Conservatives claim that declining numbers in progressive congregations are the result of progressive, non-Biblical, non-orthodox, non-traditional, non-creedal formulations of Christianity. I claim that declining numbers are due to people abandoning the Church because people think traditional theologies are no longer believable.
Changing Attitude England works in the context of an always evolving faith in God, ‘True God’ and in the essence of Jesus’ life and teaching. we will continue to pursue its vision of a God of unconditional, infinite, intimate love and of Jesus who says “I have come that you may have life, life in all its fullness” (John 10.10); of the Archbishops’ commitment to “a radical new Christian inclusion”. The Church of England’s focus must be turned towards nurturing the essence of God’s unconditional, cosmic love in the hearts, bodies, minds and souls of all human beings. This is Jesus’ message, the truth of creation revealed in the Gospels, embodying a God of compassion, empathy, and unconditional Christian, universal love.
The Church of England is having the greatest difficulty catching up with attitudes to the role of women and the place of LGBTQIA+ and black and brown people in Christianity, and to attitudes to belief in God, to a transformation from belief in God as a person or being, an entity, to an equally ancient spiritual tradition of God as Mystery, as the essence of life and energy, of primary human values and experience that lay the foundations of love, truth, goodness, health, wisdom and justice.
My latest blog dwells of John narrative of the crucifixion. It is John alone who adds the detail of the seamless tunic (or undergarment) woven in one piece to his narrative. It is the symbol of what God is revealing and doing. Jesus, in John’s understanding, is saying, “In the new order there shall be no schism, but you shall be one and you shall love one another and be woven together from above.
What are the elements of a Christian community, cell, gathering or congregation needed to create a seamless, healthy, spiritual, deeply relational, visionary, Christ-like movement? What does life in all its fullness look like and how do we assemble a model of Christian life and theology based on this, working to achieve this?
Foundational Anglican Christian theology with its reliance on scripture, tradition and reason is responsible for creating and justifying a core theology, an edifice on which and within which abuse has been built. The edifice supports conservative Christian homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, prejudice against other religions and cultures and particular categories of people.gy and culture that underpins abuse in the Church. Abuse has become systemic.
Fifty years ago I found Harry Williams in Heffers bookshop in Cambridge. In Harry’s books I found wisdom and truth, honesty and humanity, integrity and playfulness, that reinforced my courage to believe and the freedom to trust my own intuition. Among others. Harry gave me courage to believe disbelievingly.
Jesus was processing his life of human experience and emotions and relationships with exactly the same resources as you and I process our lives and experience. One difference between us (not the difference between divine and human nature) is that our experience, if we are Christians, is processed through the constructs of theology and faith that evolved following Jesus’ death and have been evolving ever since. We are programmed in a way Jesus wasn’t.
In September, five members of Changing Attitude England met in a London garden one afternoon to explore our beliefs about God. I had circulated a position paper beforehand setting out my thoughts as a framework for our conversation. The five of us who met in the garden, plus one, wish to extend the conversation we began by organising an open event on 2nd March 2024 at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo from 10.00 to 16.00 when we hope many of you will bring your own experience to the gathering, exploring our understandings of God in our human awareness and vision raised by the question What kind of God do we believe in?
There are, within specific cultural and social frameworks, specific bodies that have been regarded as particularly vile: those of a particular sex, race, religion, tribe, sexual orientation, disability or age. “Powerful Christians have regarded as abhorrent not merely the bodies of women but the bodies of many other perceived ‘others’, for example Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, people of colour, heretics.”
