View From The Pew
by Gerry Hunter
(Posted Dec. 2nd, 1999).
A Commentary on "A Christmas Message" by Bishop Michael Ingham (see below)
It goes almost without saying that this is the most peculiar Christmas message I have ever read. It is unique, in that it does not seek to make even the slightest favourable reference to Jesus Christ, as even some missives I've read by professing pagans have done. Rather, it is a subtle flank attack against Him, and all who believe in Him. It attacks by suggesting that Christmas can be approached for understanding in terms of the adaptability of man in history - which Christmas is not about - rather than in terms of God the Son entering our history as a man - which it is all about.
It speaks of limitless possibilities. It dismisses the religious expression of believers to nostalgia. It diminishes all religious expression to the expression of a human sociological phenomenon, ignoring that it could have other, infinitely more crucial components.
The living faith of the believing Christian, the author has overlooked, is never nostalgic, and cannot be characterized as such, when Jesus Christ is changing lives today, just as He did when He was walking among us as a man. To overlook that is, quite simply, to overlook Him. The analysis we are presented with is not an analysis of the Christian faith, or any expression of it. It is, though, a damning indictment of the religionism which the writer of the message seems intent on promoting.
From the post-denominational world in the message, may God deliver us! Wherever Christians have enjoyed the "greater companionship" the message writer speaks of, it has been for a particular reason: They have made Jesus the centre of their universe, and His promised presence among them has led to the greater companionship. No one has ever achieved it by leaving Jesus out of the equation, as Bishop Swing, and apparently the author of the message, are intent on doing.
Let honouring faith traditions be the good thing the message writer would have us hold it to be. The ultimate denial of Jesus Christ is no way to realize that good thing. To place Jesus on even so illustrious a list as the author of the message has done is to cease to recognize Him. It is to replace Him with a figment of someone's imagination, and attach to that figment the same name that the Second Person of the Trinity, "the Word [who] became flesh and dwelt among us" used when he was born of Mary.
Of course, all of this would be dismissed, I'm quite sure, by the writer of the message as the untutored, pathetic effort of an "ordinary believer," who has yet to have happen to him what must inevitably happen to all who "undergo intellectual and technological modernization." After the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, there were plenty of "ordinary believers" around. And the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, changed them. The change, we should note, had nothing to do with modernization, either intellectual or technological. In reading an erstwhile Christmas message, we are left to wonder why these irrelevancies are even mentioned.
This Christmas, in spite of the message writer's clever missive, believing Christians will rejoice in the knowledge that God will indeed keep faith with those who seek to come to Him through His Son, even though history rolls on, and religionists rise to episcopal rank in the church founded by His Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We have the word of Jesus, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, on that.
As St. John points out:
There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and the three agree.
But not with the writer of the "Christmas" message.
New Millennium requires a broader understanding of God.
by Bishop Michael Ingham
One of the things I most enjoy about this time of year is the "year in review" TV shows. This time they have been spectacular. We've been seeing the highlights of the last thousand years, the "millennium in review", and it has brought home to me how unimaginably different the world is today from the last time this happened.
The invention of the printing press, industrial and technological revolutions, advances in medicine and science, the collapse and rise of empires, religious reformations, intellectual enlightenments, massive social movements, the ending and return of human slavery, changing artistic periods - it's fascinating to see how infinitely inventive and adaptive the human story is.
Who was more influential - William Shakespeare or Adolf Hitler - go the unanswerable questions, and it makes us remember that individuals can still rise above the morass of history to leave permanent impressions on the world, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. Which will ours be?
Limitless possibilities
The next millennium, of course, defies prediction. The speed of change is now so rapid the possibilities seem limitless. Will sub-molecular physics make the automobile obsolete, and if so what will we do with millions of miles of paved roadway? Will the Internet become a tool of liberation or mass control? Will the nations of the South rise up and repossess the world's resources? Will the Charleston make a return?
From my point of view, it's fascinating to think how religion might change in the future. A few things already seem obvious. One is that the kind of religion we have known for the last thousand years will not survive. It is already reduced to a nostalgia in the Western world, and the same thing will happen in the developing world as it too undergoes intellectual and technological modernization. The strong hope of some in the West that the Third World will keep alive the flame of religious tradition is akin to buying a ticket on the Titanic.
The religion of the past millennium has been based on the isolation of religious belief systems from each other and the institutionalization of power among hierarchies and elites. At Y1K there were no world religions, only local religions serving local cultures. The emergence of global faiths - a relatively recent phenomenon - was also accompanied by their immediate internal fragmentation. In Christianity we call them denominations, and they have defined our self-understanding since 1054. The preservation of denominations has been the role of religious leaders, buttressed by various power structures. But time and social changes are sweeping them all away.
A post-denominational world
The future, at least for Christianity, will be post-denominational. We can see it already. Young people now go wherever their spiritual needs are met, not to the place their parents went. Scholars and theologians are finally resolving centuries-old dogmatic differences, but people have long ago decided they were meaningless. The intractable culture wars within each of the separated churches herald their own internal reformulation into new bodies with new and probably separate visions. People now find greater companionship with others across the old denominational lines than within them.
So too with religions themselves. The big emerging movement of the future - still young but now unstoppable - will be global inter-faith consciousness. Human nature has not ceased to be spiritual, but human beings have become tired of the relentless and destructive competitiveness of religions each claiming to be the only way. People by the millions are now crossing religious boundaries, formerly patrolled by powerful institutional authorities, and meeting each other as human beings and as fellow seekers after truth. Just as ecumenism has wrought profound changes among the churches, inter-faith movements will bring the religions into new self-critical reformulation.
Bishop Bill Swing of San Francisco, a recent visitor to the diocese, says the big question of the next millennium for religious believers will be "how generous can you stand God to be?" In the last thousand years we have fought hard for the belief that God is on our side, a member of our tribe, a sponsor of our interests (whichever 'our' side happens to be). The next question is, can we see God - by whatever name - in our neighbour's tribe and in our neighbour's interests? Can we believe the God we know to be equally generous in self-disclosure to others as well as to us?
Honoring faith traditions
I can imagine a world where people of faith finally turn their backs on the old ways and live together in mutual courtesy and respect. I can imagine a time when the founders and saints of all the traditions - Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Guru Nanak and so on - are honoured and cherished in all of them. I foresee the day when powerful religious elites will have to become servants again of self-determining religious communities, and the intellectual Berlin Walls, erected by guardians of dogmatic orthodoxies, will come tumbling down at the hands of ordinary believers.
It won't happen in my lifetime, or yours, nor will it happen without pain.
But the signs are all around us, and whatever we think about them, the tides of history will roll on regardless. Yet if we really believe in the sovereignty of God in creation, and the power of the Holy Spirit in human affairs, we will go forward unafraid. If God has brought us thus far, through this turbulent millennium, will God not keep faith with us a while longer?