GOD, CHRIST: QUESTIONS & FAITH

Christians must nurture dialogue with atheists

The headline from Catholic News Service read "Catholics must nurture dialogue with atheists ." I changed it above. And if you read it, you will see that this is what he is talking about. In fact, he is talking about people of faith. It is a good article, much better than the articles that appeared in the British mainstream press.

Yes, Christians should seek dialogue. But will the "new atheists" entertain this idea. Instead of dialogue we have mostly press releases, op-eds, and competitive debates.

LONDON (CNS) - Catholics must seek to nurture understanding and dialogue between Christians and atheists, a British cardinal said.

Addressing the rise of aggressive secularism in Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, argued that God was often misrepresented by prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, author of the 2006 best-seller "The God Delusion."

In reality, the cardinal said, there was a persistent element of doubt in the convictions of both Christians and atheists that "could become the basis for an open dialogue."

"The line dividing faith from unbelief passes through the heart of each of us," Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said in a May 8 lecture, "Faith in Britain Today."

"I would want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe," he said.

"Believers need to recognize that they have something in common with those who do not believe," he added. "But it is no less true that unbelievers might benefit from recognizing that there is something of the believer in every person."

The proper "response to God" was faith and not absolute certainty, the cardinal said, inviting Christians to examine how they might have given people a misleading view of the mystery of God.

"God does not need polemicists on his behalf, but God needs witnesses, and the quality of witness that we give to God is a more effective pointer to God than anything else," he said.

The cardinal discussed the phenomenon of rising public hostility to religion in Britain, where many atheists and agnostics are arguing that religion must be solely a private matter without a role in public life.

The cardinal argued that such "privatization of religion" had created a new "spiritual homelessness" which was impoverishing the country.
"Many people have a sense of being in a sort of exile from faith-guided experience," he said. "They think that even if they wanted to believe, faith is no longer an option for them."
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said he senses "among many people a sense of loss, of not being in touch with living sources that can nourish them."

"They want to live by shared values that can sustain our society but do not know where to find them. They want to find a context that can give lives a deep meaning, but, again, are unable to find it," he added.

The cardinal said that "only a modern person" would think that religion is a private matter whereas Catholicism was "profoundly social."

"Our life together in Britain cannot be a God-free zone, and we must not allow Britain to become a world devoid of religious faith and its powerful contribution to the common good," he said.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said he wanted to challenge the many "new atheists" who were unable to cope with the notion of an intelligent and reflective Christianity and were seeking to isolate religion from other forms of knowledge and experience in order to marginalize it.
He criticized campaigning atheists such as Dawkins for presenting a false picture of God.

"I usually find that the god that is being rejected by such people is a god I don't believe in either," he said. "I simply don't recognize my faith in what is presented by these critics as Christian faith."

The Dallas Morning News Offers This Quote of the Day

One of the things that non-Christians hate about us is how much we don't like each other.

• Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and author of "The Reason for God."

A quirky history of Christianity - Telegraph

A. N. Wilson has an interesting article in England's Telegraph. It is, though you won't know it at first, a review of The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit by Charles Williams. Not very timely. The book was published in 1939, but Wilson just got around to reading it. advertisement

Williams takes his readers on an extraordinary historical helter-skelter, beginning with the origins of Christendom and ending with the rise of Fascism. He takes in the Councils of the Church and the controversies over heresies, the Dark Ages, the Rise of Islam, the Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment. He is especially interesting in these later phases.

. . .

Indeed, the first time I tried this book, it made me think I was an atheist. But if I had read on to the chapter called "The Quality of Disbelief", I think it would have persuaded me I was not.

His analysis of Montaigne, Pascal and Voltaire is light, witty and deep all at once. He quotes Montaigne - "when we are angry we defend our proposition the more hotly; we impress it on ourselves and espouse it with greater vehemence and approval than in our cool and calm moments".

Williams adds: "The history of Christendom itself would have been far happier could we all have remembered that rule of intelligence - not to believe a thing more strongly at the end of a bitter argument than at the beginning." (Will these words of Williams help to save the Church of England during the Lambeth Conference?)

Wilson wrote what is in parenthesis, not me.

Of Voltaire, brilliantly, if perversely, Williams says: "He was… the first pure antagonist; he attacked the Church - and not in the name of Christ. He struck his blows so that the very memory of them has recalled her to her better self - that is to the Holy Ghost."

. . .

Within a few paragraphs, we are on to Kierkegaard. "Hans Andersen achieved worldwide repute at once, Søren Kierkegaard had to wait for his for 70 years. It has taken Christendom that long to catch him up; it took 50 to catch up St Thomas, and it has not caught up Dante yet."

The Grace of Wrath: Wrestling with Angels

Carolyn Arends has an interesting article at Christianity Today. She asks, "Is there any story about God that isn't a love story? "

God is love, BUT God hates sin. How does one hold those two realities in tension? I unconsciously developed a theology that intermittently had God the Son and God the Father in a good cop, bad cop routine, with the Holy Spirit stepping in as a sympathetic parole officer.

I professed that God was love all the way through, but deep down I couldn't help assuming he was a bit like me. Even his love had to have limits. It stopped at sin and turned into wrath. Naturally.

It is a well written article, something to think about. I suspect, from time to time, all of us slip into thinking like this. I'm not sure that Arends answers the question so much as she points to ways of thinking about the question. I recommend the article.

Presiding Bishop writes to Henry Orombi

 Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sent the following letter to the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi.

May 12, 2008

The Most Revd Henry Luke Orombi
Archbishop of Uganda and Bishop of Kampala
PO Box 14123
Kampala
UGANDA
EAST AFRICA

My dear brother,

I understand from advertising here that you plan to visit a congregation in the Diocese of Georgia on 14 May of this year.  The diocesan, Bishop Henry Louttit, has not given any invitation for you to do so, nor received any information from you about your planned visit.  I must protest this unwarranted incursion into The Episcopal Church.  I am concerned that you seem to feel it appropriate to visit, preach, and exercise episcopal ministry within the territory of this Church, and I wonder how you would receive similar behavior in Uganda.  These actions violate the spirit and letter of the work of the Windsor Report, and only lead to heightened tensions.  We are more than willing to receive you for conversation, dialogue, and reconciliation, yet you continue to act without speaking with us.  I hope and pray that you might respond to our invitation and meet with representatives of this Church.  I remain

Your servant in Christ,
Katharine Jefferts Schori

cc:  Bishop Louttit
      Abp Rowan Williams

epiScope: Presiding Bishop writes to Henry Orombi

Archbishop of Canterbury writes to the bishops of the Anglican Communion

May 12, 2008

[Episcopal News Service] The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has sent an open letter to the bishops of the Anglican Communion in advance of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, set for July 16-August 4 at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.

The full text of the May 12 letter follows.

---

The Feast of Pentecost is a time when we give thanks that God, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, makes us able to speak to each other and to the whole world of the wonderful things done in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a good moment to look forward prayerfully to the Lambeth Conference, asking God to pour out the Spirit on all of us as we make ready for this time together, so that we shall indeed be given grace to speak boldly in his Name.

I indicated in earlier letters that the shape of the Conference will be different from what many have been used to. We have listened carefully to those who have expressed their difficulties with Western and parliamentary styles of meeting, and the Design Group has tried to find a new style -- a style more reflective of that Pentecost moment when all received the gift of speaking freely about Christ.

At the heart of this will be the indaba groups. Indaba is a Zulu word describing a meeting for purposeful discussion among equals. Its aim is not to negotiate a formula that will keep everyone happy but to go to the heart of an issue and find what the true challenges are before seeking God's way forward. It is a method with parallels in many cultures, and it is close to what Benedictine monks and Quaker Meetings seek to achieve as they listen quietly together to God, in a community where all are committed to a fellowship of love and attention to each other and to the word of God.

Each day's work in this context will go forward with careful facilitation and preparation, to ensure that all voices are heard (and many languages also!). The hope is that over the two weeks we spend together, these groups will build a level of trust that will help us break down the walls we have so often built against each other in the Communion. And in combination with the intensive prayer and fellowship of the smaller Bible study groups, all this will result, by God's grace, in clearer vision and discernment of what needs to be done.

As I noted when I wrote to you in Advent, this makes it all the more essential that those who come to Lambeth will arrive genuinely willing to engage fully in that growth towards closer unity that the Windsor Report and the Covenant Process envisage. We hope that people will not come so wedded to their own agenda and their local priorities that they cannot listen to those from other cultural backgrounds. As you may have gathered, in circumstances where there has been divisive or controversial action, I have been discussing privately with some bishops the need to be wholeheartedly part of a shared vision and process in our time together.

Of course, as baptised Christians and pastors of Christ's flock, we are not just seeking some low-level consensus, or a simple agreement to disagree politely. We are asking for the fire of the Spirit to come upon us and deepen our sense that we are answerable to and for each other and answerable to God for the faithful proclamation of his grace uniquely offered in Jesus. That deepening may be painful in all kinds of ways. The Spirit does not show us a way to by-pass the Cross. But only in this way shall we truly appear in the world as Christ's Body as a sign of God's Kingdom which challenges a world scarred by poverty, violence and injustice.

The potential of our Conference is great. The focus of all we do is meant to be strengthening our Communion and equipping all bishops to engage more effectively in mission; only God the Holy Spirit can bind us together in lasting and Christ-centred way, and only God the Holy Spirit can give us the words we need to make Christ truly known in our world. So we must go on praying hard with our people that the Spirit will bring these possibilities to fruition as only he can. Those who have planned the Conference have felt truly touched by that Spirit as they have worked together, and I know that their only wish is that what they have outlined for us will enable others to experience the same renewal and delight in our fellowship.

This is an ambitious event -- ambitious for God and God's Kingdom, which is wholly appropriate for a Lambeth Conference. And our ambition is nothing less than renewal and revival for us all in the Name of Jesus and the power of his Spirit.

May that Spirit be with you daily in your preparation for our meeting. As Our Lord says, 'You know him, for he lives with and will be in you' (Jn 14.17).

+ Rowan Cantuar

Fulcrum: Conflict and Covenant in the Bible

N. T. Wright, at Fulcrum, quotes from a document written at meeting in Limuru, Kenya before the Windsor Report:

Everything about being Christian - worship, prayer, mission, fellowship, holiness, works of mercy and justice - is rooted in the basic belief that the one God who made the world has acted in sovereign love to call out a people for himself, a people through whom he is already at work to anticipate his final purpose of reconciling all things to himself, things in heaven and things on earth (Ephesians 1.10). This is what the creator God has done, climactically and decisively, in and through Jesus Christ, and is now implementing through the Holy Spirit. But this notion of God calling a people to be his own, a people through whom he will advance his ultimate purposes for the world, did not begin with Jesus. Jesus himself speaks of the time being fulfilled, and his message and ministry look back, as does the whole of earliest Christianity, to the purposes of God in, through and for his people Israel. The gospels tell the story of Jesus as the story of how God's purposes for Israel and the world reach their intended goal. Paul writes of the gospel of Jesus being 'promised beforehand through God's prophets in the holy scriptures', and argues that what has been accomplished in Jesus Christ is what God always had in mind when he called Abraham (Galatians 3; Romans 4). The earliest Christian writers, in their different ways, all bear witness to this belief: that those who follow Jesus, those who trust in his saving death and believe in his resurrection, are carrying forward the purposes for which God called Abraham and his family long before. And those purposes are not for God's people only: they are for the whole world. God calls a people so that through this people - or, better, through the unique work of Jesus Christ which is put into effect in and through this people in the power of the Spirit - the whole world may be reconciled to its creator.

This is a wonderful theological statement. It has wide appear and application.

Thousands killed by huge China quake - CNN

Our first response must be prayer. Then we must find out how, as Christians, we can help.

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Thousands of people have been killed by Monday's powerful earthquake in just one affected region of central China, its government said, with the toll expected to keep rising as bodies are retrieved from schools, homes and factories.

The death toll quickly rose throughout the day. State-run news agency Xinhua said it had reached 8,533 in Sichuan Province by Monday night, and another 10,000 were believed to be injured.

It reported that authorities were yet to reach Wenchuan County -- which sits at the epicenter of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake with a population of about 112,000 -- because of damage to roads.

Read the latest at CNN

Quote for Today: Anglican Thought

The difficulty is in retaining the children who have churchgoing parents. So long as churchgoing is something that gets you laughed at, so long as there is a social stigma attached to being a churchgoing young person, it will be difficult to reverse the trend.

By way of comparison, young Muslims . . .

Being religious is a way that you show you are different, that you are proud of your heritage. One of the ways young Muslims assert their identity is by being more observant than their parents.

--David Voas, a professor of population studies at the Institute for Social Change at the University of Manchester, said:

Source: AnglicanThought.com » Blog Archive » Losing our Religion

The celestial fire that brings us new life and inspiration

The Right Rev Dr Geoffrey Rowell, Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, in the spirit of Pentecost, writes in the Times of London:

The Spirit, the dynamic energy of God, the breath of the divine life, is often associated with random inspiration, with inspired prophets and enthusiasts who do their own thing. But in the Bible the Spirit is also the one who orders. The mighty wind that swept over the waters of chaos in the very opening verses of Scripture brings order and pattern and shaping life. Energy and order are not opposed in the order of the new creation of God’s life-giving Spirit any more than they are in the patterns of energy that make up the order of the universe. The church is to be and to live the order of the new creation. The Spirit is the Spirit of transforming holiness, shaping men and women in the pattern of the divine love in whose image they are made.

Something to think about this day. We tend to forget that we, too, and not just the people who were there that first Pentecost day, are caught up in this thing.