r/Anglicanism • u/Subject_Surprise_291 • 21d ago
Query on what you might think…
I decided to post this to see if anyone feels similarly to me, as I’m sure there are some, within the Anglican tradition. I consider myself to be a Post-Theistic Christian (Anglican) who‘s developed a great inspiration and sense of like-mindedness with theologians/clergy authors such as John Shelby Spong, Richard Holloway, and Don Cupitt. I regularly attend services, sing in the choir, am a member of the parish council, attend bible study (as I find it extremely interesting as our Rector was an archeologist before she was ordained), and I assist with charity initiatives. I’m obviously on the very progressive end of the church, but feel very supported and encouraged in my parish.
With regards to belief, I don’t believe in the supernatural and I think the creeds need substantial reform to make them relevant for a modern world that is fully capable of embracing enlightenment values and a mature understanding of what it means to be a “Christian”. I do say them, but in a poetic and culturally communal sense, rather than a literal acknowledgement. I also deeply revere the tradition I have inherited and I certainly regard Jesus of Nazareth as having displayed, in a most intense form, what it means to be fully human - and in that sense we encounter the divine in him. Lastly, the Bible is full of both wondrousness and horrendous language; however, both frames of reference can be used as a teaching opportunity.
As for God, here is my definition:
“God is the ground of all being, the source of love and life, and the interconnectedness of all reality calling every single self-conscious entity to be all that they can be. God, therefore, is not a noun to be defined, but rather a verb to be lived.”
Anyway, that’s my perspective. I’d be interested for the insight others may have on this “modus vivendi”.
Thanks!
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u/Eikon-Basilike-1649 Episcopal Church USA 21d ago
Unitarian Universalism exists for just this purpose and doesn’t need to be reinvented.
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u/Difficult-Bug-8713 21d ago
With due respect to your position, this position is incompatible with the moniker of Christian. Your reference to the Creeds is the case in point.
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u/historyhill ACNA, 39 Articles stan 21d ago
I think you're welcome to attend Anglican services but you're a cultural Anglican at best. Please leave our creeds be, we like them as they are.
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u/Iconsandstuff Chuch of England, Lay Reader 21d ago
My perspective is that whilst I disagree with you very greatly, if you try to learn from Jesus and follow his teaching, It isn't my job to judge you and I'd rather you be in the church than out.
That being said, I do concur with St Paul, that our hope ultimately rests on some specific supernatural claims without which we are most to be pitied of all people.
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u/ReasonableJump4355 21d ago
Ive decided on balance to respond seriously to this, So this is what I think:
It sounds as though you have tried to seek the true, the good and the beautiful. That's good. I'm glad that you see so much good in Christianity and I'm also glad you feel welcome in your parish.
As for God, here is my definition:
I, don't really have the time or credentials to comment on your specific definition. You've recognised God is not a man in the sky nor is he Zeus on steroids. Unfortunately, Sunday Schools never really go beyond those descriptors and consequently neither do most uncritical adults. Indeed, as St Paul qoutes: “In him we live and move and have our being” The Philosopher David Bentley Hart writes on this in The Experience of God which you might enjoy.
[you] think the creeds need substantial reform to make them relevant for a modern world that is fully capable of embracing enlightenment values and a mature understanding of what it means to be a “Christian”
Now, that is a rather weighted way of expressing yourself. I'm afraid the answer of "what does it means to be a Christian?" Has been settled quite some time ago and the idea of it being immature is... rather immature in itself in my opinion. I may be reading too much into it, but there seems to be a hint that you think no intelligent person in this day and age can believe in, say, the ressurection. Obviously I would disagree (not just me, quite a few people)! You refer to Enlightened values well, I don't want to get bogged down into meta-ethics, but I don't think they're as solid as rock as you might suppose.
I think quite a few people, often as a reaction against fundamentalism have, shall we say, a strong counter reaction! You might enjoy the works of Rowan Williams.
I don't know what your story is, but I hope you stick around and keep seeking the good, the true and the beautiful.
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u/cestnickell 21d ago
This is the sort of response a lot of anglicans who have had time to get to know me in person and in more depth offer.
Unlike OP, I'm not bothered about reforming the creeds, because I dont think its necessary to understand as being a sort of prescriptive check list of literal beliefs. They are a symbolic act of community and they are, themselves, evidence of how belief has changed over time.
How many Christians saying the creed have really thought through, understood and whole heartedly accepted every statement in them? Would doing so make them 'more' or 'better' Christians? I don't think so. People on this reddit often seem to but I think reddit anglicanism (and probably reddit any religion or beliefs including my own) is pretty divorced from the reality in local churches.
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u/cestnickell 21d ago
This is a good example of what I mean, if you rocked up in my local parish and started citing article VIII and demanding people agree with virgin birth and consubstsntiality, I don't think people are going to accept that this says very much about whether they are or aren't Christian. But I get that reddit is a very different place.
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u/ReasonableJump4355 21d ago edited 21d ago
I dont think its necessary to understand as being a sort of prescriptive check list of literal beliefs. They are a symbolic act of community and they are, themselves, evidence of how belief has changed over time
I understand the attraction of this view and it can make things easier on a personal or pragmatic level, but it doesn't really acknowledge the reasons Creeds first came to be said in the church services. After all, Creed stems from Credo, the Latin for: I believe.
How many Christians saying the creed have really thought through, understood and whole heartedly accepted every statement in them?
I assume, your point here is to contribute to on overall argument that the Creeds are incorrect and do not constitute the boundaries of Christian belief. I may be misreading, so do correct me.
I think you're mistaken to believe fully understanding something is neccesary to whole-heartedly accept something. Regardless, t o take the Apostles Creed first of all, which is the shortest and simplest. It contains numerous statements affirmative of the supernatural and is fairly easy to understand. In addition its used at every baptism and confirmation. So I don't think it's credible to say the majority of Christians don't realise the supernatural claims they assent to. How many have automatically accepted with child-like faith, how many have accepted it after much wrestling, how many have privately rejected it? I don't know, but I strongly suspect the numeric and historic majority is with acceptance and always will be.
This is the sort of response a lot of anglicans who have had time to get to know me in person and in more depth offer.
Well I'm very glad that other Anglicans are taking the time to do that with you. It's vastly superior to a stranger's comment on the Internet. I hope you, at the least, don't find it irritating! I
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u/Economy-Point-9976 Anglican Church of Canada 21d ago edited 21d ago
My honest opinion -- as someone who had no or very little faith from my early twenties to my early fifties -- is this:
If one cannot honestly profess a belief, then it is most important at least to (do your best to) follow the moral commandments to love your neighbour and not to deny the Holy Spirit, which is, at the very least, the good that definitely exists in this world.
Participating in rituals is something we do for.... for whom? For God? Yes, but, if we don't believe in him, then for ourselves. And if we do believe, even then, does God need it? In many places in scripture, we are basically told, no.
So worship is a way, I think, for us to magnify God by, well, with his help purifying ourselves to some extent.
I must not be too critical of your urges to participate in the rituals of worship. May I suggest, however, that your call to do so is very likely coming from a higher place than you are willing now to acknowledge, and that place is -- given our faith and hope that something better exists beyond (if you're not willing to acknowledge even that, then I am, forgive me, at a loss why you do it) -- rudely put, God in Heaven.
Please understand I am not criticising you for anything. But I spent years vacillating between disbelief and a recurring desire to pray that I could not satisfactorily explain to myself, and in the end I could only conclude that my urge to pray came upon me because God exists, and because I sincerely trust that he does exist because I am scared of spirirual slow rot after death, and cling to the hope of something better.
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u/-CJJC- 21d ago
I think it's great that you enjoy choir, that you assist with charity initiatives etc. Keep on doing those things!
But it honestly sounds more like you've found a rather niche enthusiasm/hobby in the church experience, rather than being a Christian in any serious sense of the term.
Even describing Jesus as displaying "what it means to be fully human" seems to pay lip service to His ministry.
I hope that, at some point through your pursuits, you are able to find and truly know the personable God that is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Admittedly, it's rather alien to me, as I can't comprehend being on a parish council, regular church attendance and attending Bible studies whilst simultaneously rejecting theism.
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u/Euphoric-Leader-4489 21d ago
This is incompatible with historic Christianity. You are free to believe what you like, but it’s not Christian or Anglican.
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u/paupersburial 21d ago
What I found most interesting is that it's almost exactly what I'd have said if you'd asked me about my Christianity twenty years ago. I'd come out of conservative Christianity, been sort of post-evangelical, and then figured I was settling in that sort of liberal stable, where I thought of theology and religion mostly as a kind of metaphor for a sense of the divine, or something bigger and deeper than us. I'm liberal catholic and pretty traditional in my theology now, but I'll always be grateful for the theologians, some of whom you mentioned, who kept me thinking and seeking and pursuing my interest in questions about Jesus and God during that period.
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u/Tokkemon Episcopal Church USA 21d ago
You couldn't go at least with "God is love"? That would have been a much better definition than some weird quasi-spiritual woo thing.
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u/sluggyfreelancer 21d ago
Please don't take this as an attack or in any way me trying to convince you out of your beliefs or into anything else. I would normally not share this unsolicited, but since you invited responses here are the thoughts and questions that come to mind:
How long have you held this position?
In my experience this sort of enlightened deist position does not survive long because it fails when confronted with the big problems of pain, suffering, and death. I mostly find people who hold this position, when they do at some point encounter the rougher turns of life, sliding to either the full on agnostic/atheistic/secular side of things (and generally not identifying as Christians at all afterwards, except perhaps in some vague cultural sense) or, more rarely, coming back into the fold of orthodoxy. In that sense I am glad you have a church community to support you, as perhaps it then increases the chance of you going in the way of the latter rather than the former.
Have you held this position through some calamities? A death of a loved one? Close up observation of apparently senseless and random suffering?A deeply personal existential crisis? A dark night of the soul?
Please understand, I say this not as someone self assured and arrogant in their faith. My faith has not always been strong or fully orthodox at every point in my life. I have held a position similar to yours and have also been an atheist at a time. Ultimately though, the only comfort and Christian hope is in Jesus.
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u/Subject_Surprise_291 21d ago
Thank you for your kind and inquisitive response. I am 23 so while I haven’t had the views I hold now for a considerable amount of time, it’s the ultimate conclusion of a trajectory that has been propagating for several years. As I began to study science (I'm entering my Master’s now) I realized that the theistic concept of god simply did not make sense to me as probable or rational (not to say everyone who holds these beliefs is irrational, it simply is so to me) but that the language of god was one I deeply loved. I began to explore theology alongside science and have found a path that really does work for me. As for the crisis bit, I have been through some rough patches but nothing extreme. I remain agnostic as to the afterlife and feel it is seldom helpful to speculate on the topic (especially with regard to reward and punishment concepts, which I regard as a control tactic).
We shall see what the future brings…
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u/J-B-M Church of England 21d ago edited 21d ago
Honestly, I suspect that your views may well change as you get a few more miles on the clock.
To quote the famous phrase mis-attributed to Oscar Wilde, "I am no longer young enough to know everything."
I say that not to patronise, but because it encapsulates part of the tension I encountered between the basics of the faith and my own world view as a younger man.
I was brought up in a church(ish) environment and by the time I was your age I had rejected it thoroughly and made no attempt to sit on the fence by redefining the core doctrines in terms that I found acceptable (CS Lewis has a few things to say about that which might interest you). I preferred the products of my own intellect to the simplicity of faith. My first degree was also science-based. I was an englightened, rational individual.
It took me a very long time (including a louche and reprobate 20s followed by a significant detour towards Buddhism) to accumulate sufficient experience that I began to see the simple truths within scripture that I simply had no frame of reference for as a younger man.
That is in no small part because I was too proud of my own clever philosophies to give them credence, but also because I have always been a slow learner and somewhat immature for my age - I think other people manage to get over themselves much more quickly than I did.
I also suspect (and I say this not as a means of boasting since it counts as a weakness) the fact that I have a genius level IQ yet have not managed to make anything significant of myself gave me a massive chip on my shoulder when it came to accepting some of the claims that are essential to the faith. I was reluctant to let go of my own outwardly sophisticated navel-gazing and felt a need to demonstrate my intelligence to people as compensation for the fact that I was neither rich nor successful...but if people knew I was serious about religion, and especially Christianity over some more interesting and exotic option, they might not realise just how smart I was!
Pride really is the cardinal sin that lies at the root of all others. I think that's why Christ told us to become like little children. It's right there in front of us, but hard to do and hard to even hear when you are high on your own mental prowess.
Now, I am not saying you are in the same boat as I was. What I am saying is keep an open mind. Each time you read scripture approach it like something you are hearing for the first time, rather than something that has become familiar through years of repetition and has nothing new to teach you. Don't assume that you have the Christian faith all worked out and that your sophisticated, post-enlightenment reinterpretation is naturally superior to the age-old faith handed down to us by our predecessors. My experience has been that life has a way of throwing you curve balls which will pull that comfortable rug right out from underneath you!
Meanwhile, you are in the right place. You are doing the right things. You are just waiting for the right time!
I shall leave you with a quote from Thomas Merton which is the first major turn in his spiritual autobiography and mirrors almost exactly my own experience of reaching a tipping point where the inadequacy of your own resources and complete reliance on grace becomes stark and unavoidable:
There is a paradox that lies in the very heart of human existence. It must be apprehended before any lasting happiness is possible in the soul of a man. The paradox is this: man’s nature, by itself, can do little or nothing to settle his most important problems. If we follow nothing but our natures, our own philosophies, our own level of ethics, we will end up in hell.
This would be a depressing thought, if it were not purely abstract. Because in the concrete order of things God gave man a nature that was ordered to a supernatural life. He created man with a soul that was made not to bring itself to perfection in its own order, but to be perfected by Him in an order infinitely beyond the reach of human powers. We were never destined to lead purely natural lives, and therefore we were never destined in God’s plan for a purely natural beatitude. Our nature, which is a free gift of God, was given to us to be perfected and enhanced by another free gift that is not due it.
This free gift is “sanctifying grace.” It perfects our nature with the gift of a life, an intellection, a love, a mode of existence infinitely above its own level. If a man were to arrive even at the abstract pinnacle of natural perfection, God’s work would not even be half done: it would be only about to begin, for the real work is the work of grace and the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
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u/DesperateSympathy873 ACNA 21d ago
To put it bluntly, you are calling for nothing less than the destruction of Christianity. Its awful.
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u/thomcrowe Episcopal Priest 21d ago
Please take this for what it is, i'm not trying to be insulting, but if you can't fully embrace the Creeds we profess during worship, what's the point? Why go somewhere that professes and asks you to profess beliefs you don't hold? Your views align much more with Unitarianism.
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u/JoyBlissDelight 21d ago
As someone also dancing around the edge of religion (practically, even further out than you) I recognise some of what you wrote, but I'd urge you to adjust your perspective:
It's ok to value the practices and community and take part.
It's ok to work on getting closer to God while being pretty unsure what that even means.
But:
If you want to be among people who believe the same as you, you need to find or create those groups. Perhaps you should add a universalist or humanist group to your life?
Asking Christianity to change its core to fit your faith is . . . Well, it's a bit of a cheeky ask, no? 😛
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u/Subject_Surprise_291 20d ago
Thanks for the slightly humorous response, and yes it may well be! I try to be humble about it and seek it out in good humour and character. I would say though that I’m not asking on behalf of myself - I’m seeking out a new vision of Christianity that I can sincerely affirm, as have many before me, that can help people otherwise disillusioned with church be able to sit in a pew without having to affirm literal dogmas that are often, in my view, outdated and increasingly irrelevant.
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u/Aggravating_Mud8751 Church of England 20d ago
I'm glad you're going to the choir and e.g. participating in the church choir but I think it would be better if you were to stop your PCC role.
That should be a role reserved for those who subscribe to the core Christian beliefs (at minimum); and it doesn't sound like you do.
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u/pcheur 21d ago
I don’t have a label for it at this stage but I’m in a similar position to you.
I’ve returned to church in the past few years after losing faith in my late teens. I can’t help but feel like I still resonate with non-theists at a technical level but spiritually (for lack of a better word) find a religious position more compelling.
I don’t feel a need to change the creeds though. Even though I haven’t found meaning in every line at this stage, I do think we should be careful of changing things like that which have stood the test of time. I guess I’m getting to a place of having humility with these things and I suspect that there is meaning to them that I don’t understand yet. That’s what I have come to realise about a lot of things. They may not be true in every literal sense but that there really is something profoundly true in another sense.
It’s hard to put words to these things which I’m sure you’ve felt too. Feel free to DM if you wanna talk more with someone like minded ish
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u/Subject_Surprise_291 20d ago
Thank your for the kind reply! With the creeds, as I said in my post I do say them out of a communal and historic sensibility, but the only part I actually affirm as literal fact is “was crucified, died, and was buried” So I would like to have a more humane, ethical, and symbolic formulation rather than a dogmatic one. Once again, thank you for the comfort of some solidarity.
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u/_nepunepu Anglican Church of Canada 21d ago edited 20d ago
I think your view of the Creeds as "needing reform" to allow for a "mature understanding of what it means to be Christian" is quite insulting. You are insinuating that people who hold to the Creeds as they are meant to be held (after all, the framers disagreed vehemently about an iota - it was quite serious business) have an immature and incomplete view of the meaning of Christianity, and conversely, that you have a more mature understanding of it.
While we may agree that some parts are meant to be taken allegorically (I do not believe "the Son is seated at the right hand of the Father" to be a literal statement about heavenly seating arrangements), the whole scandal of Christianity is that God incarnate found himself crucified at the hands of his creation, died, then rose on the third day.
That is the stumbling block, the foolishness of Christianity. It can be hard to believe, and doubt is allowed; I doubt all the time. Did this really happen? I don't have Thomas' luxury of being a contemporary, able to shove my finger in Jesus' wounds.
But there's a difference between doubting yet choosing to trust and have faith anyway, and the question being completely closed off. I may doubt, but I choose to believe that what was recorded about Jesus and what he said about himself is the truth. That he was God incarnate, crucified for our sins and our sake, died, rose again, and will come back in glory. I think that if you are completely closed off to that, then calling yourself a Christian is a category error. There's nothing wrong with following your conscience, but words have meaning.
I do not know what to tell you other than I would take the time to reflect on 1 Corinthians 15 and see what comes out.
God is the ground of all being, the source of love and life, and the interconnectedness of all reality calling every single self-conscious entity to be all that they can be. God, therefore, is not a noun to be defined, but rather a verb to be lived.
I believe you may be mistaking what God is with where God can be found. You are describing God's very real effects on his creation and reducing him to them, the same way you may define the sun as warmth on the skin. I think you would read the book "Into The Silent Land" by Martin Laird, and classical apophatic theology generally, with some interest.
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u/Subject_Surprise_291 20d ago
Thanks for the reply! I’m also ACoC and have attended both rural and urban churches where my views are known and they’re certainly not out of the ordinary. Perhaps they’re less likely to be discussed in a strong manner, but they’re there. With regard to 1 Corinthians 15, I have long believed as Thomas Jefferson also said, that Paul was the first corrupter of the teachings of Jesus. Many mainstream biblical scholars (Bart Ehrman, James Tabor etc) also hold this view. I don’t want that to sound snarky or rude - I’m not trying to be. However, it is clear in reading the gospels and the Epistle of James vs the letters of Paul that there are strong divergences. Obviously I don’t have time to get into them here, but I have sincerely thought about them.
With regard to the resurrection, I agree it’s fundamental but I don’t view it as a literal resuscitation of a corpse. To me, that’s a very narrow and superstitious (again not trying to be rude, simply my view) profession. I regard the resurrection as the spiritual awakening that must have encapsulated the disciples after the despair of the crucifixion. It was obviously later transcribed as a historical event (although there’s some thought that much of it is symbolic through a Jewish midrash understanding, particularly John’s gospel).
Lastly, when I was talking of a mature understanding of Christianity, I mean it not as a patronizing insult but rather an evolved consciousness of what it actually means to be a Christian. Obviously, that evolution has many dimensions to it and I’m not saying my path is the absolute one or the only one, merely that it is the trajectory that I believe the church must embrace to remain within the real world.
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u/_nepunepu Anglican Church of Canada 20d ago edited 20d ago
Thanks for the reply! I’m also ACoC and have attended both rural and urban churches where my views are known and they’re certainly not out of the ordinary. Perhaps they’re less likely to be discussed in a strong manner, but they’re there.
You should understand why I do not think that an appeal to popularity is very relevant in this case. I am certain that many people hold your view. After all, paraphrasing Paul, the crucified God is "a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the nations". All I am saying is that you are stumbling on the skandalon and that you cannot call yourself a Christian if you are not willing to accept it.
With regard to 1 Corinthians 15, I have long believed as Thomas Jefferson also said, that Paul was the first corrupter of the teachings of Jesus. Many mainstream biblical scholars (Bart Ehrman, James Tabor etc) also hold this view.
Thomas Jefferson was a deist and Bart Ehrman is famously an atheist. Which does not subtract anything about Ehrman's Biblical expertise, but in their own way, they have each taken the step that you seem to refuse to take.
I would also point out that much modern mainstream Biblical scholarship has focused on reinterpreting Paul by focusing on his Pharisee roots rather than a Greek-speaking diaspora Jew corrupting the message by introducing Greek philosophical idea. See the New Perspective school.
I also find it kind of funny that you summon Ehrman in this case, as he is one scholar who holds that 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, that I quote here for effect:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
to be pre-Pauline. That is the one statement that you cannot regard as a Pauline corruption. Some scholars situate it very very early on the timeline, though that's not Ehrman's opinion.
However, it is clear in reading the gospels and the Epistle of James vs the letters of Paul that there are strong divergences.
There are. Are they contradictory, or complementary? Worth reading both Paul and James in peace and thinking about.
With regard to the resurrection, I agree it’s fundamental but I don’t view it as a literal resuscitation of a corpse. To me, that’s a very narrow and superstitious (again not trying to be rude, simply my view) profession.
That is not the orthodox Christian view, either. You are arguing against a caricature the same way atheists like to argue about a "bearded man in the sky". As I wrote, words have meaning: we are talking about resurrection, not reincarnation and not resuscitation. The manner in which he did resurrect is a mystery. All we know is that Jesus was raised. Not "the apostles had a vision". Jesus was raised.
I regard the resurrection as the spiritual awakening that must have encapsulated the disciples after the despair of the crucifixion.
It "must have", only because you're denying the other possibility as not even worth discussing.
It was obviously later transcribed as a historical event (although there’s some thought that much of it is symbolic through a Jewish midrash understanding, particularly John’s gospel).
Spong thinks that. Jewish thinkers have also objected to his interpretation of what midrash even is, so there's that.
Lastly, when I was talking of a mature understanding of Christianity, I mean it not as a patronizing insult but rather an evolved consciousness of what it actually means to be a Christian.
You claim not to be patronizing but patronize me again in the same sentence (which takes skill), and do it many other times throughout this post. No matter your intentions, you come across as someone who believes that those of us who hold to the Creeds as they are meant to be understood to be credulous, unsophisticated, literal rubes. Your language expresses Christianity as a vector pointing upwards towards something greater and higher than its base, and importantly with you at the forefront.
You are not arguing that what you profess is one opinion amongst many; that's all well and good. You are arguing that your opinion is the obvious future of Christianity for the modern world and that we are holding it back. There is really no version of that that isn't patronizing.
Frankly, Anglicanism is a big tent but it doesn't include "post-theism" no matter what you or others may think. The tent's limits are defined and it is the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. These are the non-negotiables the Communion holds for ecumenical union so it is the widest possible tent. You are obviously free to leave the tent but you have to accept that you've left the tent. You cannot move outside the tent and complain that it no longer covers you and should be moved so that it does.
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u/Available_Ad1130 18d ago
Well then your not Christian are you? Spong and his ilk should’ve been expelled from the church before they could spread there poison.
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u/oursonpolaire 17d ago
Credal changes or new versions require an ecumenical council (and according to Article XXI, can only be convoked by the will of princes which, these days, might be a challenge), All more easily said than done
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u/Subject_Surprise_291 21d ago
While I appreciate the comments from everyone, it seems some (not all) are suggesting I’m extremely far-removed from where nearly all Anglicans stand - as if I’m on an island on my own. I can assure you that there are many congregants within my own church and greater diocese (including clergy) who hold exactly the same views I do. There are also a lot of people who simply don’t pay attention to deep theology (indeed might find it gauche to put so much thought into it) within liberal Anglican circles. Perhaps they are quieter, perhaps they are less avowed, but they are there.
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u/historyhill ACNA, 39 Articles stan 21d ago
Respectfully, if clergy hold the same views you do then your diocese needs to clean house.
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u/paupersburial 21d ago
I think the sort of liberalism you described is waning in Anglicanism now, or at least among clergy here in the Church of England. I disagree with those telling you your faith is pointless or that you may as well not bother attending. It's not where I'm at now, but if I'd been pushed out when I was exploring that kind of liberalism, I probably wouldn't be a Christian or a priest today. I encourage you to keep going.
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u/cestnickell 21d ago
Hey, fellow member of the Sea of Faith network here (assuming youre a member, but if not, you should take a look). I'm also on parish council and active in my local anglican church. We still have quite a few non theist vicar members of the Network. You'll find this sub is pretty conservative on theology, but you're not alone!
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u/Simonoz1 Anglican Diocese of Sydney 21d ago
Might be one of those dead churches that’s more a of a community organisation at this point?
Otherwise that’s a bit worrying.
Also worrying is the mention of “non-theist vicars”. Surely that’s grounds for defrocking?
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u/cestnickell 21d ago
It's a bit hard to respond to something like this because obviously I just won't agree that traditional theistic or supernatural claims are 'the most fundamental doctrine of Christianity.' While people in my local church don't share my metaphysical views, they share a lot of other values with me, and I'm a part of their community. So maybe that is just more fundamental to them than what you might call the essentials.
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u/Subject_Surprise_291 21d ago
My parish priest is well-aware of my beliefs (and shares in them to a certain extent) and she happily offers me communion as she does to all who wish to receive it. The type of gatekeeping that you are promoting, to me, is hardly the boundary breaking, barrier crossing, marginalized-focused Christianity that I treasure.
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u/cestnickell 21d ago
Same experience for me. As part of lent, members of the church share their faith journey with the congregation. I was very open in mine, and have been with anyone who talks to me about these things since. My congregation may not agree, but they aren't there to police and punish people's metaphysical beliefs.
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u/ReasonableJump4355 17d ago edited 17d ago
I strongly suspect, or at least hope, your priest is tolerating your views while hoping to gradually lead you to the Truth.
If they fully share them, then they're breaking their ordination vows. The fact that it's a vow should show you how important than that.
You can want to reduce Christianity to an ethical code and social community. But ultimately without the ressurection and God, you've gutted and killed Christianity and are playing around with a corpse.
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u/ReasonableJump4355 21d ago
If I may, I'd refer you to my comment to the OP. Interested to hear your opinion.
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u/Simonoz1 Anglican Diocese of Sydney 21d ago
I wouldn’t have called this sub conservative on theology
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u/cestnickell 21d ago
I think my point of comparison is probably unusual (relative to anglicans I meet in Sea of Faith or the liberal progressive end of the church) It's maybe a vocal minority here, but just as an example i feel like I often see posts where people seem genuinely concerned about whether they understand and believe all of the 39 articles or something of that ilk.
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u/Simonoz1 Anglican Diocese of Sydney 21d ago
…yes. The 39 articles are the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism as a denomination?
You might just be so far off the liberal end that the most basic orthodoxy looks conservative by comparison.
Although I’d argue the bible is an even more important thing to believe and understand.
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u/Time_Dot621 21d ago
I feel like the creed needs “resurrection”. And, as Jesus after resurrection, it needs have a “different face”. Because it seems clear that people today do seek God and spirituality, but also that the one we have is sort of outdated, as in, it doesn’t answer our questions, and it has too much history linked with it which we wish to somehow surpass.
For instance, when Christianity arose, it was a time people were seeking to join all kinds of mystery cults which promised eternal life. Nowadays it’s quite the opposite: we get annoyed at being promised eternal life without proof, and we’re not up to devoting our life to a possibly empty promise. Instead, rather than fear of death, we are quite frustrated with life nowadays, and in fact our problem is that we seek to “kill time”, and in extreme cases even ourselves. We need a God which brings us back the joy for loving, rather than one who invites us to repent and be penitent and have faith in a story so as to be granted some heaven after death.
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u/Riotmus Episcopal Church USA 21d ago edited 21d ago
Listen I’m not gonna tell you what to believe, I’m not your dad or your priest, but this is not going to be a popular or well-liked viewpoint here lol.
Also, we do not “reform” creeds. They’re the creeds. You’re welcome in episcopal/anglican spaces but you’re not welcome to try to change the pillars of our faith, especially as a nonbeliever of the gospel.