The complexity of belief

Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola’s recently released a study called, “Preachers Who Are Not Believers.” LaScola is a social worker and Dennett, a philosopher, is one of the original New Atheists (and the “Four Horsemen”), well-known for his vitriol against religion.

In an article relating to the study, Daniel Silliman writes that Dennett and LaScola have mostly missed the point in relation to the five Protestant ministers who took part in the study. The authors want to see preachers who are secretly atheists; the ministers themselves see their situation are vastly more subtle and complex. These are people who have struggled long and hard with belief and doubt, and who continue the struggle. As one of the men says, “We are not ‘un-believers’ in our own minds.”

Silliman goes on to say:

All of the preachers in the study have struggled, primarily, with denominational dogma that tries to strip down belief much as Dennett does. They have wrestled not with God so much as with particular doctrines, particular understandings of God, and, especially, with the conventions about what can and can’t be discussed openly in church. Three of them insist that, though they have rejected their denominations’ dogma, they still believe in God; they just say it’s complicated. The other two seem to accept that they, in fact, are unbelievers, that the line drawn by fundamentalists and the New Atheists is right, and they fall on the side of not believing.

Wherever they end up in their answers to the question of belief, all five of these men have taken belief seriously. They have not simply accepted or rejected imposed definitions of what faith means. They have struggled and tried to be honest about it.

Against Happiness

Once a Protestant church was a place where one would grow to understand his severe optical limitations in comparison with the infinite vision of a ubiquitous deity, a God whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Now, at least in my eyes, the numerous churches devoted to Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and the like are basically happiness companies, corporations that focus on how one can achieve blessedness while living in this world. In the pews and pulpits, contrition has turned trite, and contentment has become the given. The blessed gaze of those striding from the aisles to the vestibule is inspiring to behold. The firm farewell handshake between the minister and his parishioner is a sacred seal, a bond: stay happy until next week, for God has planned for you to prosper, if only you will pray over your repasts and tithe your earnings.

...we are beginning to see that this American quest for happiness at any cost is not merely a pastime, an occasional undertaking. We are starting to realize that this push for earthly bliss is at the core of the American soul.

from Against Happiness, by Eric G Wilson, pp 19-21, Sarah Crichton Books, 2008

The skeleton and the muscle

Len, on the Next Reformation site notes that Mike Breen essentially says we have two broad groups in the church, with two orientations.

* the traditional and pragmatic prefer the bounded set .. definition, boundaries, clear ways to identify who is in and who is out
* the “emergent” prefer the centered set.. direction, focus, purpose and an emphasis on process over location

Mike raises the body metaphor to compare these two groups and describe why they need each other. The pragmatic are like the skeleton, the emergent are like the muscle.

You can get a skeleton to stand up, but you can’t get it to move.
You can get muscle to move, but it wont’ stand up.

“We need to ask the Spirit of God to bring a great rattling so the bones will stand up, and then to breathe upon those bones so they will live so we will have a mighty army.”

Mike Breen is one of the founders of The Order of Mission - TOM - in Sheffield. To quote (at some length) from their website, this is what they're about:

TOM is a pioneering movement born out of a desire to fully give ourselves to making disciples of Jesus in this fast changing world. We stand in the tradition of the missionary communities of the past who lived as radical, pioneering pilgrims called to influence, serve and shape society and the church in their time: the Celtic monks and nuns who first re-evangelised these nations, the Methodists and the Salvation Army who called a people back to God in their days, the Protestant missionary societies who re-discovered global mission in the nineteenth century.

The Order of Mission is a dispersed community of pioneers, people called to lead and influence within whatever context and culture they live and work: cities and rural areas, developed and developing countries, business, education, arts, health and social care, public and private sector, family and church. We are a people who have committed ourselves to the vows of simplicity, purity and accountability. We take ‘Lifeshapes’ as our rule or pattern of life and seek to journey together, encouraging and challenging each other, as we follow God’s call on our lives.

Click on the link above to find out more about them.

Obstacles/Movements/Internet

One last item from the series of 18 obstacles by Mark Driscoll, in his address to Sydney Anglicans. The obstacles are listed here. While I'm not sure that the generalised statement below is entirely true, it has a point. And what is vital for modern ministers/pastors/leaders to grasp is what Driscoll says about the Internet. If ten million people download Driscoll's sermons in a year, how many might be downloading your sermons - do you know? Are they available for download? Do you advertise the fact?

Often new movements come into existence when there's new technology. For example, the Protestant Reformation happened at the time of the printing press, Billy Graham used the advances in amplification and radio at the time he was preaching. Today, we have the internet. Old systems were based on control, but today, there is no control. "You can sit on your Macbook and even if no leader approves of it, you could communicate to the world. That changes everything." People spend more time looking at a screen than a human being. Mark Driscoll's sermons are downloaded more than 10 million times each year. "That's crazy - we could never have a meeting with 10 million people, we'd call it a country."

Ministering in Rural Areas

Muriel Mellow has been running a series of articles on the Canadian Church Rural Network site. The latest (and last) is now available. (Previous ones are in the Archives section.)

The articles have been based on her book, Defining Work: Gender Professional Work and the Case of Rural Clergy. The most recent article in the series is entitled: Professional Demands and Personal Lives, and looks at how rural clergy manage the relationship between professional and private life, and the different challenges for women and men in this regard. What's presented in the article is a much condensed version of what she has to say in the book.

Here's what the publisher's blurb has to say about the book: For rural clergy, the lines between private life and professional life can blur. Their offices are often in their homes, parishioners are also neighbours, and professional duties are intertwined with emotional caregiving and volunteer activity. In a society that defines work as paid, public, and intellectual the ambiguity inherent in the life of the rural clergy poses unique challenges. Muriel Mellow considers how men and women in this occupational group conceptualize "work" in the context of their unique circumstances and shows how their experience raises questions for feminist theories of work. Based on interviews with forty rural Protestant clergy, Mellow argues that male and female clergy challenge gendered definitions of work by focusing on obligation, context, visibility, and time. She also considers how clergys work is shaped by the rural setting, arguing that we must consider how work is "placed" as well as gendered.

The book was published in 2006.