Reforming Religion

 

          It was just 485 years ago[1], on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther posted his 95 topics for discussion on the church door in Wittenberg Germany.  Though Luther may not have realized it at the time, historians regarded this deed as the official beginning of the Protestant Reformation.  Luther was morally incensed by the Church's practice of selling indulgences.  An indulgence, as we all know, was and is an escape from spending time in Purgatory.  The more you pay, the less you stay.[2]  Luther's Reformation, as important as it was, was not a complete overhaul.  He still retained the orthodox theology, but with an emphasis then on faith rather than good works or contributing money as the means of salvation.  The German rulers who became Protestants saw that the annual money drain to Rome could be ended and could be used to serve God in their own local areas.

          But now in the 21^st Century, there are rumblings of a new Religious Reformation.  Some writers claim that these rumblings started in The Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century.  Others say that the rumblings have been present since the time of Socrates as ideas and essays, often the rumblings were faint, attracting little attention from age to age, but existing ready for the inquiring and free-thinking minds to hear; a different song to sing, a different drummer to follow.  This new reformation is said to be more thorough going than the one sponsored by Luther, and some of its present day adherents are doubtful if it can be developed within the orthodox churches.   I think the new religious reformation will not be developed by extreme people, both extreme believers and disbelievers, whose mind set is so emotionally a part of their personality that they are unable to think reasonably about the nature of religion and the probable needs of our future world society.  It is surprising to notice that at the present time some of the leaders of this reformation are from within the church.  They are certain church leaders, trained in the church, --pastors and university professors, --who see the need for a change.  Of course many ordinary people not connected with any religious group and without special religious training see the need also.

          One person who has attracted considerable attention is John Shelby Spong.  I think of him as a retired Episcopal Bishop on his way to becoming a Unitarian Universalist and a humanist.  While an active bishop, he surrounded himself with controversy by trying to bring blacks, women, and homosexuals into the full life of the American Episcopal Church.  Building on his best-selling books, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and Living in Sin?, he shocked the reading public even further with his book Christianity Must Change or Die which appeared in 1998.  Then in the year 2000, he contributed a chapter to the book, The Once and Future Jesus (Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, California) from the Jesus Seminar, of which I am delighted to be an Associate Member.  In this book the nine writers of the nine chapters argue that Jesus was originally a man, not a super-natural divine deity, and he should be once again regarded as a man in the future, --The Once and Future Jesus.  At the end of his chapter, Bishop Spong concludes with his twelve topics or statements for general discussion for the coming Religious Reformation (pages 74-75). 

          In Martin Luther's original Protestant Reformation, most of the old orthodox theology was left intact, including unfortunately the Church's low opinion of the Jews.  The new Reformation of Religion that is now taking shape is quite different.  It seeks to re-evaluate and hopefully improve all the doctrines.  Spong's twelve topics include God, theism, Jesus, incarnation, creation, the Virgin Birth, miracles, redemption, resurrection, heaven and hell, morality, prayer, life after death, and the toleration of differences.

And Bishop Spong is not alone.  Lloyd Geering, emeritus professor of religious studies at Victoria University and the recipient of the 2001 Order of Merit, New Zealand's top civilian honor, published Christian Faith at the Crossroads 2001.  Also this year, Don Cupitt, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University in England, has come straight to the point in his call for a reformation by means of his latest book, Reforming Christianity (Polebridge Press, 2001).  It goes without saying that I agree whole-heartedly with these scholars.  My only disagreement is to go one step further and to advocate the reforming of all religion, not just Christianity. 

Some of you may be asking yourselves What is going on here?  All my life I have been taught that religion was supposed to reform us, and now Mitch is talking about reforming religion.  What's wrong with our religion?

The first thing wrong with our religion is that the world described in the Bible is no longer believable.  The Holy Bible teaches us that the world is a flat Earth with Hell beneath us in the basement and Heaven up beyond the dome of the sky.  On top of the dome is God in his Heaven seated upon his throne with his angels and saints.  On special occasions the sky was parted to allow God or the angels to descend to Earth, or for Elijah, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary to ascend to Heaven.  The ancient people only knew that the sky was a pale blue, and no matter how far they traveled they could never examine it up close.  But today our astronomers have seen and photographed deep into outer space and have found, not Heaven, but only stars, dust clouds, galaxies and between these astronomical objects a nearly perfect vacuum.  How can a vacuum be parted?  More and more people are unable or unwilling to accept the biblical world-view, and unable or unwilling to reject the scientific world-view.

Centuries ago, when communication and transportation were much slower and much more limited than in the present world, the average person knew only the religion he or she was born into.  The average person grew up believing the local religion the same way he or she grew up speaking the native language.  The average person believed his or her religion was absolutely correct, and thus other religions were wrong by definition or by default.  The local revelations and local tribal communications from God were correct, and all other foreign revelations were wrong and all foreign infidels were followers of Satan and false gods.  All foreigners, pagans and gentiles had man-made religions; only the inherited religion is God given and true.  Today the improvements in communications and transportation have broadened our horizons and shrunk our world.  The more people encounter other world religions, the more people realize the need to evaluate all religions by the same set of standards.  How do we know that our religion is right and theirs is wrong?  Can we now be sure that the stories of Sampson are historically true while the stories of Hercules are merely myths?  Our past religious self-centered security has to give way to fairness and justice in evaluating religions.  More and more people see religious ideas as part of culture, as part of the creative imagination of humanity.

But on the other hand, some of you may be thinking that religion has not been bad.  It has provided guidance and comfort through the centuries.  The Church has brought hope to the poor peasant.  No matter how wretched her or his life was, there was always the hope of heaven.  The Church taught that this life was but a brief moment in our existence, and that this world was but a stage upon which we humans played our role in the drama of salvation.  If we were successful we went to the unimaginable glories of heaven.  Thus the Church did not actually deliver the joys of heaven but only the hope of the joys of heaven.  Lewis Carroll had the White Queen say to Alice, "There was jam yesterday, and there will be jam tomorrow, but there is no jam today."  Today fewer people believe in a continued existence after death, and this shakes the foundation of much orthodoxy.  In our common culture we say to each other, "You only go around once."  We know what happens to people when they die.  They decompose.  Like other living beings, we return to the soil from whence we came.

Since the Nineteenth Century, beginning with David Strauss (1808--1874), there have been a succession of Bible scholars whose studies have undermined the age old conviction that Holy Scripture is without flaws.  David Strauss' Life of Jesus (1835) established his reputation but wrecked his academic career overnight.  He argued that the gospels were not historically accurate.  He found that many of the narratives concerning the birth and childhood of Jesus, his last days and resurrection and his miraculous deeds were 'myths' patterned to a great extent on proto-types and stories in the Hebrew Scriptures.  However, through David Strauss, the world of Biblical scholarship was introduced to the distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. 

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) theologian, philosopher, musician and medical missionary, after writing The Mystery of the Kingdom of God in 1901, received international attention in 1906 by writing the controversial book The Quest of the Historical Jesus.  He asked, What was Jesus himself trying to accomplish, how did he see his own quest?  He concluded that Jesus did indeed believe in the imminent end of the world.  But now almost two thousand years after his death, fewer and fewer people believe in the imminent end of the world, believe in the second coming of Christ in power and glory.  Apparently, in this respect, our common culture believes the historical Jesus was mistaken.

Bible scholars have noticed that in the gospels there are only two references to the 'church' and over four hundred references to the Kingdom.  Jesus was interested in the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven and left us a variety of stories and parables about his ideas of the Kingdom.  He may have prayed "Thy Kingdom come," but we did not receive the Kingdom we only got the Church. 

The Ancient Hebrew understanding of the Messiah was that in God's good time, an anointed leader similar to David would again arise.  This leader would unite God's chosen people and bring them independence.  It was difficult for the early followers to think of the crucified Jesus as the Messiah, because the Roman Empire was still ruling the Mediterranean Basin.  The early Christians explained that Jesus would quickly return and finish the work he started. 

The first written account of the resurrected Jesus in the Christian Scripture was that of the Apostle Paul, who claimed to have seen Jesus.  However Paul's experience seems to have occurred at least a decade after the death of Jesus and was apparently a mystical experience.  The Jews again revolted against the Romans, and in the year 70 the temple and the holy city of Jerusalem were destroyed, yet God did not intervene.  Jesus did not return in power and glory as the long awaited Messiah.  The early Christians explained this messianic delay by claiming that first the gospel had to be preached to all nations.  At this point in history the followers of Jesus were forced to develop something more than a holding pattern waiting for the return of Jesus.  Out of these events has come the Church, which through its creeds, its doctrines, its writings and its rituals sought to become the mediator between god and people. 

In developing its role as the mediator between God and man, the Church developed a system that can best be described as a spiritual bureaucracy.  Though the disciples of Jesus and many Hebrew leaders are reported as praying directly to god, the Church chose to overlook these direct prayers and emphasize Paul's notion of original sin.  The early Church taught that because of the fall of Adam, each natural person was and is cut off from communion with God.  Of course each person is allowed to pray "Thy will be done," and thus encourage God to do what he was planning to do anyway.  But if a mortal wanted to ask for a special favor, it was unlikely that God would grant his wish.  Whether God would even hear his prayer is open to debate.  The Church advised that one could then ask God's son Jesus to intercede in his or her behalf.  If praying to Jesus did not bring results, then ask the Holy Virgin Mary to intercede with Jesus to intercede with God.  But if praying to Mary did not bring results, one could then ask one of the saints to plead one's case with Mary.  Since there is at least one saint for every day in the year, the praying Christian could try one saint, then another, then another, etc.  This mediation system could never be found to fail even if all the saints were enlisted.  In this case the praying Christian was not sincere enough.   

The Church claimed to have received the keys to Heaven through Peter and to be able to determine who enters heaven and who does not.  "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven" (Matthew 16:19)[3].The proper response for one seeking Heaven was then considered to be worship and obedience.

The basic purpose of the Church became getting its members into Heaven when they died.  Today however, this purpose seems to have lost  much of its appeal.  Today people are interested in living a good life here and now without too much concern for heaven.  They will cross that bridge when they come to it.

As a result of the religious pre-occupation with getting to heaven, the Church neglected the improvement of life on earth here and now.  As a result, recent social improvements have been taken over by national governments, by secular national governments.  In the Civil War when our country was engrossed in the slavery issue, the large protestant denominations, the Methodist, the Baptists and the Presbyterians split themselves in half over slavery.  The rights of handicapped individuals was forced upon our individual churches by the government.  Our UU Church at Saint Petersburg had to install a wheel chair ramp.  In Europe today one can see many of the great Cathedrals, which can only be entered by climbing up many, many steps without even a hand rail for support.  The formation of the Bill of Rights, protecting the citizen from the government itself was not pushed by the various churches.  One area in which our own country is remiss is in public health care.  When we visited Rome for a week, Katherine had a bad tooth ache.  We went to an emergency clinic, took a number, waited a while just as we wait here, when our turn came Katherine got free medical treatment, and a prescription for her toothache.  In Europe everyone, even tourists, get free medical care.  In America we cannot cover all our own citizens.  If Europe can do it, why can't we do it?  Public education for all students, a minimum wage, the 40 hour week, social security, unemployment compensation and the rights of Negroes and women to vote have all been pushed by the secular side of society.  The churches in general have been too concerned with heaven, whose membership list can never be verified.  We need a religious reformation.

Let us think for a moment about Jesus the man, the historical Jesus.  Without having to believe the Bible to be infallible, we can nearly all agree that Jesus seems to have been an itinerate preacher, but he did not write anything.  His friends tried to remember what he said.  I hope

their memory was better than mine.  Like John the Baptist, whatever Jesus said, or maybe just the crowds who followed him, caused him to be noticed by the authorities and to be executed by the Romans.  No one can be sure that his friends remembered his stories and comments correctly, but he seemed to be concerned with the kingdom of God or Heaven.  I think he seemed to have some ideas about a better world, a vision of a better society.  I think this was his primary concern, and it has become overlooked by Orthodox Christianity.  Religion should become concerned with the here and now rather than with heaven after we die.  Let's make this a better society for ourselves and for our future generations of children.  Notice that I am not saying how to do this, or how this better society should appear.  You and I will have to figure that out as we go along.  There is no detailed plan with divine approval.  We humans are responsible for our own planning and our own destiny.

Albert Schweitzer's Bible study led him to believe that Jesus thought the world would be quickly coming to an end, and in this respect Jesus was mistaken.  For us who are some type of religious liberals this is no big deal.  I am certainly not going to believe something just because Jesus did.  Here is the guiding principle, if it helps people it is good and if it hurts people it is bad.  If God almighty and Allah himself said do this or do that and it hurts people, I am going to reject this so-called revelation and try to do the things that help people. 

This is, I believe, the basis of the religion of the future, --trying to build a better society on earth.  The religious notions of having people believe ancient creeds can be justified only it the belief helps build a better society here and now.

We need a reformation of all religions.  I am no expert on world religions, but I think the Middle Path in Buddhism can also be seen as a vision of a better society.  Furthermore, many of the sayings of Confucius deal with the proper conduct of a person working in a bureaucratic institution.  With more and more people working in big corporations or big governments, we surely need that kind of guidance now.  Just as modern technology, science, movies, art, music, health- care, mathematics and world trade are spreading quickly across national boundaries, so we have good reason to hope that a religious reformation will also spread, a religious development in which each historic religion selects as its primary goal the development of a better society.  With English becoming the international language of world trade and world diplomacy, our English speaking religious leaders are in a position to be heard around the world.  We Unitarian Universalists are in a prime position to join and perhaps lead this future Religious Reformation.