I received the following query from Richard Bott, a colleague in The United Church of Canada. Richard is exploring the question of how many clergy in the UCC may be atheists and invited me to share whatever knowledge I had. My response is also posted below.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on these questions in the comments section. Richard is interested in the impressions those inside and outside the church may have on the situation. Another interesting question would be “How many people in UCC pews don’t believe in the traditional idea of God?” And, if you’re willing, complete the sentence I note in my email “When I use the word ‘god’, I mean …..” and identify whether you are a UCC person and if so, whether a layperson or in ministry.
(Posts are always better with pictures. I’d add my editorial adaptation of the UCC crest with the atheist A in lieu of the Alpha at the bottom – a well thought out theological statement actually – but the UCC sent lawyers the last time I did that. Waiting for them to send the cease and desist letter to Our Untied Church …)
Here are Richard’s questions:
I’m in the midst of a discussion about some of your thoughts on atheist ministry personnel in the UCCan – and we’re wondering if you could clarify what percentage of ministry personnel you believe are atheist, and how you’ve come up with that number? (Anecdotal reporting, survey, whatever evidence you would have for that claim would be helpful!)
The other question that has come up is how you are defining “atheist clergy” in that context. For example, would someone who has process theology as core, be considered “atheist” by your definition?
And here’s my response:
I have no idea how many clergy in the United Church are atheist but almost every United Church clergy person who has spoken to me about their beliefs either identifies as non-theist, agreeing with me “while not completely agreeing with me” or has told me “I don’t believe in the god you don’t believe in”, often in a condescending manner or rudely on social media. There are a very few who have corresponded with theistic beliefs. Most who do so are not United Church clergy or members or related to it in any way. One clergy person, on Facebook, told me that he doesn’t know anyone who believes in that god but he still believes I lack integrity for not using the word when I don’t believe in what it is normally understood to mean.
Unless a UCC clergy person was transferred in from another denomination, I assume he or she received a theological education that was not dissimilar to mine. I was taught to explore the concept of god in theological college, not to deepen my relationship with a being. Concepts are human constructions. I was taught to read the Bible with a critical hermeneutic using exegetical methods that addressed its human construction. I researched the historical Jesus and engaged with the concept of the Christ of faith, another human construction. So I don’t think that there are many clergy trained in the UCC who, if they actually engaged during their studies, came out as classic theists with the understanding of the Bible as God’s Word or Jesus as the Son of God who died for our sins. Could be wrong, but if we took a poll and left out the word “atheist”, I think the results would show that most clergy are not theists. Which, of course, goes to your second question….
I think anyone who completes the phrase, “When I use the word ‘god’, I mean …” without using the words theistic, supernatural, divine, being, or some arrangement or combination of those words or ones like them is not a theist. Whether they call themselves atheists or not is none of my concern; my choice to call myself an atheist was a choice of solidarity with those being maligned and targeted for arrest in Bangladesh and the FACT that my understanding of god was not a theistic understanding and has not been since before my ordination. FACTUALLY, I am an atheist and my responsibility as a human being raised in the United Church was to be in solidarity with that particular group of people. I use the term in a theological sense within a theological setting but I do not shy from its use in a public setting because my belief system is aligned with the public understanding of atheist as it pertains to god. I do not believe in what the public understands god to be.
I have a stack of papers beside me from an event I did at ASTE with Marcus Borg in 2010. For sure, these were likely clergy and lay people on the more progressive side of the spectrum in the church but, in that stack, on which was printed the phrase above, “When I use the word god, I mean …” forty-one have non-theistic understandings, three have theistic understandings, and one has a theistic understanding but notes that he or she doesn’t believe in that god but that’s what they believe the word means.
My concern about the use of the term “god” is that when the public hears a UCC clergy person say “god” without clarification, they believe the person is talking about a divine, supernatural, interventionist being. Those in the pews who have accessed programs like the ones at ASTE or read books by popular authors in the field – Marcus, Jack Spong, Dom Crossan, etc., can hear the word god and hear it in a way that appeals to them. But by educating the people in the pews, as Marcus argued we should do, I believe we have simply moved the chasm that once existed between the pulpit and the pew and dug it around the walls of the church. It is now a moat. By stretching words like “god”, “salvation”, “resurrection”, etc. to cover complex definitions not held by the general public, we have essentially told them they are not welcome, we have nothing to offer unless they are willing to get over their ideas of what god is – note the inherent condescension there – and do it fast. My litmus test is, how much does someone who needs a church need to learn before they “get” what I’m saying and we can be present to them. And the answer to that should be “Nothing,” in my opinion.
At the symposium on the draft statement of faith many years ago, Orville James argued that if baseball has a special language, how much more important it is that Christianity have a special language; he argued for a gnostic faith. Marcus feared that Christianity might die if we did not continue to distinguish it with exclusive Christian terms. I disagree with those perspectives. The work we have done has always held our theologies accountable to love and justice. It was important. And the work we had yet to do was important, too. But we have failed to do it by requiring people come to us on our terms rather than inviting them to change us; we have lost them and turned them away in droves. The result has been that the UCC now enjoys almost complete irrelevance – indifference according to the Observer study a couple of years ago.
Now it’s your turn. How many atheist clergy do you think are in UCC pulpits and how are you estimating that? How many atheists do you think are in UCC pews? What’s your definition of “atheist”? And, if you are willing, complete the sentence, “When I use the word ‘god’, I mean …..” and let us know what your relationship with the UCC is. Thanks!
Richard and I are grateful!
(Just before posting this, I learned from my Bangladeshi friend, Raihan Abir, that another atheist has been brutally attacked and murdered in Dhaka. Like I said, this is the reason I call myself an atheist.)
30 Responses
I’m not clergy, but:…..“When I use the word ‘god’ ….. I mean the mystery and miracle of the creation and existence of the universe / cosmos; and our existence therein. My god is not a being; not an old bearded man with winged cherubs; not someone who loves us but casts us into eternal damnation whenever his mood swings; not an old man who plays favorites by granting prayers for some and not for others. For me, the miracle of life is more than enough, and I neither hope for, or expect further in any imaginary afterlife. I will be more than content with the gift of life and love, joyfully celebrating the blessings of this life and, when the time comes, making space for those who come after me with a big HALLELUJAH!
Rob in Edmonton
Thank you, Rob!
Compassionate Love 🙂
I’m a diaconal minister in the Maritimes.
Thanks, Annika!
I think Caputo comes close for me “God does not exist, God insists” The theology of ‘perhaps’ speaks to me, at this stage of my journey. I’m a diaconal UCCan minister in BC
So, “When I use the word god, I mean …. ” what? Would it be something like “what compels me to act justly and compassionately or something like that? It’s the specificity of the sentence that I think helps clarify. Thanks for your post. Hoping you’ll post a little more!
I think Caputo comes close for me “God does not exist, God insists” The theology of ‘perhaps’ speaks to me, at this stage of my journey. I’m a diaconal UCCan minister in BC, I would still say that’s a theology although I’m not sure if you’d call it a theistic one
When I use the word “god” I mean: first, the mystery; second, God is proven for me by the miracle of life and all that is creation; and third, God manifests as LOVE. God is love; love is God. We choose “it” or we don’t. God is the “love force” to which I believe I am to subscribe, to share, and to be thankful for as revealed to me first in the Bible (and subsequently reinforced by the example of persons in my life). I wholeheartedly and happily choose to follow the love force. (Not much else in the Bible really resonates with me, unless I am using my “quest” and analysis skills to bring subjective meaning to it. that said, I DO like to mine the Bible delighting when I find “gems” in it.) End game? Through God’s love — not to be confused here with love OF God– comes peace. Salvation and everlasting life are not my motivations, but rather, peace on earth. I can contribute to that.
Raised in the United Church of Canada in Alberta with very fond memories, and now I’m coming back to the pews after 45 years. Life intervened. My beliefs have been informed, however, by MANY explorations: my UCofC upbringing; native spirituality spilling into my life only by the fortuitous chance of where I grew up — the drums of the powwow still move me!; hippie intellectualism in the 60s; university studies of feminism and public policy; my social justice activism; life long learning including self-study of MLKing and the civil rights movement in the States, Gandhi, Buddhism, interfaith conversations, and art! All of these explorations are fuelled by intense curiosity and love for the world around me. My point here: we are multifaceted beings shaped by many influences, and we each bring to our places of worship a wealth of experience and understandings. None of us is shaped solely by the framework of the United Church — or Christianity for that matter; we are even more diverse and richer than that.
I do not understand all of the terms: theist, atheist, agnostic, progressive Christians, etc. so I don’t know where I fit in. Btw, I have read “With or Without God” and lots of it resonates with me; but I know God is in MY life as sure as the sun rises, tides “breathe,” seeds sprout, birds sing, and my heart bursts with the wonder of it all!
I welcome these discussions in our church– we will be better for them if we keep our minds open and our hearts filled with love. We have nothing to fear if we embrace love (and that love just happens to be “god” for me.) “My United Church” ought to respect and embrace those who are completely lost; those who are questioning, those who are avowed atheists, those who follow other faiths, and others as well as those who are fully with Christ — so long as love prevails. We each have until we die to find God (or not) and having lost my faith once, I know it isn’t over until it’s over. Our church should embrace all spiritual journeys.
Just so you know, deep down, I secretly hope you re-find your faith, Gretta, but my welcoming and embracing of you were we to meet at church does not depend upon it. In love and peace, Audrey
Thank you, Audrey. I wouldn’t say I’ve lost my faith. I am still filled with the same commitment that was seeded in me by my church upbringing, my theological education, and my years in the ministry. I am deeply moved by the interconnectedness of life, by our struggle to live goodness into being, by the wrestling we do with all that would shadow human beauty, dignity, and love. And that of all life on the planet, actually. I have a very Buber understanding and try to live that out in my relationships with myself, others, with the things in my life – yes, even inanimate things – and with the world. It is a challenging thing. And I don’t think that my decision to stop using the word “god” to describe that has diminished my faith at all. Indeed, when I look back, my faith has always been in our ability to be present to one another either when we are edifying or convicting and that we do that in love. It hasn’t been in a supernatural power but in a very human and natural one. Thanks, Audrey, for your post.
When I use the term God, I mean the natural order of the cosmos that enfolds humanity with grace. This is a meaning of God that aligns with the need to construct in transcendental imagination an understanding of Jesus Christ as the connecting mediator between time and eternity, with no supernatural content. A phenomenology of grace can be constructed within a scientific paradigm. The problem facing the church is that they allow themselves to be bullied by fools. Intellectual clarity is held hostage to the insistence on not disturbing the simple pious false faith of the ignorant. Such conceptual bankruptcy is a broad and easy path to destruction, while the narrow and hard path requires honesty and rigor and upset.
Thank you, Robert. It is so important for us to see the breadth of meaning that people hold. We cannot assume that “god” means this or that. Just like we cannot assume what people mean by “understanding”, “support”, “compassion”. Language can be as much a barrier as it can be a tool of communication!
I am amazed that back 50 years or more both J.A.T. Robinson and Paul Tillich said we should drop the word ‘God’ for at least 50 years, and use something else. Of course the institutional church never adopted their standard, and kept using the word – in fact overused it – ever since. Right now whenever a person in the church is groping for a word to express their sense of the divine mystery they immediately will say ‘God’. An interesting phenomenon in the UCC is that a very favorite hymn/song of the church is ‘Deep in Our Hearts’ music by Ron Klusmeier and words by John Oldham, and not once in the four verses is the word ‘God’ used. Was that the reason why Oldham was put on the Discontinued Service List of the UCC? Why must we be so attached to that word when so many other words work better and without the overlay of some terrible baggage?
I try not to use the word God at all, because I know that people will assume I’m referring to that intervening, irrational, magisterial creature from certain parts of the bible. I’m not clergy, but I was for 25 years a very active member of a big UCC congregation in the USA. My various leadership roles there over the years gave me many opportunities to explore faith questions, and I can report that maybe half of the people in that church would say that they’re not on board with any assumptions about an interventionist version of God.
I don’t go to church at all now. At some point I just couldn’t say (or sing) the words anymore without feeling like a phony. I tell old friends that I’m not a Christian, but if there were a version of Greta Vosper’s church anywhere near me, I would be all in.
I just want to thank you all for the objective views expressed here. It is so uplifting to have people like yourselves have a serious and charitable discussion of what theism means to you. Einstein and Hawking’s views on the universe can probably enlighten us as well. Mankind, like the expanding universe, must unfold its parochial thinking to encapsulate the wonders of creation that we are only now beginning to entertain with the certainty that transcendentalism is a journey whose destiny is not yet set in stone.
Thanks, Dale. Yes, Robinson’s call was deemed to difficult for us when he made it but I have had clergy tell me that when they were ordained in the 60s, it was only possible because they had Robinson’s book in their back pocket. He affirmed their understandings even though, in their ministries, they were not able to bring those understandings into the life of the church.
When I use the word ‘god’, I mean that entity without which I would not be. That’s probably the best I can muster at the moment. As a christian, I must also consider my answers to the meanings of Christ and Holy Spirit …
Thank ‘god’ I’m not clergy! 😉
My reply above implies that I think a Christian must be a trinitarian. I’m not so sure that I do think that way. But anyone calling him/herself a Christian will certainly be confronted with questions about the trinity.
I choose to capitalize ‘Christ’ out of awe and thanks for the Christ of God. But words are inadequate for this mystery. How about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlaoR5m4L80
I was raised evangelical but am presently attending an Anglican church. I’d probably be comfortable in an eastern Orthodox church if I could find one nearby that was not bound to some nationality. “There is a crack, a crack in everything … that’s how the light gets in”, thanks Leonard Cohen!
Thank you, Tim! And for the empathy!
Hello, Gretta –
Thank you for posting my question and your response.
Currently, because I am wondering specifically about ministry personnel in The United Church of Canada, I have put together a survey to ask questions around belief in God, and am inviting UCCan ministers to take part.
I will be posting results and some thoughts about those results on my website (richardbott.com), when I have received enough survey responses.
So I’d invite ministry personnel in the UCCan to head over to the survey and fill it out:
http://goo.gl/forms/Ig6t8CfA7p
Richard’s survey seeks to quantify the proportion of UCC clergy “who don’t believe in a theistic, supernatural, God” (quoting Gretta’s interview with CBC’s Wendy Mesley). But here he asks Gretta to validate the percentage of “atheist clergy”, a phrase that didn’t appear in that interview. I trust readers here are aware those are very different categories: ‘not supernatural theist’ and ‘atheist’ are not the same group, though this is the popular misconception.
Rev. Bruce Sanguin (retired) recently wrote “that 99% of the clergy in the United Church of Canada are non-theistic, if the theism [we’re] talking about is the traditional interventionist God.” I presume this is exactly the non-belief Gretta and Emmanuel’s principal (whom she was referencing) were also talking about, so 50% may be a gross understatement. At the same time, it seems very few clergy self-identify as atheist. So there’s a great middle category of UCC clergy who are neither traditional supernaturalists nor atheists.
Though Richard’s survey is not worded to provide a clear answer about the size of this middle group, the questions point in the right direction, and the comments may reveal the wide range of vocabulary clergy in this category use to describe their non-traditional belief. Hopefully we’ll be able to infer from there how many UCC clergy are non-theists as regards traditional belief and, separately, how many of that group are nonetheless theists but their own definition. The rest will be nontheists and atheists.
Thanks, Steve. We have spent considerable decades of time working our way around the complexities of our language. What theist technically means, we can now validly question because we have stretched the term to mean more than it originally did. Odd, though, that we continue to use it with its original meaning when we refer to other theistic faiths. And Canada’s religious charitable registration requires belief in a theistic being even though they regularly grant charitable status to Buddhist temples and organizations.
When I use the term, as I’ve noted above, I’m using it in the way I think most people would understand it. Nuanced by theological interpretation, words become useless as tools to deepen understanding. Again, the question becomes, how much does someone need to know before they “get” what I’m saying. Calling myself an atheist makes it clear that I do not believe in a supernatural being, in other words, a theistic god. So I wouldn’t make a distinction between lack of belief in a theistic supernatural being and an atheist as you’ve done, Steve. Thanks for your comment!
I came across your name when it appeared in the news. My first impression was that an atheist was interested in remaining a pastor. My reaction- apart from surprise that this could be a question – was that it seemed to be a contradiction in terms.
I have no connection to the UCC. I recall it as another denominational sect that like Lutheran, Presbyterian and others appears to be on the decline. Of course this seems to be within the larger decline in church attendance overall, and that’s another topic.
“When I use the word ‘god’, I mean God as defined within the Apostolic Creed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles%27_Creed ) . It’s a solid statement. Created and agreed upon in a time of much debate over just the same question as you’ve asked people to answer, centuries later. What goes around comes around.
Thanks, Sue. I think many very likely share your use of the word.
I don’t tend to use the word “god” or “God” for that matter but if I were to define what it means for me it is perhaps best described in Spinoza’s Ethics. … as nature, as substance immediately expressed in all its modes, conatus, creation, epxressed in all things.
I am clergy and believe in the God of unending love,grace, and hope who answers prayers, still performs miracles in our lives, and who is actively itervening in our lives whether we believe or not.
Hi Evan. That absent “n”. A typo, perhaps, or an irreverent tease at our own (clergy) infatuation with ourselves?
I’d call you a theist, then, though I do know some who might also identify as you have but call themselves non-theist. It is really clear that we need Richard’s study!
Thanks for posting.
ordained UCC. I believe in God who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit. Loving, active, living trinity.
Supernatural, interventionist, theistic, I presume, but I wonder if there are not those who recite the UCC’s “creed” who are non-theistic, who use those words in a metaphorical way. Thoughts?
I hope we can agree that God (a particular Divine Being who does things) does not equal “God” (a mercurial concept or undefined abstraction). When people who no longer believe in God nevertheless continue talking about “God”, they fall into a dishonest word game called theological double-talk. Gretta Vosper says that there’s a moat around the United Church of Canada. That moat was dug by theological double-talk. We should ask why people who no longer believe in God persist in talking about “God”. Is it because they have been left in a state of ignorance by a polity and a clergy that treats them like customers? (Happy customers fill offering plates.) Is it because they have no other idiom in which to ask important questions about meaning, value and purpose? I think it’s because people have not yet understood (or accepted) that abstractions cannot love us and concepts do not hear our prayers.
Rev. Dr. Davidson Loehr asks:
What was lost when God changed from a being to a concept? In philosophical shorthand, what was lost were the “attributes” of God. It was never the kneecaps and the toes of the old man that appealed to people anyway, it was God’s anthropomorphic attributes. “He” was thought of as seeing, hearing, caring, planning and – above all – loving us. But concepts don’t have attributes. The idea of God doesn’t love anything, except in the poetic sense that we mean when we say things like, “Truth loves those who will not lie,” and so on. But that kind of love is fundamentally different from the kind long imagined to be coming to us from a father in heaven.
Myths are culture shaping stories. When God died, the myth of Providence died with him. We can’t have “the promises of God” (in the words of the old hymn) without the literal God who was the author and guarantor of those promises. No God, no goodies.
The comforting idea that we can substitute a vaguely benevolent or responsive universe for a loving heavenly father is just too good to give up. Somehow, someway, Mother Earth must love humans more than all her other children. A heaven and earth emptied of partial or preferential love for human beings is too cold. We love our “sacred canopy” and will invent ways to imagine that it still hovers over us.
Straw dogs were props used in an ancient Chinese ritual. When the ritual was concluded the straw dogs were thrown on the fire without sentimentality or reluctance. Lao Tzu referred to these straw dogs in verse 5 of the Tao Te Ching. Ursula K. Le Guin nailed the translation:
Heaven and earth aren’t humane.
To them the ten thousand things
are straw dogs.
Wise souls aren’t humane.
To them the hundred families
are straw dogs.
Heaven and earth
act as bellows:
Empty yet structured,
it moves, inexhaustibly giving.
In her commentary on verse 5 Le Guin adds, “Heaven and earth – that is “Nature” and its way – are not humane because they are not human. They are not kind; they are not cruel: those are human attributes.”
It is one thing to meet people who “need a church”, as Gretta puts it, where they are. It is quite another to leave them there. When a child of three asks, “Why does the sun go down?” an age appropriate answer is required, not a lecture on our heliocentric solar system. In time, however, everybody needs to learn about Galileo. It has been said that ministers must take their congregants more seriously than their congregants take themselves. At some point church needs to stop being a place where we go to be comforted and become a place where we are challenged and expected to grow up intellectually and emotionally.
Joseph Campbell used to ask, “Why is it considered a bad thing to be disillusioned?” In some Buddhist traditions, the ideal is that we should give up all our illusions – including the comforting ones. However comforting it may be, theological double talk is confusing and dishonest. People who don’t believe in God should stop taking about “God”.
In response to Gordon Koppang, the recognition that religious language involves allegory is not dishonest. All parables are allegorical, and there is a strong argument that in the New Testament the use of allegory is far more extensive than just the parables, extending to also cover miracles.
Loss of illusions does not mean disillusionment, with its implications of loss of faith and trust. The recognition that a belief formerly considered literal has a deeper allegorical meaning involves a loss of illusion, but can bring a transformative recognition that the author intended a profound understanding, for example regarding how humanity relates to our natural cosmos.
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