Come On Down

[poliphilo]

A sci-fi fantasy I'm fond of- The Saga of the Exiles- predicates an alien intervention at the beginning of the 21st century (in fact, any time now.) The aliens- who are nice chaps- allow us the join their Federation, but on certain conditions. One of the conditions is that we abandon all but one of our religions.

And we do. Just like that.

How I wish. How I wish....

For some reason the religion we choose to retain is Roman Catholicism.

A certain leeway is allowed. People are permitted to flavour their Catholicism with Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever they used to adhere to. But I don't remember there being any Muslim-flavoured Catholics or Southern Baptist-flavoured Catholics.

It's a silly book.

I wonder how long it's actually going to take us to get beyond our religious differences.
How many thousands of years.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The thing is to be secure enough in your own belief not to be threatened by others believing differently.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

The thing is to be secure enough in your own belief not to be threatened by others believing differently.

I remember well a conversation I had with an older woman in our congregation whose son was dying.

I wanted to talk about Spong, that old reprobate who so stirred up the Church in the 90s with his book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism.

(He now has a new book out, A New Christianity for a New World, in which he explains why the traditional understandings of God, Christ, the Church, and their rules and dogmas are wrong and dangerous. He spells out his contemporary vision of God, Jesus, prayer, worship, evil, the afterlife, and the Church as a community of love, equality, and truth.)

Anyway, the woman stopped me. She actually held up her hand like a policeman. She said, "I don't want to have my faith shaken right now, not with my son so ill. I don't want to think about this."

I felt terrible and apologized. But it occurred to me later that if her "faith" was so fragile, it was probably already too late.

We seem to have the idea of "faith" and "being saved" all rolled up together.

I'd forgotten all about Spong. He had a really bad name for awhile, people gasped at his blasphemies, and then he was forgotten.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I had some contact- fleeting- with Don Cupitt, a Cambridge don who caused a similar stir back in the 70s and 80s with a string of books propounding "Christian atheism". He was the most ferociously intelligent person I ever met. His intellect shone like a blade.

I raised his name in conversation with the jolly old bishop of Middleton and he said, "I don't read radical theology. I'm afraid it would shake my faith."

I understand his concern. Reading Cupitt shook my faith to the extent that I had to leave the church. But is faith worth hanging onto if it such a fragile thing?

Surely what we're all trying to do- in church and out of it- is get at the Truth.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I raised his name in conversation with the jolly old bishop of Middleton and he said, "I don't read radical theology. I'm afraid it would shake my faith."

How sad, to smother oneself in "faith" like a child's blankie, when there is so much to explore and wonder about!

I have never heard of Cupitt, but I found Spong fascinating. And there was no one to talk with about it. He was considered "evil."

The single most influential writer for me was Stephen Mitchell, a Buddhist. I happened to see his book, "The Gospel According to Jesus," in a bookstore, and I usually don't buy stuff in that section, but I kept thinking about it and kept thinking about it, and finally drove back to the store and bought it. It led me to Rumi, to Eckhart, and to thinking for myself.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Cupitt fronted a TV series called Sea Of Faith, which caused quite a splash at the time. It documented how key 19th and 20th century figures- Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung et al- had contributed to the erosion of what Cupitt called the "realist" version of Christianity.

He was the inspiration for a (slightly hush-hush) organization for "unbelieving" clergymen. I spoke once (about Krishnamurti- then an enthusiasm of mine) at one of their "Sea of Faith" conferences.

These days Cupitt, like Spong, no longer makes the news. The theological debate (so far as I can see) has regressed and is all about whether God likes gays or not.