Musings

Answers to Atheists

In 1981, I had the privilege of visiting what was then the Soviet Union as a member of a church peace delegation.  One of the places we visited was the seminary in Zagorsk, headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church.  I found myself walking down the halls of the seminary, which were encrusted with hauntingly beautiful old icons, while talking with an official in the Department of Religious Affairs of the USSR.  His job was to control religious groups and to promote the official Communist orthodoxy of atheism.  He wanted to know about my religious beliefs.  Specifically, he wanted to know about my understanding of God.   I told him I don't so much believe in God as I experience God.  I told him that God is my experience of awe and wonder before the mystery of existence.  "I have that experience, too," he said.    Neither of us believed in a supernatural entity living beyond the universe and meddling in its affairs.  Both of us felt a reverence for the universe around us, a sensation of its transcendence.  "Perhaps we aren't so far apart as one might expect," I told him, and he nodded with a smile.

Currently, there are an unusual number of books on the market that argue for atheism and condemn religion.  Notable are the ones written by Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins.  I've heard the authors interviewed on the radio, read interviews with them and reviews of their books.  I'm glad that they are inspiring people to question supernaturalism and superstition, and to reflect on the intellectual and moral errors to which religion is subject.

I look forward to reading these books, and also a book that Scotty McLennan, dean of religious life at Stanford, is writing in response to the current crop of public atheists.  I had the privilege of working with Scotty when I was the ecumenical Protestant campus minister at Stanford.  As a progressive Christian in the Unitarian tradition, and a gentle and thoughtful soul, he certainly will have interesting things to say on the subject.  (He just preached a great sermon in response to Dawkins' book.)

I hope I'll find some new ideas to consider in the books when I read them.  But for now, I'll share some responses to old arguments against religion.

I've had plenty of encounters with people who are adamant that there is no God.   I often ask them which God they don't believe in.  Invariably, it's a God I don't believe in, either.  So they don't find me to be a worthy partner for an argument.  Proving or disproving the existence of God misses the heart of my faith.  God is what happens when I am overcome with wonder and gratitude before the transcendent mystery of existence.  Some atheists say they have this experience, too, but just don't call it God.  Other atheists get peeved at me, saying that I'm not really religious at all.  Since I don't believe in a supreme being in the the way they assume religious people are required to do, what I have to say doesn't count!

Within Christianity's long history, I'm hardly alone in my point of view. Christian mystics for two thousand years, and Jewish mystics before them, have described God in terms much different than the theistic, supernatural ones that modern atheists disavow.   It's worth noting that the early Christians were considered atheists by many Romans.  In the absence of images of their god, people presumed that Christians didn't have a god at all.

Most of the atheists I've met are against religion because they think it does a bad job of explaining reality.  In their view, the book of Genesis does a bad job of explaining natural history, and the book of Job does a bad job of explaining the problem of evil, and so on.  But I don't find Christianity to be an explanation of anything at all.  I find the Bible primarily to be a diverse collection of poetic, metaphorical descriptions of the soul's journey through life.  It would never occur to me to go looking for a biology or physics lesson in the Christian religion.  Instead, I find in it a language for my heart and for sharing my heart with others.  Christianity gives me a rich, ancient, nuanced, flexible, inspiring system of symbols, rituals, stories, music, practices, and images to express my spiritual experience.

Some atheists talk as if religion was like an assault weapon that ought to be banned entirely from the marketplace.  Sure, in the hands of sane people who are scrupulous about safety, maybe it would be harmless, but what if not-so-sane people broke into their houses and stole religion and used it to kill people?  What if children got their hands on religion, and destroyed themselves with it?

But banning guns would be a lot easier than banning religion.  The impulse to express the life of the soul in story and ritual is so strong that nothing can dampen it for long.  The failure of the Soviet experiment with state-imposed atheism is a case in point.  We can reform religion, we can make it more pluralistic and progressive, but there is no point in trying to eliminate something so basic to human nature.

Ultimately, religion is not about affirming any particular concept about God.  Religion is about the universal human experience of profound meaning, overwhelming compassion, and dumb-struck wonder.  The felt intensity of these experiences begs for metaphorical, poetic, musical, and artistic means to describe them.  The value of these experiences inspires spiritual practices to elicit them.  These are just the sorts of expressions that abound in the best parts of the world's great religions.

Calling all atheists!  Come check out the expressions of religion that are compatible with science, common sense, and human decency.  Come visit the churches which have kept the baby Jesus and drained out the bathwater of bad or downright silly things that were said and done in his name.  Come and experience God, whether you "believe" in God or not!

Asphalt Jesus: A Book Review

Asphalt Jesus: Finding a New Christian Faith Along the Highways of America

by Eric Elnes

Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2007

Reviewed by Jim Burklo, pastor, Sausalito Presbyterian Church, member, board of directors, The Center for Progressive Christianity, www.tcpc.org

Yes, there is a place in America named Podunk, and progressive Christianity is alive and well there. Podunk Corner is a wide spot in the road in Oklahoma. Just south of the town, over the Texas border, a group of progressive Christians, walking across the United States to share a new vision of faith, were invited to spend the night at the ranch house of Doris and Robert Akers. The ranch has been in the Akers family since 1906, and the house is festooned with the Texas state flag and the Texas star. The Akers belong to a local church, but don’t much like the preaching they hear. So they read the books and the blogs of Bishop John Shelby Spong and other liberal theologians and scholars in order to get a perspective that makes more sense to them. They love their church and community but on matters theological and social, they are in the minority. Eric Elnes quoted Doris Akers in Asphalt Jesus, his book documenting the walk: “I just have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when there’s so much that needs to be changed in our country.”

 

Eric Elnes isn’t one to keep his mouth shut, or his feet still, either. He was inspired to change things when he daydreamed about taking a walk across America with a set of principles for a more inclusive and loving Christianity and “nailing them to a church doorway in Washington”. Although he resisted his own idea, when he brought it up to the people of Scottsdale Congregational United Church of Christ in Arizona, where he is the senior pastor, his parishioners wouldn’t let it die. They created an organization to sponsor the walk, Cross Walk America (www.crosswalkamerica.org), and gave it energetic support in time and money.

 

The dream turned into a reality on Easter Sunday in 2006, a small band of walkers, supported by a crew in an RV including film-makers, began their 2,500 mile trek on foot from Phoenix to Washington, DC. With them they carried the Phoenix Affirmations, a twelve-point declaration of progressive Christian principles written in 2005. These affirmations morphed out of the 2003 Phoenix Declaration, which was drafted by an ecumenical clergy group called No Longer Silent in Phoenix, opposing continuing discrimination against homosexual people in the church. The Phoenix Affirmations are very similar to the 1996 Eight-Point Welcome Statement of The Center for Progressive Christianity (www.tcpc.org).

 

Cross Walk America worked hard to find churches and people who would offer hospitality to the walkers.  However, there were long stretches of the walk route in which no churches could be found that had an openly progressive orientation. This turned out to be a great blessing. The uncertainties about where the group would stay, and whom they would meet, resulted in serendipitous encounters that blew away widely-held prejudices about religion in “Middle America”. At many points in the book, I was moved by waves of emotion as I read about the surprising acts of kindness and hospitality that the walkers experienced, often from people they least expected to provide them.

 

Jesus First Baptist Church in Springerville, AZ, with its sign emblazoned with the cross and American flags, was so welcoming of the Cross Walk crew’s spontaneous visit that it took up a money offering to support them, even as the pastor gently let them know he disagreed with much of their progressive agenda. When the walkers stumbled into Hereford, Texas, after walking in the heat past miles of stockyards, they were given a huge barbecue feast at a non-denominational church led by a woman ordained in the Baptist church. Their sojourn near Podunk Center revealed how people are living out a progressive expression of the faith even in the very buckle of the Bible Belt.

 

Elnes’ book is a hopeful celebration of what unites Christians and others even in a time when religious intolerance and chauvinism seem to prevail. He found that there is much less negativity and rigidity in conservative churches than the media, and the rhetoric of many high-profile conservative Christian leaders, would suggest. And he also witnessed a great hunger in “Middle America” for a form of Christianity that takes the Bible seriously without taking it literally, and that cares more about correcting poverty and injustice than about judging people’s sexual orientation. Cross Walk’s approach was forthright but humble.  Eric and the rest of the walkers listened as much or more than they talked. In Asphalt Jesus, Eric opens a window into the soul of American Christianity, and what he reveals is heartwarming and encouraging.

 

The walkers arrived in Washington, DC, last Labor Day, joined by an enthusiastic crowd of about 200 supporters walking the last mile to a rousing worship celebration at Foundry Methodist Church. But Eric’s book, and its accompanying documentary movie which will be finished soon, comprise the real climax of his walk across America. If the book is a preview of the film, don’t be shocked if it, too, makes you want to walk the talk of progressive Christianity across America for yourself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eucharist

See grain ripening,
Watch grapes reddening,
See dough rising,
Smell juice fermenting,
Observe developing
From infancy to adulthood,
Watch friendship deepening,
Feel love swelling,
See the spread of community’s web,
Notice creativity emerging.

Taking it in,
Humbled with awe
Beholding transformation:
Bread becomes body,
Wine becomes blood,
We become elements
Of cosmic eucharist.

How does it happen?
Secreted in yeast,
Hidden in the oven,
Obscured in the cask,
Unseen in the belly,
Occulted in the brain?

How does God become food,
Drink become divine?
How does love smell delicious,
Or truth wet the tongue?

By taking and being taken,
Eating and being eaten,
Drinking and being drunk;
By putting ourselves into each other
And letting each other grow:
This is the way
War yeasts to peace,
Anger ferments to forgiveness,
Grief bakes into gratitude,
Hate ages to patience,
Pride digests to humility,
Selfishness brews into compassion,
Conflict cooks to communion.

Take, and eat,
Take, and drink.