The predominant New Age and Spiritual But Not Religious writings in a United Church of Canada publication in recent times suggest a naïve sentimentality that cries out for challenge and critique. One author celebrates her visit to Thoreau’s Walden Pond. It is quite moving. Except that its nature pantheism is undisturbed by the complexity and contradiction that nature throws at us.
In The London Review of Books, by contrast, Stephan Collini also writes about Walden Pond (20 October, 2016), but he has a different take on the experience. He writes: “there is, of course, something seductive about the idea that we might each of us find a way to release our inner Thoreau, but somehow this existential quest has to be made to connect up with collective modes of responding to a world in which global capitalism threatens to pollute the waters of the pond, build condos around its edge, and prevent access for all but the very rich.”
Another writer rhapsodizes about an “expansive Christianity” meeting that focuses on personal uplift. I applied a magnifying glass to the photo of the large congregation. Who are they? Might I learn something by trying to look into their faces? In fact, I learned nothing more than the author had already told me; most of the participants were over 50 and seemed quite elated by their new spiritual explorations.
But we need to know more. How much turmoil of soul would have been evoked by the day’s newscast of the drowning of 100 Pakistani migrants off the coast of Libya en route to Italy? Do the conferees know any poor people living or raising a family on $14.00 per hour? What resources of insight and resolution will it take to confront the inequity and iniquity of the 1 percenters who have a stranglehold on the disposition of the world’s income? When did these congregants last hear a sermon on the prophet Amos?
Finally, there is an exhortation to be Jesus-followers. I don’t know whether to laugh or weep when I hear someone declare, “I don’t subscribe to all that Christian dogma about God, sin and salvation. All I do is follow Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.” What these words establish is that they are uttered by someone who hasn’t read the Sermon on the Mount (or Matthew chapters 10 and 12) which is so radical that it’s paradoxical effect could be to motivate one to abandon any aim of following Jesus.
Moreover, there is a cross in the Christian tradition. Many years ago when my father was pastor of an Italian language congregation in Niagara Falls, he incurred some congregational criticism when he inspired the erection of a small belfry with a cross atop. Some thought it too “Romish” and wanted to take it down. Nowadays, any anti-cross sentiment would emerge not because the cross represents flirtation with Rome but because it is too evocative of a Jesus way of life which most would find too demanding, too sacrificial, and unwanted.
In medieval times, Christian theologians followed a practice of "Quaestiones disputatae" or “disputed questions.” Beliefs were not monolithic. Some issues had to be debated. It is likely that this was what Luther was trying to do. Is it too much of stretch to look upon this blog as a symbolic cathedral door on which disputed questions are displayed for debate and defense?