Searching for God # 105

 Jesus makes clear that all rewards and punishments are intrinsic. According to Jesus, reward is integral to the activity for which it is a reward. The reward for loving one’s neighbor is an unqualified relation to that neighbor. However,  the church developed a doctrine of extrinsic rewards and sanctions to undergird its power and authority. If love is its own reward, why should human beings be rewarded for loving?

This quote, from Robert Funk’s Honest to Jesus, appeared in the last post in this space. Why have I excerpted it and repeated it here?

We live in a culture in which classical conditioning, in and through the design, administration and assessment of success is almost exclusively extrinsic rewards. Even the church operates on the basis of extrinsic rewards. The number of people in pews and dollars in plates is a primary, if not in too many cases, the exclusive focus of the hierarchy in mainline churches. With mainline churches closing at a furious pace, excepting the Roman Catholic church, where there appears to be a surge in numbers seeking ‘admission,’ one has to wonder about the cultural difference between the corporation, the academy, the public square and the ecclesial sanctuary.

And the practice of bargaining with God, ‘if you do this for me, I will…..for you’ is another form of the perhaps unconscious personal, organizational and cultural bias in favour of extrinsic rewards. There is an implicit ‘justice’ or injustice within this mind-set…..if I have ‘done’ this for you, I expect that you can and will do this for me’…..And if that is not reciprocal, then there is a sense of betrayal, often a withdrawal of connection and another reinforcement of the extrinsic reward system.

B.F. Skinner, the author of behaviourism, (from Britannica.org) was an American psychologist and an influential exponent of behaviourism, which views human behaviour in terms of responses to environmental stimuli and favours the controlled, scientific study of responses as the most direct means of elucidating human nature. Skinner was attracted to psychology through the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov on conditioned reflexes, articles on behaviourism by Bertrand Russell, and the ideas of  John B. Watson, the founder of behaviourism….His experiences in the step-by-step training of research animals led Skinner to  formulate the principles of programmed learning, which he envisioned to be accomplished through the use of  so-called teaching machines. Central to his approach is the concept of reinforcement or reward. The student, learning by use of the machine at his own pace, is rewarded for responding correctly to the  material he is trying to master.

Why such a lengthy explication of behaviourism in a post about ‘intrinsic rewards, from a theological perspective?

The pervasive concepts of behaviourism lie at the foundational of the thought process, and the accompanying attitudes about the nature of reality, that we also live in a culture that, as James Hillman reminds us, operates on the basis of literalism, empiricism and all of the implications of that ‘mind-set’. Objectifying behaviour, through the design and application of extrinsic rewards, impacts our salary grids, our competitive promotional ladders in organizations, our systems of performance reviews, and also our ‘termination’ approaches.

If everything about everyone is measured in numerical digits, of some sort, then one’s value and worth morph into a psychological notion of one’s identity. We but and sell out time, our skills our insights, and our precise attitudes, through such digital manipulation as opinion polls, marketing research, and the like. And once the numbers of people reach a certain benchmark (the one that determines whether or not the bills of the congregation can be and will be paid) the decision is taken to sell the building, and close and lock the doors.

Bells that ring for dogs to learn how to acquire food, for example, in the Pavlov experiments, are one specific application of the classical conditioning of behaviourism in operation. At a base level, perhaps, humans too are conditioned to ‘perform’ like trained seals to the satisfaction of their employer, and are consequently rewarded through one of the various extrinsic reward systems, most of which are embedded in personnel policy and practice.

Those who are less attracted to, or perhaps even completely immune to, the extrinsic reward system, naturally are considered ‘deviant’ and ‘different’ and often even untrustworthy.

Theologically, this extrinsic reward proposition has another profoundly significant and tragic application. Traditionally, the Christian faith has operated on and propagated the notion of an extrinsic reward of an afterlife in Heaven for those who have been saved. Nightly, people like Franklin Graham, son of the evangelist, Billy Graham, appears on some television channels offering ‘salvation’ and forgiveness of sins, for those who ‘give their lives over to Jesus Christ….and there is a phone number on the screen to call to have one of his staff pray for those who call. Such marketing and proselytizing tactics and strategies are, like those ‘pious’ acts of religiosity in public, the antithesis of the spirit of that same Jesus, at least as considered by the participants of the Jesus Seminar. Extrinsic rewards for ‘surrendering’ and for the exclusive status of attaining the rank of being ‘chosen’ so that, with the apocalypse, they will be assured of their place in heaven, while the ‘rest,’ the ‘unsaved’ will be sentenced to Hell…the whole so-called Christian theology, at least this branch of it, relies on, and proudly boasts, an embrace of extrinsic rewards from God, embraced, incarnated and embodied by millions of Christians

Here is another quote from Funk, detailing more of the sinister and self-serving aspects of the extrinsic reward of that apocalyptic heavenly afterlife:

 Apocalypticism is world-denying and vindictive. The apocalypse is a protest against injustice in this life, which is what makes it appealing. But it is ethically crippling because the apocalyptic mind looks for rectification in another world, rather than seeking justice in this one. In addition, the apocalyptic vision anticipates that those of us who have suffered in this life will be freed from pain in some future existence. That seems unobjectionable. But apocalypse adds that those who have prospered here, and especially those who have harmed us, will suffer in the hereafter. Those who advocate the apocalyptic solution are seeking vindication for their mistreatment in this life and punishment for someone else’s unmerited favor. The desire to reward and punish in the next world is self-serving in its most crass, pathetic form. It is unworthy of the Galilean who asked nothing for himself, beyond the simplest needs.

The numbers ‘game’ also applies to the social and cultural pattern, in the West, whereby churches claim success based on the size of their congregation the size of their trust fund, and the appointments of their sanctuary, not to mention the names of ‘elite’ social leaders in the town or city. The notion that everyone, all of us, is considered equal, with none being ‘superior’ in any way to another, is missing from the cultural ethos.

More from Funk:

 The authentic words of Jesus reject the notion of privileged position among his followers: the first will be last and the last first; those who aspire to be leaders should become slaves of all.

Jesus robs his followers of Christian ‘privilege.’ As John Dominic Crossan so pointedly puts it, Jesus robs humankind of all protections and privileges, entitlements and ethnicities that segregate human beings into categories. His Father is no respecter of persons…..What is the basis for one denomination to claim superiority over another? Is there a basis in Jesus’ views for one individual to think that he or she has a favored position in God’s eyes?

Many of the propositions from Funk expose the difference between what the scholars learned from the gospels, and the letters, when studied in a detailed manner, and the creedal and dogmatic documents that emerged from debates hundreds of years after the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Many churches continue to recite the creeds (Nicean and Apostles’ and Athanasian) as cornerstones of the ‘belief system’ on which they purport to rest their religious faith and conviction. For many, the words echo as a hollow chant, for most their meaning and import, and their relative meaning is lost in the fog of the memorized or read chant.

The notion that Jesus was envisioning a new world, the kingdom of God, tends to get lost in the sanctimony of some of the creedal, dogmatic and expectations of the church fathers and their impact on the faith. Returning to Jesus ideas, notions, and especially the non-confining and non-prescribing aspects of what amount to many paradoxical concepts and notions, can bring a revisioning of Christianity.

To shed much of the currently behaviouristic, hierarchic, empiric, and literal aspects in favour of a more tolerant, accepting, loving and inspiring perspective not only of morality but, more importantly of the intrinsic worth and value of each person, irrespective of title, bank account, ethnicity, religious affiliation, linguistic heritage..for many would look like something unenforceable, indefinable, and chaotic. For others, it would represent a kind of liberation that opens the human heart and imagination to new visions and interpretations of each and every moment, including the highly dynamic relationship with God, as envisioned through the life and words and eyes of Jesus.

Searching for God # 104

 More of Robert Funk’s more than moderate, less than revolutionary thoughts and insights and recommendations for Christian practice.

He opens his discussion with these words that will come as a shock to many and as music to others, including this scribe:

Jesus was a social deviant. It is helpful to remember that. If Jesus was a social deviant, social deviancy may not be all bad. Recommending it is a king of imitatio christi but with a different twist. In Jesus’ company, rebels are welcome.

Jesus kept an open table. Jesus ate promiscuously with sinners toll collectors, prostitutes, lepers and other social misfits and quranantined people during his life. …We have to ask, would Jesus have condoned…..a table open only to self-authenticating believers? Should we reconceive the scope of eating together in Christian communities, as well as the function of the eucharist.?

Jesus made forgiveness reciprocal. Jesus tells the paralytic the blind, the adultress that they are forgiven, without exacting penalties or promises from then. Jesus forgives because his Father forgives and on the same terms: without penalty or promise. The only requirement is reciprocity: one is forgiven to the extent that one forgives…..By acknowledging that forgiveness is in the hands of the human agents, Jesus precludes the possibility of vesting that matter in the hands of priests or clerics or even God. The power to forgive has already been conferred upon those who themselves need and want forgiveness. Human beings can have only what they freely give away.

Jesus condemned the public practice of piety. Jesus makes sport of displays of piety. He regards religious posturing as hypocritical….He suggests that prayer is best conducted in the privacy of one’s closet…..Piety should be practiced out of earshot of one’s own voice.

Jesus advocated an unbrokered relationship with God. Jesus insisted that everyone has immediate and particular access to God….. The inauguration of a priesthood and clergy therefore appears to be inimical to Jesus’ wishes. The Jesus Seminar concluded, on the basis of the evidence, that, while Jesus enjoyed good companionship, he did not deliberately collect disciples among them…..(T)he canonical gospels endeavor to authenticate the leadership of the church then in power. The authentic words of Jesus reject the notion of privileged position among his followers: the first will be last and the last first; those who aspire to be leaders should become slaves of all.

Jesus robs his followers of Christian ‘privilege.’ As John Dominic Crossan so pointedly puts it, Jesus robs humankind of all protections and privileges, entitlements and ethnicities that segregate human beings into categories. His Father is no respecter of persons…..What is the basis for one denomination to claim superiority over another? Is there are basis in Jesus’ views for one individual to think that he or she has a favored position in God’s eyes?

Jesus makes clear that all rewards and punishments are intrinsic. According to Jesus, reward is integral to the activity for which it is a reward. The reward for loving one’s neighbor is an unqualified relation to that neighbor. However,  the church developed a doctrine of extrinsic rewards and sanctions to undergird its power and authority. If love is its own reward, why should human beings be rewarded for loving? Do not the pagans---those who have no such special incentive to love—do as much?...According to popular orthodoxy, we are promised eternal life following bodily resurrection for believing the right things, for being theologically correct. How can that promise be anything other than self-serving? A version of Christianity that takes its cues from Jesus cannot be preoccupied with rewards and punishments.

We will have to abandon the doctrine of the blood atonement.  The atonement in popular piety I based on a mythology that is no longer credible—that God is appeased by blood sacrifices. Jesus never expressed the view that God was holding humanity hostage until someone paid the bill. Nor did Amos, Hosea, or other prophets of Israel. In addition it is the linchpin that holds the divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, and a sinless life together in a unified but naïve package: God required a perfect sacrifice, so only a divine victim would do.

We will need to interpret the reports of the resurrection for what they are: our glimpse of what Jesus glimpsed. The reports of Jesus’ appearances to certain followers function in the gospels and letters as commissioning stories. They endow certain leaders with authority and position—authority to proclaim the gospel as they understood it and the position of reliable dan exclusive witnesses to the resurrection. These circular credentials exclude subsequent and independent claims to the same or similar vision and to authority. The appearance stories, consequently, are fundamentally self-serving….The reports of appearances of the risen Jesus to his followers, however, are a belated and oblique recognition of the vision Jesus had of God’s dominion over creation. They are a diluted and not altogether satisfactory glimpse of what Jesus glimpsed.

Redeem sex and Mary, Jesus mother, by restoring to Jesus a biological if not actual father. Virginity is not necessarily godly, except in an ascetic, pleasure-denying, dualistic world. And Jesus is not necessarily a more effective savior for having been born without a father. Celebrate all aspects of life by giving Mary her rights as a woman, even if it means acknowledging that Jesus may have been a bastard. A bastard messiah is a more evocative redeemer figure that an unblemished lamb of God. The virgin birth, in the light of other miraculous birth stories in the ancient world, is a mythical way to account for an unusual life…..Augustine’s notion that the consequences of Adam’s sin is transmitted through male sperm is one of the great tragedies of theological history. He should be labeled as misguided and Manichean for his views. Furthermore, we should blow the whistle on the Roman curia for its ascetic proclivities—the self-justifying inclination to condemn sex for all purposes other than conception. Mary’s plight is thereby linked to a celibate priesthood on the grounds that abstinence is godly and that sex is dirty, aside from necessary multiplication of the race, especially in Catholic countries. In Genesis, the Lord did not order human beings to multiply and destroy the earth.

The anti-abortion movement, sponsored by both Catholic and Protestants pretends that it is solely concerned with the sacredness of life, a concern contradicted by its parallel endorsement of capital punishment. In fact, the so-called prolife people are driven by a fundamental disdain for the sex act if its intent is not to produce children. In the absence of such intent, sinners who indulge and conceive accidentally should be forced to pay the price of parenting unwanted progeny. Criminalizing abortion is a way of enforcing Puritanical sexual codes. We must divorce the abortion issue from the concept of sex as sin. We should endorse responsible, protected, recreational sex between consenting adults.

Exorcise the apocalyptic elements from Christianity. Apocalypticism is world-denying and vindictive. The apocalypse is a protest against injustice in this life, which is what makes it appealing. But it is ethically crippling because the apocalyptic mind looks for rectification in another world, rather than seeking justice in this one. In addition, the apocalyptic vision anticipates that those of us who have suffered in this life will be freed from pain in some future existence. That seems unobjectionable. But apocalypse adds that those who have prospered here, and especially those who have harmed us, will suffer in the hereafter. Those who advocate the apocalyptic solution are seeking vindication for their mistreatment in this life and punishment for someone else’s unmerited favor. The desire to reward and punish in the next world is self-serving in its most crass, pathetic form. It is unworthy of the Galilean who asked nothing gor himself, beyond the simplest needs.

Declare the New Testament a highly uneven and biased record of various early attempts to invent Christianity. Reopen the question of what documents belong among the founding witnesses….Eliminate the less deserving parts.

These are my twenty-one theses. If I had a church, I would scotch tape them to the door. (Funk, Honest To Jesus, pps.310-314)

Editor’s note:

If I too were engaged in active ecclesial ministry, I too would duck-tape these theses to the front door, to the door of the church hall, to the door of the choir loft, and to the back of each and every Bible resting in the pews. And I would publish then at least quarterly, and hold at least semi-annual workshops on their significance, and the degree to which we (together) were embodying their spirit…and also seeking new visions that are congruous with these theses.

Searching for God # 103

 In the previous post, I introduced Robert Funk’s notion of a ‘new age’ for a renewed Christianity. Today, I would like to flesh out that concept, with his help.

Funk begins with the phrase, ‘The aim of this quest is to set Jesus free.’ And the freedom Funk addresses would liberate Jesus from ‘the scriptural and creedal and experiential prisons in which we have incarcerated him….The  creedal formulations of the second, third, and fourth centuries would be de-dogmatized and Jessus would be permitted to emerge as a robust, real, larger-than-life figure in his own right….The pale anemic, iconic Jesus would suffer by comparison with the stark realism of the genuine article. (Funk, Honest to Jesus, p. 300)

“Revamping our understanding of the origins of the Christian faith itself”….Funk continues: ‘We will find it necessary to reexamine trends tat led to the identification of certain documents as orthodox and authoritative and eventually to the formation of the canonical New Testament…This agenda takes us back to the beginnings of Christianity, to a time well before it assumed its classical form at Nicea. Just as the first believers did, we will have to start all over again with a clean theological slate, with only the parables, aphorisms, parabolic acts, and deeds of Jesus as the basis on which to formulate a new version of the faith. (Ibid, p. 301)

The renewed quest has..ramifications for how we understand the Christian life…Christianity at its heart is not moralistic. In its finest hours it is ethical. At its worst, it is creedal—creeds are designed to exclude and expunge rather than include and nourish. (Ibid, p. 302)

A secular sage who may have more relevance to the spiritual dimensions of society at large than to institutionalized religion. As a subversive sage, Jesus is also a secular sage. His parables and aphorisms all but obliterate the boundaries separating the sacred from the secular….When the name of Jesus is mentioned, ‘religion’ is assumed to be the subject. But in fact the Jesus of whom we catch glimpses in the gospels may be said to have been irreligious, irreverent, and impious. The first word he said, as Paul Tillich once remarked, was a word against religion in its habituated form; because he was indifferent to the formal practice of religion, he is said to have profaned the temple, the sabbath, and breached the purity regulations of his own legacy, most important of all, he spoke of the kingdom of God in profane terms—that it—non-religiously. (Ibid, p. 302)

Jesus himself is not the proper object of faith. Jesus called on his followers to trust the Father, to believe in God’s domain or reign. The proper object of faith inspired by Jesus is to trust what Jesus trusted. Jesus pointed to something he called God’s domain, something he did not create, something he did not control.  I want to discover what Jesus saw, or heard, or sensed that was so enchanting, so mesmerizing, so challenging that it held Jesus in its spell. I do not want to be misled by what his followers (Peter, Paul) did: instead of looking to see what he saw, his devoted disciples tended to start at the pointing finger. (Ibid, p. 305)

We should, in articulating the vision of Jesus, we should express out interpretations in the same register as he employed in his parables and aphorisms. Jesus quite deliberately articulated an open-ended, nonexplicit vision of his parables and aphorisms. He did not prescribe behavior or endorse specific religious practices. He never was programmatic in his pronouncements….Our interpretation of parables should be more parables—polyvalent, enigmatic, humorous, and non-prescriptive. Yet we are invited by his example to be equally bold and innovative….One tenet of the new creed for the post-Christian age is that nothing is protected, nothing is off limits. (Ibid, p. 305)

Give Jesus a demotion. He asked for it, he deserves it, we owe him no less. As divine son of God, coeternal with the Father, pending cosmic judge seated at God’s right have, he is insulated and isolated from his persona as the humble Galilean sage….A demoted Jesus then becomes available as the real founder of the Christna movement. With his new status, he will no longer be merely its mythical icon, embedded in the myth of the descending/ascending, dying/rising lord of the pagan mystery cults, but of one substance with us all.

Cast Jesus in a new drama. The creedal plot in which Jesus has been cast is the myth of the external redeemer. In that story, the protagonist leaves a heavenly abode, enters the human space, performs a redemptive function, and returns to the heavens. The movement is from and to alien space….A plot familiar to modern readers, Superman and American West where the cowboy hero rides into a town beleaguered by villain, has a shoot-out with the perpetrators of evil, rescues those who are unable to resc..ue themselves, and then rides off into the sunset. (Lone Ranger)…The hero is not one of us; he or she is qualitatively different from us. This feature of the redeemer suggests that the created world is basically flawed and must be redeemed from without. In this flawed world, evil is stronger than human powers and cannot be overcome without superhuman aid. Mortal men and women are powerless within the framework of the myth because evil itself has cosmic dimensions. Spectator religion, morality, and politics are the inevitable result. Human beings are pawns in the cosmic drama being played out on a stage wider than their own. We are encouraged to rely on the powers above us, alien to us. Myths in this category tend to tranquilize, to function as escapist fare….Joseph Campbell…. tells of a hero with a thousand faces. He or she undergoes trials and tribulations in an alien space but manages a victory over evil powers, usually assisted by helpers. The hero then returns home and is reintegrated into society, now able to bestow boons on others.  We might dub this kind of story the myth of the internal redeemer….A true savior incarnate---incarnate literally means embodied—a true savior embodied must submit to the same limitations imposed on the rest of us. If Jesus of Nazareth is a savior, it is only because he aspired to heaven as all mortals do but was sage enough to reject the temptations and accept the limitations of his finite existence. If he arrived via a miraculous birth, knew himself to be the messiah and son of God, and had foreknowledge that his death would be reversed in a few days, he is not qualified to function as my redeemer. I prefer a savior who understands my predicament—my double fettering that ancors mortals in both heaven and earth, as Franz Kafka put it---and is prepared to assist me in grappling with my insatiable longing for heaven while chained to earth and mortality…..We might try (a plot) Jesus suggested himself. There is the plot of the prodigal. In that story, one can come home only by leaving home. The prodigal reflects Israel’s foundational myth—the exodus and quest for the promised land. It also echoes Israel’s exile and return. Departure and arrival, leave-taking and homecoming are linked in inseparable tandem.(Ibid, pps. 306-7-8-9)

We need to reconceive the vocation of Jesus as the Christ.Jesus told his parables as though he were hearing them. He was not so much calling on God as God was calling on him. He was not making claims; he was being claimed….To what divine manifesto did he succumb? By what vision was he both captivated and liberated? This is the interesting question. That is the determining issue. As an external redeemer in contrast to an internal savior, Jesus supplies our every need, fulfils all our fantasies……The historic Jesus is a reality anchor in a sea of unrealistic and potentially demonic dreams. The renewed quest is a reality check. It discourages self-indulgence and pandering. It represents the end of apologetic posturing and evasion, It demands honesty and candor. The real vocation of Jesus will displace the contrived vocations assigned by later generations. (Ibid, p.309-310)

For those who are continuing to read, along with this scribe, we have shared in a theological tutorial, offered, in precis form, by the founder and member of the Jesus Seminar. His life-long faith, and embodied scholarship, imagination and pursuit of the historic Jesus, as opposed to the one generated by credal and dogmatic debates and documents, (getting back to the narrative of the life of the Jesus of history of Nazareth) offers refreshing insights, propositions, proposals and hints at new ways, not of capturing another equally dogmatic, prescriptive and constricting Jesus, or a Christian faith based on such ‘principles.’ He offers a set of foundational notions from which we might begin to re-envision what we understand, imagine and are set free by and from, as we pursue God in  the twenty-first century.

If you want to read between the lines of these precis, you can find them on the pages in the footnotes.

Next, we will take a look at Christian practice, as Funk offers some ideas for our reflection.

To be continued……….

Searching for God # 102

 On the eve of Dame Sarah Mullally’s installation as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, the Vatican has released a major doctrinal text defining “Anglican heritage” as lived in the Catholic Church’s personal ordinariates—and declaring it a permanent, missionary gift to Catholic life, not a temporary halfway house. 

The document, “Characteristics of the Anglican Heritage as Lived in the Ordinariates Established Under the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus,” sets out seven hallmarks of this patrimony—consultative church life, evangelization through beauty, daily common prayer, care for the poor, family as “domestic church,” Scripture‑rich preaching, and serious spiritual direction and confession—and insists that these are to be safeguarded and shared as a “living reality” for the future.

The text was published on 24 March 2026, just as global media converged on Canterbury for Mullally’s historic installation on 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation. For Anglo-Catholics, the juxtaposition is hard to miss: while the Church of England celebrates a contested innovation in orders and leadership, Rome quietly offers a detailed, appreciative account of classic Anglican spirituality as it understands and receives it—within the doctrinal and sacramental framework of the Catholic Church. 

The timing underlines three contrasting trajectories: a Canterbury-centered Anglicanism re‑shaping its identity under a new archbishop, a confessional Anglicanism centered on the dynamic churches of the global south, and an Anglican patrimony that Rome says has found a stable home in the ordinariates.

A defined and permanent patrimony

The new text, issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is the fruit of a March plenary meeting in Rome with the three ordinaries of the personal ordinariates. It asks what exactly has been brought into Catholic life from Anglicanism and how that heritage is now being lived. The answers are strikingly positive. Drawing on earlier papal language that spoke of a “worthy patrimony of piety and usage” and “a precious gift … and a treasure to be shared,” the document insists that there is a recognisable core identity across ordinariate communities worldwide, despite their spread from the UK and North America to Australia and beyond.

That identity is rooted in a common journey: clergy and laity who first encountered the Gospel within Anglicanism and later entered full communion with Rome, bringing with them certain spiritual, liturgical and pastoral instincts. Far from treating these as relics that will fade in a generation, the dicastery states plainly that this patrimony is a “living reality” ordered to handing on the faith to future generations. It explicitly rejects the idea that the ordinariates are a merely transitional structure, instead presenting them as a settled, enduring “face” of the Catholic Church with their own contribution to make.

 

First, the document describes a distinctive ecclesial ethos: a church life that is highly relational, with strong lay–clerical collaboration and a habit of consultation. This is not presented as congregationalism, but as a style of governance and pastoral care which assumes that faithful laity share responsibility for the Church’s life and mission.

Second, it highlights “evangelization through beauty.” Here Rome speaks warmly of reverent liturgy, ordered ceremonial, a rich musical tradition, and a strong sense of sacred space—not as aesthetic self‑indulgence, but as a way of drawing people into the mystery of Christ. The assumption is clear: what many would call “high church” worship is a missionary asset, not an embarrassment.

Third, the bishops underline “direct outreach to the poor” as integral to this patrimony. Beauty at the altar is expected to spill over into concrete service in the streets. The document points to the example of St John Henry Newman, whose theological stature never obscured his work among the poor of Birmingham, as emblematic of this Anglican‑formed, deeply incarnational instinct.

Fourth, it describes a pastoral culture shaped by the Divine Office. The daily rhythm of Morning and Evening Prayer—refined over centuries in the Book of Common Prayer—is presented as a key part of the ordinariates’ life, now in Catholic form. The office is not the preserve of clergy in choir stalls, but the prayer of the whole people of God, anchoring parish life in Scripture and intercession.

Fifth, the family is described as the “domestic church,” with particular attention given to Walsingham as “England’s Nazareth.” The home is seen as the first school of the Gospel, and ordinariate parishes are urged to support parents as primary educators in the faith, fostering an “organic” approach to formation that links altar, font, and family table.

Sixth, the document points to a tradition of Scripture‑grounded preaching. Sermons are expected to be biblically rich, intellectually serious, and pastorally applied—nourishing minds as well as hearts. The text explicitly connects this with engagement with the Fathers and the wider Catholic tradition, and with a high view of reason serving faith.

Seventh, it identifies a particular style of cura animarum in spiritual direction and confession. The ordinariates, drawing on Anglican pastoral habits, are said to give time to individual souls, accompanying them patiently to an encounter with Christ the Good Shepherd in the sacrament of reconciliation and in ongoing spiritual counsel.

All of this is explicitly located in a robust Christology: the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of the Son of God are presented as the source from which the dignity of the person, the meaning of beauty, the shape of liturgy, the call to serve the poor, and the vocation of the family all flow.

From Anglican Ink, by George Conger, March 27, 2026, in a piece entitled Vatican fires a shot across Mulally’s bow

Patrimony: inherited from the Father

Ordinariates: Canonical structures within the Roman Catholic Church, equivalent to dioceses, created to allow groups of former Anglicans to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining elements of their Anglican liturgical and spiritual heritage. Established by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.

Anglicanorum ceotibus: an apostolic constitution issued by Pope Benedict XVI November 4, 2009

Contested innovation in orders and leadership: the disputed ordination of women and in some diocese, the ordination of gays and lesbians

St. John Henry Newman: English Catholic theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer and poet, ordained as an Anglican Deacon (1824) and Anglican priest (2025) and later a Catholic priest (1847), and later a Cardinal (1879). He belonged to the Church of England from 1824-1845, and the Catholic church from 1845-90.

Walsingham: home to major Catholic and Anglican shrines in Norther England, concerned with the incarnation of Jesus and the belief that Jesus was born of a woman in a particular place, into a human family.

Cura animarum: care of the souls or cure of the souls, the fundamental pastoral responsibility of the clergy, linked to concepts such as pastoral care, spiritual direction and soul care.

The document is historic for a number of reasons. It attempts to envision, and to invite and to propose a reunification of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches which split apart under the Act of Supremacy, 1534, enacted under Henry V111. The church was briefly united with Rome from 1553-1558 under the reign of Mary 1, but separated again under Eizabeth 1, 1558-1603. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement established the Church of England as a conservative Protestant church. During this time, the Book of Common Prayer was authorized as the church’s official liturgy and the Thirty-nine Articles as a doctrinal statement. These continue to be important expressions of Anglicanism (Wikipedia)

The issue of an exclusive male clergy, however, represents a significant divide, as well as the marriage and ordination of LGBTQ+ persons. In a previous post, I included a summary of William Blake’s interpretation of the Original Fall, as a separation of male and female, from a previous androgynous state, similar to the androgyny of God. That divide currently not only separates the Church of England from the Roman Catholic church; it also has generated another divide between the Church of England and GAFCON, the group of former Anglicans who hold that any other sexual orientation except male and female is counter to scripture.

From hrc.org, Human Rights Campaign, we read:

….(W)hat Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 17:17-18) indicates experience should inform how we learn God’s truth. This was what allowed the Christians to decide to include gentiles who were not keeping the Old Testament law in the early church. (Acts 15:1-19). It also was the basis for the Christian arguments that put an end to slavery and has supported movements for women’s equality throughout church history as well. The call to reform Christian teaching in these instances didn’t suggest that human experience should be held over Scripture. What they did suggest was that the obvious exclusion, injustice and destructive outcomes of widely held beliefs should take Christians back to the text to consider a different perspective, one which might better reflect the heart of God. While some Christians say that the Bible presents a variety of hard teachings as well as promising suffering of followers of Jesus (Matthew 16:24), it never endorses oppression. In order for suffering to be Christ-like, it must be redemptive. Redemptive suffering does not uphold oppressive forces but always expresses resistance to them. For all these reasons and more, Christians have a moral imperative to reconsider their interpretation of what the Bible says about LGBTQ+ identities.

The question of whether Christian theology is and can or must remain ‘fixed’ as in the patterns mentioned in the ‘seven principles’ above, or be amenable to experience, and open to the shifting tides and winds of time, history, learning, and especially the poetic imagination also lies at the heart of the Vatican document. Of course, opening an informal, yet public, negotiation, really another form of evangelism (recruitment, ecclesial growth and social and political status), especially at a time of extraordinary turbulence in geopolitics, globalization, environmental protection, genetic discoveries,  a digital and cyber revolution, a revolution in the manner of conducting warfare….and….and…..exploding prices and costs for everyday families….a form and face of ‘stasis’ represents a lifeguard’s rescue ring for those who feel they are drowning in chaos and powerlessness.

Nevertheless, Blake, and the Human Rights Campaign are not the only sources of both insight and theological reflection that might be worthy of consideration.

As originator and participant in the Jesus Seminar,  Robert W, Funk in his book, Honest to Jesus writes in a chapter entitled, ‘Jesus for a New Age’….

The ‘new age’ refers first and foremost to the end of Christianized era….I am not thereby claiming that Christianity has come to an end; I am only proposing that the Christianized West can no longer pretend to sponsor the only game on planet earth….

In the global arena, the symbolic world that is ingredient to traditional Christianity no longer occupies a foundational position…..The advent of a new age has brought with it the chance to star over…There is nothing in the creed, in the gospels in Christian tradition and in the historical and scientific methodologies with which we study them that is immune to critical assessment and reformation…..In the ‘new age,’ all theology is post-Auschwitz, as a German theologian recently remarked. Theology conducted in the aftermath of Auschwitz means, among other things, that we can no longer trust the authority structure of an ecclesiastical tradition that learned, at several critical junctures in its history it was unable to resist the ultimate compromise. We should already have learned that from the lessons of the Spanish Inquisition. Or we might have gathered something of the American cpropensity to read scripture in a self-serving was as an endorsement of black slavery…(Also) People are beginning to talk—openly, intelligently, candidly, without rancor-about the Bible, the gospels in particular, and about the Christian faith, its past and its future. (Funk, op, cit. pps 297-298-299)

Funk actually proposes specific ideas for consideration, some twenty-one theses in answer to the question:

What real knowledge—knowledge of consequence for us and out time—has this thirst to know the flesh-and-blood Jesus produced? What difference could it possible make? (Funk, op. cit, p, 3000)

To be continued………

 

 

Searching for God # 101

 That there is a growing sense of alienation amongst the white working class is evident; what is not sufficiently recognised is their sense of betrayal by the church.

At one time the Church of England and other mainstream churches stood at the heart of many working-class communities. No longer; over the past half-century many working-class people have come to feel that the church no longer connects with them or their values. They have become alienated from the church, and more importantly from Christ.

In industrial Britain, the parish church or chapel offered moral structure, social events, education, and welfare before the welfare state existed. Churches, chapels and missions were deeply intertwined with labour movements and mutual aid. Nonconformist chapels in particular played a major role in organising communities and promoting self-respect and social reform.

As industries and communities declined from the 1970s onwards, church attendance also fell. In response the church chose, instead of evangelism, to close, merge or repurpose once-busy churches. The community anchor disappeared. For many, this felt like an abandonment of the very people who had once built and sustained the church.

The Church of England in particular has become increasingly perceived as a middle-class, educated, southern institution, more comfortable in Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster than in the working-class parishes of Middlesbrough or Bradford.

Clergy today are too often seen as representing liberal, metropolitan values. People who speak the language of inclusivity and internationalism rather than concerns about stability, family and belonging. When bishops speak out on national issues, Brexit, immigration or race their tone often reflects liberal metropolitan priorities rather than the concerns of ordinary parishioners. The church hierarchy is often seen as distant, focusing on abstract moral or global issues such as climate change, diversity and international aid, rather than local deprivation, addiction or unemployment.

The church has moved from preaching sin and salvation to lecturing on social justice. Many working-class people have felt alienated by the shift from traditional moral teaching to progressive activism. Traditional values have been neglected, if not dismissed as belonging to a bygone age. Working-class communities often value tradition, patriotism and moral clarity; all too often they don’t get it from the church.

The church’s growing emphasis on progressive causes, gender identity, multiculturalism, migration and climate activism, is out of step with the priorities of the white working class. For many the church no longer offers transcendent meaning and purpose, instead it offers social commentary.

In the face of rapid demographic and cultural change many white working-class communities perceive the church as embracing multiculturalism and interfaith outreach in a way that neglects their own identity and traditions.

From Anglican.ink, in a piece entitled, ‘The church’s woke betrayal of the white working class’  by Campbell Campbell-Jack, November 25, 2025

A similar argument is being carried in The Telegram, today, March 28, 2026, as well as in the publication www.issacharpeople.org on the same date as it appeared in Anglican.ink.

The installation of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally, this past week, has helped to generate two obvious shots across the bow of the Church of England. The second one comes from the Vatican, an expression of the seven principles of Anglicanism, including patrimony, that the Vatican welcomes as gift and blessing to what it considers the origins of the Christian faith, and, inferentially, but boldly so, also presents itself as an invitation to all those defected former Anglicans, now associated with GAFCON, a conservative off-shoot, dedicated to defying the authority of the first female Archbishop, and the celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, including mixed marriages and perhaps even ordination.

So….hypothetically, on this Saturday morning in Lent, the day before Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, let us take up silent, and imperceptible residence in the office of the new Archbishop, facing:

·      the growing cries of alienation from the white working class in small English communities many of whom believe that the church has stopped speaking to and with them and their traditional values,

·      the defiance of a large number of both former Anglican clergy and laity around the world, many of whom would echo the social alienation of the white working class in England, only with a specifically Biblical sword or arrow sustaining them in their quiver of opposition

·      the mixed-message from the Vatican extending an olive-branch of harmony and even unity on seven principles, while at the same time, putting on the world religion ‘table of contents’ for reflection and debate, a highly attractive implicit invitation to all disaffected Anglicans (from GAFCON and elsewhere) to return home to the Roman Catholic welcoming hearth.

Not only will it require a faith of eminent conviction and durability from the Archbishop, as well as a supportive community who fully understand and have earnestly and voluntarily signed on to her liberal theology, plus a level of erudite and sophisticated diplomacy even to begin formal and informal conversations with, first, her clergy, and the disaffected laity within those working class parishes, many of whom have already departed, if she is to have any hope of reconciliation of values that seem to be dividing much of the Western world.

In Canada, (bear with me, for a moment, as this may seem off-topic), this morning, coming from the whiteribbon.ca is a report part of which reads in part:

Ø 73% of educators are concerned about harmful online content targeting boys and young men

Ø 80% of educators have witnessed misogynistic behaviours in the classroom

Ø 84% of Canadians aware of online influencers with misogynistic views say these influencers have a negative impact on boys and young men

This cluster of data is not intended to assert, and certainly not imply, that the issue of gender relations is the only one confronting the church, the state, and families throughout the West. However, there are clearly some deep and divisive, also potentially tragic and reprehensible implications should the world continue down a path absent of and incapable of gender reconciliation.

The depth and range and rapidity of change over the last quarter or perhaps half century is astounding, shocking, unsettling, and deeply chaotic. We all know and ‘feel’ the many tentacles of these changes, everywhere. At the same time, we all feel impotent, and even dismissed, from having an impact on their depth, range, and especially on the complicit political body of both opinion and incest with the changes. Chaos reigns, and we all experience alienation, powerlessness, isolation and abandonment, from the crucibles of power, money, laws and institutions.

And that phenomenon is, like space, time, money and death, boundaryless. Oh, and of course gender and sex. Alienation, to the degree of evoking and inflicting trauma, whether individually or collectively or both, is an integral and intimate ingredient of the lives of most, if not all humans. We all ‘feel’ as if we are riding a jet-speed roller-coaster for which no previous inspections, corrections and control supervisions have been either permitted or imposed on that machine. And, of course, given a serious ‘perceived threat’ (from the classical, behavioural psychologists, and their ‘flight-fight’ impulse) we, consciously or not, have chosen a personal response. Our personal faith and relationship with/to God may or may not have played a part in that leaning.

Science, pandemic, new digital technology, environmental existential threat(s), globalization and the flow of money spiking upwards to the top 1% or fewer (the vast majority are men!) …taken together there is a picture so blatantly obvious, and yet also so obviously and blatantly unsustainable and nefarious, heinous and despicable, that it not only impacts both directly and indirectly, all people of the world.

Trouble is, only a very few men seem to have the volume and ubiquity of megaphone-power, that we are deluged with, frankly, ‘narcissistic-steroidal-teestosteron-infected-masculine-irresponsibility’. Of course, neither the digital oligarchs nor their political sycophants are ever going to accept and acknowledge their responsibility nor are they going to be held to account. They will forever be absolved of any guilt, shame or full responsibility having attained the conditions necessary for ‘impunity and immunity’ from having to reflect, reconsider, and both pause and desist their shared, pathetic, insidious and lethal hegemony.

Bombs, missiles, drones, and the ‘freedom’ to deploy them on oppressed, innocent, and frightened people, men women and how-can-they boys and girls, including babies, along with tariffs, racism, religious bigotry and an arsenal of spies and national security cyber-sleuths are all in the service of a lethal, amoral, global white supremacist (religiously enhanced) cabal.

Needless to say, the fine-tuned facts, and their broader implications often do not penetrate into the lives and minds and psyches of men and women who are just trying valiantly to put food on the table, to send their child to school and, if possible, college or university or even an apprenticeship. That is not to insult ordinary people. They ought not to have to become intimate with the workings of national governments, especially given that such governments have been working rather quietly and unobtrusively and reliably for well over a century.

Of course, not every political or social ill has been effectively resolved or even ameliorated. Much work for social justice, equity and inclusion still remains, especially among those least visible, and with the least access to a microphone. The alpha-males currently and inscrutably in power (think U.S.A., Russia, Israel, Hungary, North Korea and perhaps others) have formed an oligarchic cabal with their respective ‘cyber-bullies’ and their bank-accounts, as well as their admittedly nefarious obsessive-compulsive addiction to making us all addicted to their machines and devices. Our new normal comprises lies, not truth, bullying, not collaboration, or conciliation or negotiation or resolutions of our shared ‘complaints’ frustrations, alienations, and abandonment.

They, those running the machine, couldn’t care less about our ‘pitiful’ frustrations. They have bigger fish to fry. Indeed, they have such hubris that they will continue to ride roughshod over all normal, official, legal, and reasonable boundaries to their presumed and assumed total power and control. And as the Pope reminded Italian journalists this week, start reporting on the victims, not the soldiers and politicians in these military conflicts.

It will take many such addresses by many more voices by Pope, Archbishop, theologians, sociologists, and especially politicians, such as the Prime Minister of Spain who has boldly and courageously declared his nation unalterably opposed to both the war in Gaza and in Iran. Refusing to co-operate with the pugilists is a political position that might constrain their hubris and their ambition and their untethered political will.

Nevertheless, with considerable anxiety, even stress, I am going to introduce into this ‘cauldron’ some insights from a renowned, yet somewhat unfamiliar poet from England, whose searching and searing mind and imagination has a unique, creative, pulsing and even challenging interpretation of what is Christendom’s major event, The Original Fall. It is the depth of the penetration of religious symbols and images and their meaning into our Christian, western culture, that, while perhaps considered ‘too liberal’ by many, needs to be continually and imaginatively plumbed for meaning.

And meaning is what William Blake offers those of us, ordinary men and women who are deeply concerned that, by focussing on the symptoms of our social malaise, we are letting those with inordinate power off the hook. Universality, as humans, cannot be either ignored nor dismissed by all religious faction.

Blake imagined a different kind of “Fall”….based on what he considered an androgynous God and androgynous Adam and Eve, until the separation in masculine and feminine.

From the website divinehuman.org, in a piece entitled, Gender and Perception: William Blake and the Fall into Male and Female, by Northrop Frye,Posted on September 18, 2022 by Golgonooza

Blake believed that Consciousness was originally integrated, non-gendered, and “androgynous” (as he terms it). Human consciousness was, before the Fall, the “image” or likeness of this: indeed, as the Book of Genesis itself notes: “God [“the Elohim”, an honorific plural] created man in his [ie their] own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” “God” here is originally both what we now term “male” and “female”, denoting the integrated sexuality of the sacred. As our imagination fell, due to the advance of rationalising and moralising (judging) processes within the brain, the world appeared increasingly literal and separate from this integrated consciousness. In Blake’s terms, it “fell” (or divided) into a rationalising Spectre (Adam) and a feminine Emanation (Eve). The beauty of the world, human consciousness now thought, was “external” to the perceiving consciousness of it. Poets are the last reminders of this primal connection – what is called in literary criticism “the pathetic fallacy”. Except of course it’s not a fallacy. If anything it’s a “phallus-y”, a newly gendered schizophrenia within the perceiving consciousness – that is to say, within perception itself – which now fragmented or divided into “subject” and “object”, perceiver and perceived, active and passive, and eventually “male” and “female”. This was the world of Eden now seen in terms of Generation, of divided opposites, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.

Now, does this scribe expect the newly installed Archbishop of Canterbury to bring these perceptions and their implications into formal discussions with her clergy, laith, the press or even the Vatican? Of course not. Nevertheless, the question of how men and women relate, and the question of the imposition and deployment of power are both highly radioactive in today’s culture than embraces urban and rural, working class and white-collar workers, the political class, as well as the economic oligarchs and the political tyrants. It also includes the teachers and professors who are attempting to strengthen and deepen and broaden the sphere of influence of the human imagination. We, men women and children, inhabit the same small and fragile, yet beautiful planet, as observed and photographed from space; we drink from the same lakes, rivers, oceans and we plant seeds and bring food from the same shared soil. And while that argument tends to become pigeonholed into environmental protectionism (or denial or hoax) it is also a religious, ethical, moral, political, economic and even a national security issue.

Our best theology, whatever name and faith dogmatic foundations it carries, can and must embrace a shared agape for the whole world, and we can and must bring our best and most clarifying and clarion voices to the table whose menu has to include the meal on which we can and will all survive.

And war, military munitions and ambitions, racial and religious hatred and bigotry, linked to political and national hegemony and narrow-minded heroism are not on the menu.

Humility, the image of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey celebrated tomorrow, is a far more fitting, resonant, and androgynous beacon and role model for all faiths. Christians do not have exclusive ‘rights’ to that story or that image. And, it offers a far more life-sustaining, life-giving and life-sharing image, including, of course, the final willing sacrifice on Good Friday to the unjust, irrational, and overweening violence of the mob, to death in the interest of relationality.

Violence, in all its many faces, forms, iterations, domestic, military, economic, political and religious, is the shared enemy of the human community, and its ubiquity and penetration into the cultural psyche and ethos, Hillman’s anima mundi, is so pervasive that none of us is spared a plethora of opportunities to non-violently oppose with force that violence, that bullying. And it will take all of us, in an inclusive and sustainable, courageous, and faith-inspired and emboldened collective voice! And time is short!

Searcing for God # 100

 For frequent visitors to this space, (Thank you for your time, attention, reflection and patience!), you will have noticed two themes emerging in this ‘pilgrimmage’…one toward ‘liberation’ and the other toward ‘silence’.

Both have roots in the Christian tradition, and we might like to explore whether the convergence of these two themes has roots in any of the spiritual ‘angels’ among those in the Christian archives.

Finding both liberation and silence to be integral and impactful not only as applications of one’s faith journey, but also a beacons of both light and darkness, in the balanced and rejuvenating necessary for a pilgrimage in search of God, I stumbled upon a website, after ‘googling’ ‘relationship of mysticism and liberation theology’….Surprise!: In Search of a New Eden.

Here are a few thoughts from one Jeremy McNabb, found on their website:

Celtic influences often find strange theological pairings, and what I have to bring to the table today is no exception. Gustavo Gutierrez was neither Irish nor a mystic, but I think his writings carry a lesson for those of us who are either. He is considered one of the founders of liberation theology, and for those who aren’t students of church history, liberation theology has three main parts:

1.    It challenges the radical and systematic dehumanization of the marginalized by introducing spiritual hope.

2.    It builds on that foundation of hope by engaging the marginalized in critical self-reflection about both their situation and their oppression.

3.    It studies both scripture and church history to discover parallel movements of liberation.

I don’t know how it plays out in the rest of the world, but mysticism and liberation theology do not frequently cross paths in the American Church. It would be an anachronism to suggest that (Saint) Patrick was motivated by liberation theology, because what is called liberation theology today did not yet exist in fifth-century Ireland and Britain. It would not be incorrect, however, to say that what motivated Patrick to return to the peasants of Ireland would be called liberation theology if it played out in our modern world.

Though Patrick would fall into what is commonly called “white” today, he was not a member of his world’s ethnic or political majority. The Irish had little privilege except where they aligned themselves with Rome and Patrick himself had been kidnapped and enslaved in his youth. Despite this, he returned to the peasants (pagani) of Ireland after mystically hearing their collective voice calling out to him.

The monk Pelagius is known as a heretic, condemned as one, even. He found himself on the religious fringe, excluded from a circle that included (and whose gates were guarded by) giants like Jerome and Augustine of Hippo. Pelagius accepted that women could learn as well as men and it has been suggested that the pagan belief that humans could directly engage in relationships with deities influenced his Christian understanding of free will.

Germanus of Auxerre also seemed to fear Pelagianism for its tendency to stimulate men and women to resist Roman commands. In fact, it was this fear that prompted Germanus to co-opt Patrick’s call to the pagans of Ireland with the intention of dismantling Pelagius’ influence there.

In recent years, mostly thanks to a wide-spread internet hoax, the plight of the Irish has been unjustly weaponized against communities of color in order to dismiss slavery and xenophobia, and to suggest what good folk ought to do when faced with oppression and marginalization.

I call attention to Patrick and Pelagius, not to ignore black and brown heroes of the faith or to center this religious dialog on men who would have looked like the vast majority of folks at the top of corporations or in Washington, D.C. today, but to point out that it should not be impossible for many of us—who look like them–to grasp the struggle faced by those Gutierrez intended to liberate.

Patrick, Pelagius, and Gutierrez are our spiritual ancestors and speak to us across a communion table that is greater and grander than we can imagine. Their journeys can and should inform ours. Christ said in Matthew 25 (paraphrasing), “Whatever you do or do not do for the least of these, you do or do not do for me.” When we feed the poor, we feed Christ. When we cloth the naked, we cloth Christ. When we visit someone in prison, it is Christ that we visit. And when we ignore those souls, we ignore Christ, too.

As mystics, many of us know what it is like to have other Christians treat us with suspicion for being too “Pelagian” or too “new age.” Many of us know what it is like to have our mystical experiences treated with disbelief, clinical dismissal, or outright ridicule. It should come as no surprise to us that someone of a different skin color or from a different culture could be treated with similar disbelief, dismissal, or ridicule.

When the time comes for white Christians to stand in solidarity on behalf of black or brown Christians, those of us who consider ourselves mystics or heretics should be at the front of the line, not because we’re more important, not because we’re wiser, but because we understand in some small way what it means to be made to feel unimportant.

We should realize that what Christians of color face is a much larger, much more systematic and terrifying version of the same prejudices we have faced, and we should count it a privilege to offer ourselves as a soul-friend to them.

(This article was written by Jeremy McNabb. Jeremy is a religious history geek with a B.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies, a graduate student of Theological Anthropology, a hopeful novelist, a Pelagian, and an aspiring heresiarch.)*

*Heresiarch: an arch-heretic, founder or proponent of a hierarchical movement or sect. (FYI, this scribe has no intentions, ambitions, flirtations, fantasies or expectations of becoming an heresiarch. This space is dedicated to whatever it is that I deem necessary to learn, to embrace, to wrestle with and to prayer to and for.)

While these notes from Mr. McNAbb, (with their United States’ perspective) offer a glimpse into his perception of the connections between mysticism and liberation theology, a different name has also been cited as another bridge between the two, also long before the word or concept or practice of liberation theology had been documented and studied.

The name Theresa of Avila will be familiar to some, although her story and influence may be less familiar. She is reputed to have joined these two themes throughout her own life, and, for this scribe, offers a role model of considerable influence, consequence and application for contemporary Christian spiritual pilgrimages. why might she be relevant and significant in this preliminary ‘dig’ into the potential relationship or connection between mysticism and liberation theology.

From the website: Theresa of Avila- Saint mystic and Doctor of the Church

What to Remember

It is obvious from the directness and freshness of her writings that Teresa was a real flesh and blood individual who, while being a great contemplative was also a person who was very active in the world. Persistently poor health did not stop her in her attempts to bring a more authentic spirituality to the religious communities that she set up. Her political acumen saved her from the power of the Inquisition to have her silenced and even put to death. We also see in the progression of the writings, someone who, as she got older, became more compassionate towards her own sisters and more forgiving of their failings. Her life can be seen as the story of a spirited young woman who, at home in the world, by degrees allows her spirit to be infused and completely surrendered to the will of God. Like Julian of Norwich, her God is a god of great tenderness and forgiveness who is only waiting for us to approach him in prayer when we can no longer conceive of him through thoughts and words. Like so many mystics her writings are less about spiritual technique and much more about the quality of relationship. As she says herself;

‘And so my friends, I will end by suggesting that we avoid building towers without foundations. The Beloved looks less at the grandeur of our deeds than at the love with which we perform them.’

Contemporary theological thinkers continue to wrestle with the deep connections between the mystical and the political. One such thinker is Frederic Lenoir#, and from his website, fredericlenoir.com we read:

Le Monde des religions, November-December 2009 —

Religions inspire fear. Today, the religious dimension is present, to varying degrees, in most armed conflicts. Even setting aside war, controversies surrounding religious issues are among the most violent in Western countries. Certainly, religion divides more than it unites people. Why? From its very beginnings, religion has possessed a dual dimension of connection. Vertically, it creates a bond between people and a higher principle, whatever name we give it: spirit, god, the
Absolute. This is its mystical dimension. Horizontally, it brings together human beings who feel united by this shared belief in this invisible transcendence. This is its political dimension. This is well expressed by
the Latin etymology of the word "religion": religere, "to bind." A human group is united by shared beliefs, and these beliefs are all the stronger, as Régis Debray so aptly explained, because they refer to an absence, to an invisible force. Religion thus takes on a prominent identity-forming dimension: each individual feels a sense of belonging to a group through this religious dimension, which also constitutes a significant part of their personal identity. All is well when everyone shares the same beliefs. Violence begins when some individuals deviate from the common norm: this is the perpetual persecution of "heretics" and "infidels," who threaten the group's social cohesion. Violence is also exercised, of course, outside the community, against other cities, groups, or nations that hold different beliefs. And even when political power is separate from religious power, religion is often instrumentalized by politicians because of its mobilizing role in shaping identity. We remember Saddam Hussein, an unbeliever and leader of a secular state, calling for jihad to fight against the "Jewish and Christian crusaders" during the two Gulf Wars. The survey we conducted in Israeli settlements provides another example. In a rapidly globalizing world, fueling fear and rejection, religion is experiencing a resurgence of identity politics everywhere. People fear the other, retreat into themselves and their cultural roots, and breed intolerance. Yet, there is a completely different path for believers: remaining faithful to their roots while also being open to dialogue with others in their difference. Refusing to allow religion to be used by politicians for belligerent purposes. Returning to the core tenets of each religion, which promote values ​​of respect for others, peace, and welcoming the stranger. Experiencing religion in its spiritual dimension rather than its identity-based one. By drawing on this shared heritage of spiritual and humanistic values, rather than on the diversity of cultures and dogmas that divide them, religions can play a pacifying role on a global scale. We are still far from this, but many individuals and groups are working towards this goal: it is also worth remembering. If, to borrow Péguy's phrase, "everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics," then it is not impossible for believers to work toward building a peaceful global political space, based on the shared mystical foundation of religions: the primacy of love, mercy, and forgiveness. That is to say, to strive for the advent of a fraternal world. Religions, therefore, do not seem to me to constitute an insurmountable obstacle to such a project, which aligns with that of humanists, whether they are believers, atheists, or agnostics.

#Frederic Lenoir is a French sociologist, philosopher and writer, born June 3, 1962). He is Director of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). He divides his time between his main residence in Corsica, Paris and the rest of the world where he gives numerous seminars and lectures.

To be continued…..

Searching for God # 99

 Silence revisited…..

In a previous post on silence, it may have seemed as if silence was being considered as something less than either normal or acceptable. It may have seemed, as a premise, that humans were (or might be) deliberately ‘keeping secret’ whether from others, themselves or God, in some mysterious, even conspiratorial way. That was never my intent.

Silence in both a social and a private sense ( socially: shyness, reserve, distance, detachment; privately: self-talk, perception, intuition, imagination) is both a critical and an essential space for all humans. And that essentiality applies whether one is pursuing a search for God, an atheist, or an agnostic. Nevertheless, what remains as inescapably significant is the recognition of what might be ‘going on’ within our multiple silences and their  ‘hidden’ messages, the inner voice, the inescapable pulse of something beyond whatever we might be engaged in at the moment that the last post was wrestling.

Cultural differences often revolve around the degree of ‘silence, reticence, respect and reverence’ one shows to one’s circle of others. Researchers in social psychology are beginning to examine the role silence plays in communication, including such things as ‘pausing to think and reflect,’ or ‘underlining’ a point, or similarly, allowing the listener to digest the previous point.

Another perspective on silence is a theological one.

Some notes from Karen Armstrong in ‘The Case for God’ might be helpful:

Pushed to the limit, reason turns itself inside out, words no longer make sense, and we are reduced to silence. Even today, when they contemplate the universe, physicists pit their minds against the dark world of uncreated reality that we cannot fathom….Thomas (Aquinas) would say that we know we are speaking about ‘God’ when our language stumbles and falls in this way. As a modern theologian has pointed out, ‘This reduction of talk to silence is what is called theology.’ (Denys Turner*, author of The Darkness of God) Unknowing was not a source of frustration. As Thoman indicates, people can find joy in this subversion of their reasoning powers. Thomas did not expect his students to ‘’believe’ in God; he still uses credere to mean trust or commitment and defines faith as ‘the capacity of the intellect to recognize (assentire) the genuineness of the transcendent, to look beneath the surface of life and apprehend a sacred dimension that is as real as—indeed more real than—anything else in our experience. This assent did not mean intellectual submission: the very assentire also meant ‘to rejoice in’ and was related to assensio (‘applause’) Faith was the ability to appreciate and take delight in the nonempirical realities that we glimpse in the world. (Armstrong, op. cit, p. 145)

Denys Turner* (from goodreads.com) we find:

For the medieval mystical tradition, the Christian soul meets God in a ‘cloud of unknowing,’ a divine darkness of ignorance. This meeting with God is beyond all knowing and beyond all experiencing. Mysticisms of the modern period, on the contrary, place ‘mystical experience’ at the center, and contemporary readers are inclined to misunderstand the medieval tradition in ‘experiential’ terms. Denys Turner argues that the distinctiveness and contemporary relevance of medieval mysticism lies precisely in its rejections of ‘mystical experience’ and locates the mystical within the grasp of the ordinary and the everyday.

And from Cambridge.org in a preview of an abstract of Turner’s work, ‘God, Mystery, and Mystification, 2019, we read:

…a central concern for Turner is the interplay between negative and positive theological language arising from an openness to the mystery of God, which leads to an ongoing spiral between knowing and unknowing. The mystery of God sustains both affirmations and negations without absolutizing either, since God is beyond both….Drawing on Julian of Norich, Turner argues that evil and redemption are fitting, which neither solves nor suspends the problem (of evil) but maintains the honest incompleteness of the human perspective on God’s narrative with creation.

Armstrong give us some background on mysticism from the thoughts and writings of one Denys the Aeropagite, an unknown Greek author and Saint Paul’s first Athenian convert. Quoting Denys the Areopagite she writes:

Scripture supplies God (Armstrong)

With horses and chariots and thrones and provides delicately prepared banquets and depicts Him drinking and drunk, and drowsy and suffering from a hangover. And what about God’s fits of anger, His griefs, His various oaths, His moments of repentance, His curses, His wraths, the manifold and crooked reasons given for His failure to fulfil promises…(Armstrong, The Case for God, p. 124-5)

Armstrong: But crass as it seems, it is valuable, because this gross ‘theologia’ shocks us into an appreciation of the limitations of all theological language. We have to remember this when we speak about God, listen critically to ourselves, realize that we are babbling incoherently, and fall into embarrassed silence…It is easy to deny the physical names (of God): God plainly is not a rock, a gentle breeze, a warrior, or a creator. But when we come to the more conceptual descriptions of God, we find that we have to deny these too. God is not Mind in any sense that we can understand; God is not Greatness, Power, Light, Life, Truth, Imagination, Conviction, Understanding, Goodness---or even Divinity. We cannot say that God exists because our experience of existence is based solely on individual, finite beings whose mode of being bears no relation to being itself.

Quoting Denys the Areopagite:

Therefore…God is known by knowledge and by unknowing: of him there is understanding, reason, knowledge, touch, perception, opinion imagination, name and many other things, but he is not understood, nothing can be said of him he cannot be named. He is not one of the things that are, nor is he in any of the things that are, he is all things in everything and nothing in anything. (Ibid, p. 125)

The silence of awe, reverence, amazement, astonishment, and even ‘implausibility’ and beyond our imagination, within our sphere of experience is, then, perhaps the beginning and the final approximation of glimpsing something of the divine. And even then, we continue to fumble to articulate those moments.

Suddenly, while sitting at one’s desk in a large organization, one is stunned by a first-time “aha” about this story of forgiveness for everyone, always having considered that notion for others only, and not for one’s own person. There are no words, no explanations, no justifications, and no comparables.

Another similar but different moment of silence seems to arise when we are confronted by a diagnosis or by news of a sudden passing. We are in what we might attempt to call a pit of silent darkness, overwhelmed, ‘gob-smacked’ with the totality of whatever is or has just happened. Feeling completely alone, isolated, alienated, and abandoned and forsaken, we seem to recognize, perhaps unconsciously, that no words are ever going to explain not only what just happened, but what that moment is like for us. Empty, dark, and imponderably silent is the space of that moment. And, depending on whether we attempt to ‘rush’ out of it, or not, it might last for some time.

Paddling solo in a 12-foot canoe while sitting atop one of the seats, like a human sail, exiting a river mouth into a brisk, spring-time south-west wind and suddenly the canoe capsizes and the moment is silent, one is immediately up-ended, cold, dark and the instant evokes a reflexive gasp, until one realizes that one has no  oxygen and air, but is slowly drowning. In such a moment of the terror of silence, one’s imagination ‘projects’ pictures perhaps of roast-beef dinners and school report cards, inflated into some kind of significance that, itself, is beyond explanation. Floating, thrashing, clamouring for a ‘mooring or life-raft’ as if involuntarily and impulsively churning for breath and life….attempting to survive. And that moment of the deep is so riveting and so transfixing and so indelibly imprinted with chaos, confusion, fear and anxiety….all of it in total silence.

Or the silence of a delivery room when, without words, almost in a silence of reverence at the sight, sound and physicality of a three-second-old baby being passed into one’s arms rivets one’s whole being as some kind of unspeakable oneness with the baby and the universe. The room disappears, except for the window that draws one to its morning sun in the silence of--- I dunno--- is it prayer or is it complete amazement at the miracle of birth or is it all of those things and more?

Or the eerie silence in a pathology laboratory as preparations for an autopsy are being laid out. The deceased is, less than two or three hours from sitting in her kitchen with her husband, and now the process of discernment of  how and why she died has already begun. The mysterious air, the silence, the professional, and also very silent, movements of pathologist and assistant, the soft bell of an instrument on a grey-steel counter and the masked-and-scrub-clad chaplain interns move, if at all, as if they were at the altar, preparing for eucharist. This is the silence of wonderment, not merely about the ‘clinical’ cause of death, but more importantly about the amazing, complex and highly balanced ballet of recently pulsing organs, and systems and a whole human life. A sacred moment of not only respect for the deceased.  A sacred moment also for the moment of one’s encounter with the universe of the human anatomy and the ‘creation’ of a now-passed woman. Is it the silence of reverence for the woman, the heightened sensibilities of all present, the awesomeness of both the professional integrity of the scientist whose share in the silence and the ‘awe’ of what it happening…

We live and breathe moving into and out of silences…and many of those silences, while never fully falling into our comprehension or understanding, give us moments to jar us from our semi-consciousness, from our passive often-robotic routines, relationships, expectations and solving ‘situations’. And, without any full comprehension or explanation of how and why those moments have a meaning and a dimension and a resonance unique to each one, they do, perhaps give us a glimpse of something ‘more’ beyond our senses, our intellect, our experience, our expectations and our imagination…..And, we are wont to wonder…maybe, just maybe we glimpsed something extraordinary and unforgettable and……???

And, of course, we also wonder in silence!