What, Question 10 already!?

"If any denomination has a future, it needs to focus on what it believes," says Connie.

I assume she means doctrinal belief, and I think therein lies the problem. If we focus on doctrinal belief, and someone does not toe the doctrinal line, then they are excluded from the denomination.

The United Church prides itself in inclusivity, and from my experience it is. Even those of us who don't toe the doctrinal line are included in the church. But this applies only to the layity. The clergy, it seems, have to toe the doctrinal line.

A mission is different. If the social gospel is our mission, then this is easy to define without getting into doctrinal belief.

I think it all comes down to what we, the United Church of Canada, want to be.

Do we want to be an evangelical church, where unquestioning belief in doctrine is the essential element of faith?

Or do we want to be a church that fosters spiritual experience, practices the social gospel, and tolerates a stance that is beyond doctrinal belief, among its members as well as its clergy?

Or can we be both? Can there be a compromise that includes both?

You are both. I see the more doctrinally-rigid side actively pushing out the less literal side. I see the more doctrinal side complaining they are being pushed out, but the "pushing" seems to be the mere existence of a less literal side.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see friends of Gretta making YouTube videos and complaining on Facebook that people like Connie don't belong. I don't see an organization like Cruxifusion being created for the other side of this debate. The worst thing Gretta seems to have done against anyone else in the UCCan is simply existing.

God should try that, some time.

Yes, chansen. The progressive faction (if we call it that for want of a better word) is the one that is inclusive, whereas the traditionalist faction is exclusive. The progressives are willing to include the traditionalists, but the traditionalists are not willing to include the progressives.

What then? A velvet divorce? Leave it up to the congregations? The Penticton congregation has split into two congregations over this.

Yes we could call a Rabbit a Horse. Could be if we keep them apart no one will notice. Ofcourse if seen when there together they really don't seem to be related. Could be if we put saddles on them. Then they can't tell the differents. If your a Christain church but you don't teach of GOD and Jesus.  My belief is your nolonger a Christain church. You may want to try a saddle. You may be a horse.

But the thing is, ac, you can't generalize about the UCCan like that. The church I occasionally go to talks a lot about God, Jesus, Resurrection, and so on. They espouse a liberal understanding of them that might not fly with you, but I would certainly argue that they do, in fact, teach about God and Jesus. So much so, that I have decided that it really isn't for me with my more diverse set of spiritual sources. Then there is RevJohn with his Calvinism. And Panentheism and his process theology. Both teach about God and Jesus, just maybe not how you see them. Gretta and her followers are not, to my eye, a majority in the UCCan so I don't think you can judge the church based on them. The denomination as a whole does teach about God and Jesus, just perhaps not in the exclusivist way that you see them.

Mendalla

What is this about a Penticton congregation? Did I miss something somewhere?

Hi Mendalla--You posted--

But the thing is, ac, you can't generalize about the UCCan like that. The church I occasionally go to talks a lot about God, Jesus, Resurrection, and so on. They espouse a liberal understanding of them that might not fly with you, but I would certainly argue that they do, in fact, teach about God and Jesus.

____________________________________

Airclean-- I take it the U.C.C you attend is not ministered by Getta Vosper .

Just looked them up. Sounds like a nasty split and disagreements over division of assets as Oasis United split from Penticton United.

Not sure what the split was over.

On the positive side, the United Church gained a new congregation in Penticton!

I have said it befor  and will say it again . I believe the U.C.C have some good Ministers  and people who attend there churchs. You I believe are right to think the U.C.C and myself  may not see all things the same. So please tell me what would that have to do with being Chrtistain ? I believe a belief in .and the accaptance of Jesus as the Christ and your Lord and savior and His God as your GOD. After that  many Questions that good woman and men have been looking at for a long long time. If you have any answers to these question . Please post I will read and we can talk. Good night Mandalla . I hope you have a good rest..--airclean33

Hi Chansen, 

Arminius seemed to imply that the split was along progressive/ traditional lines. I hope he can tell us more about this. 

Hi All,

We continue with a rather free exchange of ideas.

I think this is necessary but it will not, in and of itself, guarantee the future.  Lack of focus is a killer and what is at issue (within the context of the interview) is what precisely the focus should be.

I don't expect the Reverends to be able to agree on that point.  I would be surprised if either thought that a lack of focus was for the best.

I quibble with the qualifier "healthy".  I don't think an organization with clearly drawn boundaries is necessarily "healthy."  Westboro Baptist is exceedingly clear about its boundaries and "healthy" is the last adjective I would use to qualify them.

Boundaries help us know where we start and where we end.  These boundaries do not force our neighbours in a specific way, these boundaries do identify who our neighbours are.

This itself is very telling.  This is a question which is frequently asked for which we can find no official answer which is definitive.  There is a lot of opinion on what mission should be.  Very little energy has been devoted to articulating it for the denomination.

I have an opinion of what the mission of The United Church of Canada is.  The minute I articulate it I will have some colleagues telling me I am out to lunch and the others telling me I am right on target.  Switch to another minister or member of the Church and let them articulate the mission and the process begins again.

Like instructions on a shampoo bottle.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

A comprehensive review could define the mission.  Probably no better than I or any other could.  It would at least be something.

Well, we can and we can't.  Each of us can very easily state what we think the mission should be.  Being able to convince a majority to agree with our articulation would not be easy.  It could still be done.  It isn't that we can't do that.  It is that we do not do that.

I agree with the Reverend Vosper.  We certainly can define our mission.  For some reason we as a denomination appear reluctant to be clear on this matter.  It is still within the bounds of our ability to accomplish.

I also agree that The United Church of Canada has been influenced by the social gospel movement.

As far as being on the forefront of justice issues and community building. . . .can we put the pom-poms away and stop resting on our laurels for a moment?  Mission is not about what we did or who we were.  Mission is about what we are doing and who we are.

Our articulation of mission cannot be set in stone otherwise the organization stagnates and strives to serve a need which does not exist.  Who we were in 1925 tells us who we were in 1925.  It will shape, to some extent what we will be in 2025.  It should shape to some extent what we are in 2013.  If we aren't able to articulate something more than what we have been all we are is a collection of has beens.

True.  It is revisionist.  That said the centrefold clearly articulatred a mission.  One that I suspect many in the Church today would not articulate so clearly.

The fact that we weren't competing with each other sounds, on the one hand like we were immensely reasonable and practical.  On the other hand it sounds like we tended to operate on the cheap.  

Which hand is more obvious in 2013?  Probably not the one we are most proud of.
 

Residential schools were a product of social activism and not evangelism.  Is that an example of standing proud and strong?  I certainly hope not.

Can I think of a similarly embarring point in our history that was evangelism related?  Not personally, no.

That said there was social activism that we were involved in that was not as disastrous as the Residential School system was.

Agreed.  We do a very good job of resembling a dysfunctional extended family.

Disagreed.  You can actually divorce family members.  Husbands and wives being the principal family members who divorce.  Children, in rare instances have been emancipated from parents and parents have disowned children.

Should it happen?   I have an opinion.  Does it happen?  Yes, it does.

Perhaps the dysfunction becomes more prevalent when the different factions within the Church are more concerned with their own articulation of the Church's mission than the Church is concerned with having one?

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi p3:

Penticton, B.C. It happened a few years ago. The rift between traditionalists and progressives within their congregation became so huge and the battle so bitter that they decided to become two separate congregations. The traditionalists kept the old church building.

I don't know all that much about it, except that the split happened along progressive/traditional lines, and that the progressive faction invited Bruce Sanguin to lecture at their facility. Lumby Lad and I registered for that lecture, but then a landslide blocked the highway to Penticton, the detour was long and arduous, and we ended up not going.

The landslide must have been a sign by the traditionalist God, eh?

Joking aside, I think their progressive congregation did not quite go as far as "Vosperism" If "Vosperism" is extreme liberalism, then they probably are into moderate liberalism. I probably would feel right at home there.

One member of the liberal/progressive faction of the Pentiction UC posted here on wondercafe about their bitter dispute, five or six years ago. I forgot his name, and the title of the thread he wrote in, but it was in Religion and Faith. Maybe somebody with a better memory remembers and can dig it out.

Here are the threads, I think:

http://www.wondercafe.ca/discussion/politics/333-finished-congregational-split-ordered-yahoo

http://www.wondercafe.ca/discussion/religion-and-faith/new-congregation

Yes, chansen, that's the one! The poster of the thread was rons, with a raven as his avatar, and I was a frequent poster on his thread.

At that time I read and posted only in "Religion and Faith," and did not realize that he had a thread on the Penticton United split in "Politics" as well.

I just read, in rons' thread in "Politics", a post by RevJames werein he mentions that stardust also posted a thread on the issue of the Penticton United split.

I have been thinking about a mission statement for the UCC.  Here is my preliminary draft.  We are followers of Jesus, using reality as a lens to refine our inherited beliefs, nourished by the companionship of the Spirit, trusting in a loving and creative God, continuing his ministry of nurturing right relations and working for healing in individuals, communities and the world.

What about abandoning those who, in good conscience, do not believe? Certainly that should be in there.

How would abandoning anyone fit in with right relationships and healing?

Ask those who want to turf Gretta.

Chansen -- GOD has not abanded you , It is you, that have abandoned HIM.  His Love will be there till your end. --airclean33

And one day, airclean33, I hope you will be touched by His noodly appendage. Maybe more than one of them.

That second appendage can be quite frisky. I warn you.

Arminius, 

This is not so different from what happened at West Hill (Gretta Vosper's congregation.) 

There was a theological split between those on the "progressive" journey and those of us who were more traditionally minded. Not wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Thankfully it did not end up in a bitter battle or in the formation of two separate congregations. 

A huge wave of departures took place with most of these individuals joining with a neighbouring congregation. There are also a few of us who found new congregations on our own . . . I am the only ex-WHUC'er where I attend church now. 

Arminius, 

Not necessarily the case. Not in my experience, at any rate. 

This is how my daughter (16 at the time) put it: "Gretta claims to be open to questions, but she really only wants the questions that match with her answers."

 Out of the mouths of babes. 

I would like to suggest that looking at residential schools as social activism and not evangelism is at best short sighted.

Hi SG,

Residential schools obviously are a composite of both.  Particularly where the Church (this and others were involved).  The strategy of the residential schools was social engineering designed to assimilate Canada's First Nations peoples into the dominant European influenced culture of the day.

It was social.

It was activism.

Social Activism fits.

To the extend that Christendom was alive and well at the time the Christian faith was considered a requisite component.

The Churches that participated clearly had it in mind that proper assimilation would result in more Christians.

The whole project was not to make more Christian.  It was to make civilized what was though "savage."

There is no way the Church can hold its head high with respect to our involvment.  To suggest as the Reverend Vosper has that our brightest shinging moments are all rooted in social activism is to be willfully ignorant of the flaws.

Grace and peace to you.

John

I agree Residential Schools were a composite of both social activism and evangelism.

You and I may or may not disagree on which leg bore more weight or if they were equal... or whether one motivated the other.

In my speaking to those who lived Residential Schools firsthand, their opinion is that it was mainly misguided evangelism. I trust them to have more knowledge than I on what they experienced or endured. They believe that the government and DIA may have had a more political motivation- lands etc, but also a more social activism focus with faith as a heavy influence. They believe that those who ran the schools for the DIA were more motivated by money and had more of an evangelism focus, with social activism as a heavy influence.

The focus they saw, in "schools" was not on learning to read and write to "get a good job" or "be a productive member of society".  It was to be able to read the Bible and be saved. It was to fully understand the sin of their culture....

Many peoples have been poor, isolated… ate with their hands, could not read or write...  and yes social activism (even that which went awry) kicked in, but they were only “savages” when they were not of your faith or Christian.

Those I have spoken with definitely believe the majority of the population did not respect or value Indigenous ways and beliefs. They may believe that assimilation was viewed as a means to eliminate their people or to promote economic self-sufficiency or both. What is the role played by the fact that most the people were Christian who felt their beliefs were “dangerous if spread” and “evil” and “of Satan”?

The message that their ways and beliefs and societies were not thought of highly by the larger society were delivered to the youth. Government and evangelists went after the children. The evangelists were motivated in part by a desire to Christianize through the younger generation. Not much has changed and one can ask if shoeboxes are social activism or evangelism. We may once more disagree on what leg holds more weight or if one leg is motivated by the other.

No, p3, this is not necessarily and not always the case. I only thought this was the case in Penticton.

In my previous congregation, Lumby, B.C., the traditionalist faction was in the majority. Only Lumby Lad and I were openly progressive, with me even more openly and outspokenly so than him.

Although I suspected our minister to be progressive, she never came out into the open with it, but stuck to a traditional worship style and traditional language. I think she held back with her private beliefs in order not to be seen to be siding with the progressive minority.

But there was no rift between the two factions. The traditionalists respected us and our views, and we respected them and their beliefs. Also, I never was in favour of throwing out the baby with the bath water. I love most of our Christian traditions; but I regard our traditional Christian stories and language as metaphorical rather than literally true.

All this being said, I think Jesus' teachings were basic humanism, within a 1st century Jewish context, of course. We don't quite know what 1st century Judaism was like, but we can clearly define humanism. I think teaching and practicing humanism is in the spirit of Jesus' teachings. There ought to be room for it in the United Church of Canada, with or without God language.

Doctrinal Christianity was the invention of Paul and others who came after him. I think Pauline Christianity differed so much from the original Jesus movement that it could well be regarded as a different religion.

I think we would do well to re-capture the spirit of the original Jesus movement. I identify myself as a follower of Jesus' teachings (as I understand them) rather than a doctrinal Pauline Christian.