bitterly criticised the

ecclesiastical bodies for their inward-looking stance, ignoring the

challenges of our age. Her experience and those of others have

prompted this essay.

My take on the Kingdom of God and prayer has led me

naturally to a consideration of what worship is, or perhaps what it

should be. My conversations with other ‘exiles’ plus Carol’s

comments lead me to conclude that we have reached the time

when we should examine what our present services of worship

achieve and how they might better serve human needs. Doubtless

any radical changes would disturb many older worshippers, but

such changes might just interest or challenge outsiders and even

the young. This assumes that they might be persuaded that there is

some point in church attendance. Carol Williams has cut right to

the heart of the problem. “The only thing that most churches offer

is worship and who but the in-crowd wants that?” The church is so

shackled to the time-worn liturgy or order of service that any

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departure from it either shocks or is rejected by seasoned

congregants. As it stands, it has little appeal to honest enquirers.

So, what IS worship? Worship, it would appear, is a

prerequisite of religion. When one traces the history of religion, it

becomes apparent that it is a human artefact, created when early

human beings felt it essential to find an explanation for the

mighty, uncontrollable forces of nature. These powerful,

frightening phenomena were thought to be demonstrations or

evidence of the presence of spirits or gods. So it behoved mere

mortals, at the mercy of these unseen powers to do all they could

to gain the favour and protection of these animistic gods and thus

worship was created. It is interesting to note at this point that even

in this 21st Century, some people still pray that approaching and

predicted untameable elements such as tornados, earthquakes and

floods may be averted.

As knowledge increased and religions developed, these

earlier gods were superseded by tribal ones who were imagined as

protectors against the gods of unfriendly tribes. In times of

conflict, your god would support you against the god of your

enemy, provided you obeyed his commands and remained loyal.

The Old Testament is replete with stories of the interaction

between mortals and local gods. So important was it to placate

your god that it was essential that sacrifices, often human, should

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be offered. Although pre-Christian Jews were told that ‘God did

not want sacrifices’, the practice was still present in Jesus’ day,

albeit using animals. It is noteworthy that some time after Jesus’

death, the idea emerged that this event was the ultimate sacrifice!

We have now reached the point in human development when

much more of the working of nature is understood and many of us

have come to believe that this theistic concept of divinity,

involving as it does a being ‘up there or out there’ is no longer

credible. Yet there remains a strong belief in a personal, protecting

God. Bishop Spong has written “I cannot imagine a God who

needs worship, or a God who has some innate need to be flattered

by the human praise that is so often the content of worship”. Any

act of worship aimed at pleasing a deity is vacuous and should be

recognised for what it is – something to satisfy ourselves that we

are complying with a divine mandate. Worship still acts as a

comforting security blanket, providing of course that it does not

challenge the way we treat every other human being and that it

occupies no more than one hour per week.

As I perceive it, that is what worship is. I come now to

consider what I think it should be. ‘Free’ churches normally refer

to their liturgy as the Order of Service. Herein lies an important

clue in the word ‘service’. I believe that the brief time spent in

church should be the occasion when those present prepare

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themselves for service in the world. The doctrine, dogma and

creeds about the Christ of Faith should be abandoned in favour of

the teachings of the Jesus of history, whom this Christ has all but

obscured. These teachings normally centred on the interactive

behaviour of humanity.

Jack Spong has stated that clergy prefer liturgy to education,

since it is less demanding. This fact may explain why, at a recent

Induction service, a congregation was urged to avoid over-

working their new Minister. Spoken words of prayer are

unnecessary, since prayer ought to be an individual self-

examination and personal assessment. If we believe ‘God’ to be

omnipresent, there is not even a need to invoke his presence at the

beginning of a service. The inclusion of hymns – much as I enjoy

singing – is of dubious value, particularly as many well-loved

ones include expressions of a theology some of us have rejected.

Like others, I find that I am unable to sing with integrity some of

the words. If singing is used as a means of uniting us as a body, let

us select meaningful hymns, like those composed by Brian Wren,

Caryl Micklem, Alan Gaunt and the unforgettable Fred Kaan.

So we come to the instructional piece of worship, the sermon.

There is evidence that it was the self-styled apostle Paul who

introduced sermon-preaching when he invented Christianity

(almost) as we know it. Neither sermons nor a new religion were

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on Jesus’ agenda. His method of teaching was by the use of

aphorisms (short pithy sayings) and parables. Both of these were

designed to initiate discussion, not to prescribe moral edicts.

Parables like the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son and the

vineyard owner would have generated debates so heated that they

were remembered more than forty years later when the first gospel

was written. Sermons could usefully be replaced by periods of

education and reflection, allowing time for questions and inviting

discourse.

“There is no open and frank discussion of belief” complains

Carol Williams, “what about any dialogue at all?” In his highly

recommended book, The Dishonest Church, Jack Good charges

the clergy with failing to pass on to the people in the pews what

they themselves learnt in their seminaries, thus depriving their

hearers of the fruits of modern scholarship and theology. Some

fifty years ago, the late Rev. Dr. Jason Wright tried to replace his

sermon with a discussion but his Buckinghamshire church firmly

rejected the idea. Jack Spong fears that unless Christianity

changes, it will die. He thinks that the future of the teachings of

Jesus will rest in the hands of groups like Free to Believe, the

Progressive Christianity Network-Britain (PCN), Sea of Faith and

so on. Prof. Keith Ward guesses that the Christian faith may even

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be promoted through the internet, though this seems to be rather

random and impersonal.

Carol comments that ‘nothing will be achieved if the ideas

(expressed in Briefing) merely stay within its pages’. I have found

great benefit from attending Free to Believe and PCN conferences

and presentations where progressive ideas abound. Whilst I

heartily recommend such conferences, I realise that they may not

be a possibility for all, due to location and/or finance. However, as

an alternative, I can strongly recommend a number of highly

readable books by modern biblical scholars and theologians which

have been of inestimable help to me.

With the organised churches in disarray, is there an entree for

the outsider? The Catholic church is being led back to an earlier

stage in Christianity’s growth (unfortunately not as far back as

Jesus) by the conservative Pope Benedict XVI who is currently on

the campaign trail in a bid to rescue wanton Europeans from

secularism. The Archbishop of Canterbury is struggling valiantly

to unify the Anglican Communion, sharply divided over many

basic ethical issues. Sideliners like Florida’s Tony Jones

threatened to hold a ‘burn the Koran’ day to protest against a

Muslim initiative to build a multi-faith meeting place in New

York. In all these enterprises, the misty image of the ‘pale

Galilean’ is all but invisible. I am forced to conclude that the

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organised church is failing in its role as the body of Jesus although

it may be content to see itself as the body of Christ.

Can Christianity in its state of self-destructive fragmentation

survive against the seemingly unstoppable secular tide of western

culture towards materialism and blind self-interest? Is it

impossible for modern humanity with its advanced intelligence to

see that a belief in one god, however we might name it, requires us

all to treat everyone as equals – surely the basis of human rights?

For the world’s sake, let us consider the needs and beliefs of all,

the unbeliever, the unconvinced enquirer and the outsider as well

as the pious, committed and secure (or saved).

It is still possible for the ‘dry bones’ of Christianity to live

again but in a resurrected body. Let us look again at what worship

might be and how it might better achieve the aspirations of Jesus.

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7. “JESUS IS GOD”? YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS!

This essay was a response to an article by David Keddies

(PCN newsletter, March 2010) in which he wrote: “We could say

(as I would quite like) that Jesus is God and there is no other”.

Are we talking Christianity or is David Keddies reviving

Docetism?

I agree that the Church, which most believers erroneously

think was inaugurated by Jesus, is still attempting to define the

indefinable – God. This search is as old as humanity’s first

groping for the deities it has itself created. The ‘church’ is what

the body of people originally called ‘followers of the Way’ came

to be named. These followers acquired the name ‘Christian’ soon

after the life of Jesus ended and ever since many efforts have been

made to define what one had to believe in order to be a Christian.

It is unfortunate that the title ‘Christ’ was appended to Jesus.

Roughly equating with ‘Messiah’, it applied to a mighty leader

who would save Israel from its predatory neighbours. Eventually it

came to mean one who would save those who accepted his

lordship from the sin which was said to alienate us from God, not

withstanding Jesus’ reassurance that God does not reject anyone

for any reason. How sad it is that this Jesus the Christ has all but

obliterated Jesus of Nazareth.

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I claim that it is time to recover the roots of our faith – to

seek the itinerant teacher (one among many in those days), the

‘secular sage’ to quote Robert Funk, the founder of the Jesus

Seminar. That Jesus was a normal human being is borne out by the

earliest Christian writers, the Pauline school, who give no

indication that his birth was extraordinary. This same

understanding was shared by the writer of the first Gospel, one

attributed to someone called Mark. Paul stated that Jesus did not

reckon himself equal to God. I find it enigmatic that if Jesus was

an aspect of God, to whom did he address his prayers?

Despite any contrary impression we may gain from our

reading of the Gospels, this fully human Jesus, wandering around

rural Galilee with some interested companions, probably not

twelve, nor all-male, not always the same people, would have

been relatively unknown. Although he was steeped in Judaism

(more a way of life than a religion), he ‘may be said to have been

irreligious, irreverent and impious’ according to Funk. I glimpse

in Jesus one who was perhaps more political than priestly. The

impetus of his life drove him to openly criticise the domination

systems that virtually enslaved the majority of the inhabitants,

reducing them to destitution and forcing them into banditry and

eventually rebellion. His brief ministry thereby brought him into

conflict with the Roman controllers of his country and with the

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Jewish ecclesiastical hierarchy, both of whom imposed crippling

taxation. It was the combined reaction of these two powerful

groups, not the Jewish people (the misuse of the term ‘Jews’ was

surely the root of anti-Semitism) that led inevitably to his

execution.

This common misinterpretation of the Crucifixion gave rise

to the Eucharist, which Jesus did not appear to institute. Is it not

likely that the references to the ‘body broken’ and the ‘blood shed’

were really a warning that those who followed his anti-domination

crusade could expect to share his fate?

I cannot believe that the entire purpose of Jesus’ life was to

suffer the ignominious death of a criminal of the deepest dye,

despite the fact that Christianity has made it central to its teaching

and adopted the cross as its logo. The life of Jesus seems to me to

be a seamless example of how human beings should treat each

other, thus creating a fair, compassionate and equitable society.

This aspect of his ministry as the focus of our faith is totally

absent from any Creed deemed essential to membership of the

Christian church.

I agree with David in his comment about worship. The clergy

regularly lead prayers which are obviously addressed to someone

‘out there’ and the worshippers, not trained in the seminary and

thus destined to be a recipient of the delivered ‘truth’ naturally do

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assume that they are talking to a ‘being’ out there. When disaster

strikes, many people, especially the ‘non-religious’, almost

involuntarily recite the Lord’s Prayer, as though it were a magical

incantation. I know of a minister who was openly rebuked because

she had (deliberately) omitted this prayer from an infant baptismal

service. It is standard practice for the congregation to be requested

to join in ‘the prayer that Jesus taught us’. My reading of the

gospel accounts is that Jesus was not issuing an instruction, but

simply responding to a request ‘teach us how to pray’; which

would seem to indicate that no one ever heard what he said in

prayer! In any case, the final phrase ‘for thine is the kingdom . . .’

is not Biblical.

I invite the reader to re-consider what we mean by prayer –

what do we imagine we are doing? Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain

explains that the English term ‘to pray’ comes from the Latin verb

‘precare’, meaning to entreat or supplicate. By contrast, the

Hebrew term ‘to pray’ comes from the Hebrew verb ‘l’hitpalleil’

meaning to judge oneself. Here, prayer is an act of self-

examination, not so much addressing God but oneself. Prayer

would be more productive, I claim, if we meditated on our past

actions and considered how we might act (possibly differently)

henceforward in the service of others.

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Mindful of this new approach to prayer and aware of the

lamentable lack of understanding on how to interpret the Bible, I

think worship should become a time when we abandon our

pointless liturgy and dreary three-point sermon (another aspect of

the 3-in-1 theme?) and embark upon a programme of re-education,

inaugurating a challenge to engage in life, as Jack Spong has

already suggested. Realising how Jesus’ teaching still informs us,

we might then re-energise the Church into a movement leading the

drive to create a just and compassionate society here and now –

God’s kingdom envisioned by Jesus.

Together with many others, I sense a stirring of an energising

Spirit, within and outside the ecclesiastical communities. This

Spirit is surely that which ‘kick-started’ the Christian movement.

This Spirit maybe is God. Even the latest written Fourth Gospel

attributed to someone called John, records words that Jesus

probably never uttered when he addressed the fictitious Samaritan

woman: ‘God is Spirit’. In his recent book Spiritual Intelligence,

Brian Draper writes “God is in you. God is in others and the Spirit

of God courses through creation like a pulse, a heartbeat, a life-

bringing, life-sustaining force for good.”

Jack Spong, whom David ridicules, recalls in his book Born

of a Woman: “The Spirit in early Christian thinking was an aspect

of God identified with life and breath. The Spirit was the force by

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which God moved the prophet to speak . . . the animating principle

of Jesus’ ministry . . . the empowering presence . . . that came

upon the disciples after Jesus’ death . . .”

Surely, this latter phrase is what the Resurrection stories

mean?

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8. IS THEOLOGY ONLY FOR THE SUPER-INTELLIGENT?

“Where does God live?” This was the question put to Bishop

Jack Spong at a Progressive Christianity Network lecture in Exeter

in 2006. It stirred one of my earliest childhood memories. I

recalled my mother teaching me to kneel by my bed and say my

prayers for the safekeeping of my relatives near and far. Thus I

was taught to believe there was someone, somewhere, who

somehow heard and responded to my request, yet I could not help

wondering how he could listen to me whilst paying attention to a

multitude of other supplicants. In retrospect, my quest to know the

unknowable began all those years ago.

Questions such as these clearly illustrate the dilemma of

many inhabitants of the post-Christian era. God, it seems, is

perceived as some sort of being ‘out there’. That this is a common

conception is reinforced by the definition of theology (at least in

my dictionary) where it states that theology is ‘the systematic

study of the existence and nature of the divine and its relationship

to other beings’ (my italics).

Theology is largely kept from Christian church-goers. By and

large, our trained experts, the church leaders who weekly instruct

us in the divine mysteries and who are mainly the propagators of

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our received knowledge which conveys to most Christians the

certainties of their beliefs, still tacitly reinforce the ancient idea

that God resides in a heaven above the sky. This impression is

implicitly re-stated, Sunday by Sunday, by the way in which our

liturgical prayers are framed. This concept is no longer tenable to

21st century minds, scientifically better informed than their

forebears about a universe that precludes the possibility of an

external heaven just above us and within earshot.

My ‘study of the existence and nature of the divine’ forces

me to recognise that our conviction of the existence of God arises

from a feeling of helplessness and insecurity in the face of the

awesome forces of nature, not understood by our ancestors. In

short, humanity is only too aware of its fragility and mortality and

desperately needs an all-powerful protector. I have to admit that I

don’t know if God exists and therefore I tend to envy those who

claim any certainty. However, my definition of the ‘nature of the

divine’ is that this ‘God’ is the projection of human perfection, the

pinnacle of what full humanity can attain.

If we assume, as many do, that God exists as an entity,

exterior to our world, yet in some way in regular control of it, an

all-powerful being concerned with our personal welfare, can we

really believe that this God intervenes in human affairs, as our

prayers seem to assume? When we are confronted by frequent

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reports of cataclysmic disasters and tragedies that affect good and

bad alike, we are forced to concede that there is no evidence of

such an intervening deity.

If there is a universal divinity beyond us and around us that

we occasionally glimpse or sense, we can only acknowledge its

existence whilst never being able to capture or describe what it is

that we experience. A few people appear to possess the ability to

engage in mystical experiences. I have made several unsuccessful

attempts at mystical contemplation and if it is true that this

external divine is accessible only through mysticism, the spiritual

dimension must be denied to the majority. It occurs to me that the

only way most of us can respond to the call to the Christian way

as exemplified by Jesus is to live it out with all its demands.

In his magnum opus ‘A History of Christianity’, Diarmaid

MacCulloch states that “within the common Greek culture, there

was an urge to understand and create a systematic structure of

sacred knowledge which ordered everyday life”. It is generally

agreed that a great deal of early Christianity derived from the

prevailing Greek philosophy which was deeply embedded in

Judaism.

This brings us back neatly to the second part of my definition

of theology, namely the relationship of the divine to other beings.

At this point, we should recognise and accept that each religion

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has its own special human being who has defined that relationship.

Although we, as Christians, have been led to believe that

Jesus said “no-one comes to the Father except by me”, the fact

that this quotation occurs only in the fourth gospel written at least

half a century after they were supposedly uttered, raises some

doubt that Jesus ever said it. However, we accept as our guide and

mentor the historical Jesus of Nazareth. It seems to me that our

pathway to perfection lies in the re-discovery of the religion of

Jesus, rather than a religion about Jesus, promoted and developed

by the organised church. His teaching, some of which he probably

received from earlier philosophical knowledge, has become

foundational for much of the western world’s sense of democracy

and is enshrined in a great deal of our legislation. That his

teaching has increasingly had such a profound and enduring

influence for nearly two thousand years surely validates it.

Further, much of our benevolent motivation arises from the values

espoused by Jesus.

Robert W. Funk, the founder of the Jesus Seminar, states in

his eminently readable book Honest to Jesus: “. . .(our) times call

for a wholly secular account of the Christian faith”. Also in the

book he continues: “Jesus did not ask his disciples to convert the

world and establish a church . . . apparently did not call on people

to repent . . . did not initiate what we know as the Eucharist”. This

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appraisal of the ‘Galilean sage’ must surely irritate our modern

church hierarchy as much as it angered the religious establishment

of his day. Worse is to come, for Funk goes on to say “the Jesus of

whom we catch a glimpse in the gospels may be said to have been

irreligious, irreverent and impious”. This is the sort of man worthy

of emulation! Little wonder that the ‘common people heard him

gladly’. In him, his followers felt that they saw the life of God

lived out fully in humanity.

Believing as I do that Jesus was fully human, I find it

difficult to understand why any church which calls itself

‘Reformed’ has at the heart of its Confession of Faith the

‘acceptance of the witness . . .to the faith in the Apostles’ and

Nicene Creeds’ which I think Jesus would fail to recognise and

probably refute. These Creeds would have us affirm facts which

our present knowledge rejects. They completely fail to mention

anything of the ministry of the person on whom that faith has been

built; they attempt to define who Jesus was, not what he taught,

thus obscuring the man. We cannot call ourselves ‘reformed’ until

we abandon these irrelevant Creeds. I am unable to accept them

and therefore I cannot honestly recite the Confession, although I

know that some Christians admit to saying the words whilst not

meaning them, to what purpose I cannot imagine. I return to the

Creeds later.

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Does this mean that I am no longer a believer? No, it means

that I am what Jack Spong calls a ‘believer in exile’. Don Cupitt, a

one-time clergyman who has left his church as I have, says in his

thought-provoking book Above Us Only Sky: “Any philosopher

who is serious about religion should avoid all contact with

‘organised religion’”. Is this a harsh criticism? I don’t think so.

Does it present a pessimistic prospect? Possibly. Many thinking

people have already deserted the pews they once frequented. In

this secular, scientific age, when social conduct and values are no

longer guided or restrained by the ‘fear of the Lord’ – still

proclaimed on wayside pulpits as the ‘beginning of wisdom’ – the

church has lost not only its authority (surely not a bad thing), but

also its appeal. It no longer speaks to the modern reasoning mind.

Is it not imperative that we retrace our steps and reclaim

whatever it was that was so life-changing to those who

encountered Jesus and gave the impetus that created a new, lively,

energetic force within Judaism, a power and a vision of a society

that appeared to compel all those involved to risk everything and

change their lifestyles for the common well-being? This was the

implementation of the passion of Jesus, a foretaste of his vision of

God’s kingdom. Sadly, it did not take long for that vision to fade

and for partisan feudings and manoeuvring for power and

seniority to creep in. This drift away from the dream of Jesus has

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continued to this day and seems to be unstoppable. Materialism

and the human craving for domination is even more rampant. A

modern example may be seen in the frustrated efforts of President

Barak Obama to introduce, for the benefit of his country’s poorest

citizens, a medical care programme which has encountered the

fiercest opposition from the more affluent Americans – surely an

indictment of a self-proclaimed Christian country.

Cupitt, in an earlier work entitled Taking Leave of God,

incensing his fellow churchmen wrote: “There will not be any

future kingdom of God on earth but the symbols tell us that we

should not withdraw from temporality and society, for the

religious ideal requires realisation in time, in history, in society”.

We are often warned against ‘mixing religion and politics’, yet it

appears that the driving force of Jesus’ life may have been more

political than priestly. It certainly had a strong secular bias.

When we peruse the history of ancient Israel, we get a sense

of a people worn down by continual invasions by, or threats from,

surrounding nations. Ultimately there emerged the longing for,

even a promise of, a special messiah, an anointed one, a God-

given mighty leader who henceforth would forever guarantee the

nation’s peace, prosperity and liberty. In the same way that in

times past God had provided a strong man, so this same God of

the people (a derivation of an earlier tribal deity we might note)

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would provide a new protector. This mighty warrior-king would

save his people from their earthly enemies, not, as we have come

to think, from their sins.

When this longed-for saving figure was imagined to have

been identified in Jesus, with his revolutionary (in all senses of the

word) ideas, he was misunderstood. He was not the mighty

warrior come to free them from their oppressors that they had

been led to expect. At this discovery, many of his listeners

departed. I believe, as Jesus appeared to, that saving this world

and its inhabitants may be achieved through a new way of living, a

way shared by all world faiths. This way should be based on the

teachings of this ‘secular sage’ to quote Funk. The foci of this new

religion must be universal compassion and the justice of

distribution.

I now return briefly to those outdated Creeds. Traditional

Christianity has become defined by belief in some literally,

unbelievable facts. Central and crucial to them is the Resurrection

of Jesus. The apostle Paul (who never knew Jesus and yet, with

Peter, succeeded in providing the basis for Christianity), claims

that the Christian faith is invalid without the Resurrection. In this,

I dare to profoundly disagree with Paul and suggest that his view

would have been radically different had he been a Sadducee

instead of a Pharisee. Biblical evidence for the Resurrection is

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conflicting and from an historical or literal point of view,

decidedly shaky. Further, I fail to find any compelling evidence

that Jesus promised a life after death to those who believe in him,

or that he expected his reward for an exemplary life would be a

post-mortem ‘existence’. The life of Jesus, with or without the

Resurrection, should be a sufficient example for all Christians. To

me, the Resurrection appears to be an attempt to describe the

experiences of the disciples finding re-focussed and renewed

(resurrected?) life as they came to reflect – at some time, not two

days, after the event – on all that their Master had said and done.

How they eventually perceived the divine within the secular and

glimpsed his vision. In that sense, they were ‘raised to new life’.

Our world has become too small to accommodate the old

feuding faiths, each claiming that theirs is the only god, creator or

life-force – Paul Tillich’s ‘ground of being’. We are forced to

conclude that either our disparate concepts are incorrect or these

various deities are still the creations arising from our human

needs. The time has surely come for us all to lay aside our former

allegiances and labels, be they concerned with faith or

denomination, in order to serve the worldwide good – or should

that be the worldwide god?

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I leave the last words to Robert Funk. “There are no

theologies without question marks trailing behind . . . It is not

what we believe that is crucial, but what we do”.

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9. HAS THE CHURCH PASSED ITS SELL-BY DATE?

Or should it be – Has CHRISTIANITY passed its sell-by date?

In her article “Whispering into Silence” (Briefing, Autumn

2010), Carol Williams recounts hearing at an Alpha course,

reference to a remark by the actor and atheist John Mortimer that

‘everyone, even believers, should return to church in an effort to

solve the problem of evident moral decay’. Resonances of this

view are apparent in the rash of Alpha courses and the recent

Papal mission to the UK – to be followed, I gather, by further

missions across the continent – the object of which is the rescue of

an increasingly secular Europe. Carol was disappointed to find

little help in her visits to local churches. She goes on to ask ‘What

is there to bring unbelievers . . . and people of other beliefs into a

church? Nothing. And if they do enter, they will not hear about the

Way of Jesus, or meet people who think that following it is a path

to a better world’.

Suppose someone, like Carol, is honestly searching within a

Christian church for some guidance towards the creation of a

better world, they would be totally confused about what

Christianity is, or which sort of Christianity is the correct one, so

splintered has the church become.

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In a Catholic church, these seekers would be asked to accept

a faith system dictated by the Pope’s infallible interpretation of

Holy Scripture. The Bible is to be understood as literally,

historically true. Among other things, this means accepting that

Moses actually wrote the Pentateuch, whose concluding chapter

(Deuteronomy 34) relates the author’s death. Also, one must

believe that Jesus was conceived without the aid of a human male

and that his mother remained a virgin after his birth. She was so

pure that her birth was equally miraculous. At her death, she was

assumed bodily into heaven, thereafter being acknowledged as

Queen of Heaven and Mother of God. To most modern informed

minds (at least five Anglican bishops excepted), such literal

reading (or myth, since much of the foregoing is not based on any

firm evidence) is at least suspect.

A trial visit to an Anglican church would show that some of

the authentic dogma, doctrine and creeds are still present, albeit in

diluted forms. Liturgy is still the order of the day, the designated

Sundays of the ecclesiastical year are rigidly imposed and, in

general, prescribed prayers are much in evidence. Although

private confessions are not mandatory, confession is built into the

public prayer structure and worshippers are left in no doubt about

their unworthiness. As with Catholicism, children must be

baptised in order to avoid their eternal perdition.

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If this system of worship doesn’t fit easily with their

consciences, perhaps the seekers might sample the lower, more

liberal forms of Christianity, springing as they did (or squeezed as

they were) from the orthodox protestant tradition. Rejecting the

formality of liturgy, some of the dogmas of Anglicanism and

slavish adherence to the lectionary (although this is reappearing in

certain churches) such Christians, liberated from these strait

jackets, formed the non-conformist movement, following their

conscience-driven interpretations of Jesus’ teachings. Their

convictions caused them to eschew the wearing of highly

decorated vestments and ornate headgear of office, paralleling as it

does the ceremonial regalia of the secular world. Seen as symbols

of power, such a practice was believed by these breakaway

denominations to be at odds with the values of Jesus. Even so,

among the serried ranks of the free churches, there is rarely any

evidence of the self-denying demanding requirements of Jesus of

Nazareth. In general, there is still a lamentable lack of

enlightenment available through modern Biblical scholarship.

If our questioners have failed to find a Christian belief that

suits their taste, there are other options on offer.

In July, Channel 4 screened a Dispatches programme which

revealed yet another variant of Christianity. It disclosed that in

some of Britain’s African churches, pastors preach the Gospel

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message that when misfortune or sickness befalls a family, the

cause lies in the demon-possession of a child member. Harrowing

scenes of exorcism of such children, involving physical and

emotional abuse (sometimes resulting in death, viewers were told)

were shown.

The variety of Christian beliefs is almost endless. With this

welter of different practices, procedures and interpretations, all

derived from this same Jesus, one wonders how a person, wishing

to embrace a credible faith, is expected to find a simple intelligent

solution. Are we, the practitioners, so steeped in liturgy, dogma

and empty-centred creeds, that we are overlooking the

fundamental requirements set out by Jesus?

The story of the early church as related in the Acts of the

Apostles shows that from its inception, there has been a deep split

in the interpretation of Jesus’ teaching. Paul, who never met the

living human Galilean sage, claimed to have experienced a

miraculous conversion and seemed to be fully conversant with the

essence of the philosophy of Jesus with all its nuances. We should

note that Paul was sometimes in conflict with the Jerusalem

church, created around the original disciples, according to the Acts

of the Apostles, our only record (unless the Dead Sea Scrolls will

eventually reveal more, if and when they escape the clutches of

the Catholic-controlled ‘international team’).

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We see signs of the Pauline church separating from the early

church under James and there are constant reminders that Paul was

a Roman citizen. Certainly he was viewed with great suspicion.

There has even been a suggestion that he may have been a Roman

agent or informer who had slipped into the very heart of the early

community.¹ An overview of Christianity’s history indicates that

originally the influence of Jesus was powerful and life-changing.

However, when Constantine used the outlawed religion to

unify the Western and Eastern parts of the Roman Empire under

his sole control, the Christian attitude changed and the formerly

persecuted became the persecutors. To some extent, that new role

has been exercised and justified to this day.

Our current version of Christianity appears to have lost its

true calling and basic simplicity. Over many years, it has wrought

havoc and brought terror, caused wars, endorsed murders, stirred

up hatred and condoned all manner of evil. One has only to be

reminded of the Crusades, when Christian warriors rampaged

through the continent seeking out Muslims and where none were

found, slaughtered Jews instead. Anti-Semitism, with its root

firmly embedded in Christianity, reached its zenith with the

atrocities of the Holocaust. It has recently come to light that a

Catholic priest was involved in a bombing in Northern Ireland in

1972. At the time it was perpetrated, this detail was discreetly

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hidden by the collusion of government, police and church

authorities. We have witnessed the savage, inhumane assaults on

Muslim nations instigated by our powerful, religiously-inspired

leaders and to our shame, and probably to our cost, we are

complicit in these conflicts.

If we are able to detect through the mists of history the image

of the man described by Robert Funk as a secular sage, we are

confronted by a God-focused individual who, by his very life and

death, challenges each one of us to be merciful, just, caring and

compassionate towards the least of our brothers and sisters. I dare

to claim that Christianity is past its sell-by date and is no longer fit

for its purpose of saving or healing humanity. Away with these

religions about the invented Christ! Let us re-discover the religion

of Jesus. We might even find the way that leads to ‘life in all its

fullness’, the liberating realm of God. Many are those who, whilst

rejecting the title of Christian, would acknowledge their

acceptance of the principles of Jesus.

Best-selling author Philip Pullman says “I’m very pro-Jesus.

I shall never be a Christian, but you can call me a ‘Jesus-ite’”².

Strange how a number of retired ministers share that position.

Maybe that’s a good starting point.1. The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception: Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Corgi, 0-552-13878-9

2. REFORM, October 2010, United Reformed Church.

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10. TIME FOR A NEW REFORMATION?

At a meeting of a Progressive Christianity Network group,

comprising Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, United Reformeds

and members of the ‘church alumni association’, angry exchanges

exposed the total disarray in which the organised church is to be

seen. Hardly surprising for such a volatile mix, the discussion was

so vitriolic at times that I found it difficult to reconcile this group

with one faith, especially one supposedly based on the platform of

inclusivity and tolerance. It caused me to consider the state of

current Christianity, in respect of recent events.

The crusade by Pope Benedict XVI, an enterprise aimed at

stemming, and presumably reversing, the relentless slide of

Britain (and other Europeans) into rampant secularism, seems to

have contributed more to antagonism towards Catholicism than

the opposite objective. This same awareness of losing its religious

grip on society is clearly shared by the Church of England,

judging by the proliferation of Alpha courses. Many non-

conformists are growing apprehensive on discovering that

surreptitious moves towards creating some kind of merger with

the Anglican Communion are taking place. Further desperate signs

of retrenchments are the appearance of ‘Bring a friend to church’

services being held by many churches.

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There can be little doubt that the church is slowly and

belatedly awakening to its diminishing influence in society. Also,

it cannot have escaped the notice of its hierarchy that its declining

population is seriously threatening the viability of the local

church, as witnessed by the steady flow of closures. This hierarchy

must surely be growing apprehensive at the growth of Islamic

mosques. Nowadays an increasing number of people are using

secular premises for weddings and resorting solely to the

crematoria for funerals (this even applies to clergy and church

regulars). One is forced to wonder if the retention of our costly-

maintained church edifices can be justified. The charges levied to

the ‘customer’ (not always only the secular ones), however

necessary to balance the books, is nevertheless seen by the non-

religious as unworthy of an organisation hoping to win their

allegiance. Daring to be bolder than most, Don Cupitt states in his

book ‘The Meaning of the West’ that God is dead and that the

Christian church is in the last throes of a dying process which

began around 1750 C.E.

Does this foreshadow the end of the influence of that distant

Galilean or merely the end of Christianity as currently practised?

Modern Christianity, arguably invented by St. Paul, modified by

the early church fathers, distorted by the creeds, notably that

greatly-influenced by the power-seeking Roman emperor

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Constantine, and redefined by spurious dogma and doctrine over

two thousand years, has been seriously questioned by both science

and the best Biblical scholarship. More than a decade has elapsed

since perspicacious theologians like Bishop John Shelby Spong

and the late Robert W. Funk issued their calls for serious action to

resuscitate dying Christianity. Both were deeply concerned by the

evident decay of the faith, prompting them to publish their theses

for a new reformation, which will “dwarf in intensity the

Reformation of the 16th century” says Spong.

After losing its way in the maze of human development, the

church can either coast along this dead-end path or retrace its steps

to its origins; to the flesh-and-blood man we can still know as

Jesus of Nazareth. If we read him correctly, we see him cautioning

his contemporaries to abandon the pursuit of wealth, position and

power in favour of a single-minded endeavour to establish a

society whose compassion, justice and equality are of paramount

importance. This was the unequivocal advice he gave to those who

sought true contentment (blessedness). Such advice could never be

more apposite than it is today. The lure of consumerism – cost

future generations what it may – materialism, wealth (more than

many could ever need and some ever use) and dominating power

over the lives of others, cries out to be challenged. We should note

that Jesus was more political than pious. Albert Nolan in ‘Jesus

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before Christianity’ reminds us that “Jesus was not busy with a

religious revival; he was busy with a revolution – a revolution in

religion, in politics and in everything else”. Today’s pseudo-piety

will not save us from self-destruction.

Cupitt again says that the mission of Christianity was the

emancipation of mankind. This task has been gradually transferred

from a ‘phasing-out’ of God into human hands and the Christian

ethic is now largely embodied in secular Western democracy. If

this is true, it must be incumbent on the church to use its

congregational time to educate, instruct and challenge its

adherents to complete the Jesus-ethic work of showing

compassion and seeking justice for everyone. As already pointed

out, we have become not so much God-less but worshippers of our

chosen gods of self interest. The idea of service and self-denial has

lost its popularity and we are in an age of self-service. This

resonates with our government’s call for the ‘Big Society’ and its

attendant plea for voluntary community service. Does it take a

near-collapse of our capitalist system to awaken us to an ancient

truth?

Jesus was a radical social subverter, an individual who

substantially changed the world. He demands that his followers

make whatever personal sacrifices may be necessary to continue

his work and realise his dream. Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for

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over twenty years as a terrorist or freedom fighter, depending on

one’s viewpoint, is a modern example of a non-violent social

subverter. Single-handed, he was the catalyst that initiated

enormous radical changes in South Africa, bringing some measure

of freedom and equality to multitudes. Another recent example is

Martin Luther King. Even today, such people demonstrate that the

world’s evil structures can be challenged and dismantled. This is

what the followers of Jesus were called to enact. I use the past

tense because we seem to have forgotten that it is still our calling.

The task of social re-figuring appears to have slipped off the

Christian agenda. This would indicate a pressing need for a new

reformation, since in its present form, the church is failing the

world.

If, as it purports, the church is the Body of Christ, by which I

assume that it means the manifestation of the spirit of Jesus, one is

bound to ask: Is this body actually continuing the work begun by

Jesus? We often refer to Jesus as the Redeemer of the world, but

do we assume that he is the means by whom individuals may be

saved for continued existence in heaven, or that redeeming refers

to an act of releasing from slavery or bondage? Today we are in

bondage to our modern lifestyle which benefits some (a minority

in world terms) at the expense of those powerless to improve their

situation.

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It is time for the ‘dishonest church’, to use Jack Good’s term,

to discard this Christ of faith it has created and re-introduce the

fully human Jesus if it dares. If the saving work initiated by him is

ever to usher in his dream realm of God, where justice,

compassion and equality are the key values, it will require

Christians whose lives are so fundamentally changed and

reformed that they too become social subverters. An effective

church needs practitioners rather than believers. “In as much as

you did it to the least of these . . . you did it to me”, Jesus

supposedly said.

We should jettison all the Christology invented by many

centuries of the activities of the religious hierarchy and devote our

energies to rediscover that revolutionary deviant from Galilee.

It would be good to see you back in church, Jesus.

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EPILOGUEIn this booklet you will have read some reflections of an ordinary man who has spent

his long life trying to identify and emulate a far greater man, Jesus, and still found it

difficult to tick the Christian box on his census form. After many years in the service

of the church, he now realises that the human Jesus has been side-lined by the often

conflicting divine Christ, the icon that the church has created as a focus for worship.

His sincere hope is that this booklet may help those readers who presently experience

the problem of equating the religion of Jesus with a religion about Jesus.

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