AN
OPEN AND CRITICAL FAITH
Martin
Camroux
The 19th Century brought a new challenge to
Christian faith – a crisis of belief. Darwin argued
for a theory of evolution – and old ideas of creation looked
impossible. History looked at old documents with a new
critical eye. The literal truth of the whole of the
Bible no longer seemed possible to maintain. Churches
were being built everywhere – the more grand of them looking
a bit like this one. Congregations were full but behind
the outward facade of Victorian piety the foundations were
crumbling. Tennyson was poet Laurite “I falter where
I firmly stood” he wrote “and stretch lame hands of faith”.
There was a wrestling with doubt. There is an agonising
as how you go in being a Christian in a world where old truths
are insecure.
One answer was simple. Fundamentalism.
Pull the drawbridge. Nothing has changed. What
we always believe we still believe. As someone put it.
“The Bible says. I believe it. That settles it”.
But is what is good in one age always right for another? In
America you can see it with those who after all these who
after all these years still oppose the teaching of evolution
in schools. In the same spirit the Southern Baptists
in America recently voted to stop ordaining women into the
ministry.
Fortunately there was another approach – a Christianity
which represented a more liberal spirit. The word liberal
comes from the Latin liber, which means free. Liberal
faith is to do with freedom, freedom of belief, freedom of
conscience, freedom from dogma, it's to do with the open mind.
It inspired great theologians, a world wide of new critical
scholarship, and great preachers – of whom Leslie Weatherhead,
Harry Emerson Fosdick and Donald Soper were some of the best
known. All of these agreed on one thing either God is
a God of Truth or not a God at all. In the face of a
crisis of belief “I cannot park my brain at the door and offer
God my heart. I've got to bring intelligence to bear
on the ultimate issues of my life. And maybe when I’ve
done this Christian faith may be more liberating, more profound
than before”.
Firstly the liberal in religion is against dogmatism
of every kind. I recently read about a man who wanted
a revelation from God. "I want a revelation"
he told his minister "I want God to speak to me simple
and straight". His minister was rather puzzled
as to what to advise. Finally the minister said to him
"The next time it rains, go outside, look up into the
heavens, and ask God for a revelation".
A few days later the heavens opened. There
was torrential rain. The man came back to the minister
utterly sodden, dripping water everywhere. "I followed
your advice" he said "I stood in the rain for over
an hour, looked up in the skies and asking for a revelation
from God. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
The rain pelted down by face, the water ran down my neck,
I just felt ignorant and stupid".
The minister replied "What greater revelation
do you need?"
None of us should need to stand in the rain
to realise how little we know of this amazing universe.
It is a fundamental to a reverent faith at the best
we understand a little. Look at what Paul says in Corinthians.
“Now we see in a mirror dimly.. Now I know only in part”.
As someone once said "Take three steps into anything,
and you are over your head in an ocean of mystery".
Too many people imagine the truth is simple
and they know it. The liberal begins by saying the one
thing you should never do in religion is limit the truth of
God to our poor reach of mind. Dogmatic faith is always
to be rejected.
Secondly the liberal stresses tolerance.
If there is always truth that we haven’t seen – it is possible
that somebody else has. We need to listen to the views
of others and be open to the possibility that amazing, as
it might seem we might not be ones who are right.
The sad truth is that often Christians have
lacked this quality, passionately believing that they alone
had a monopoly of truth. The story is of a man who was
shipwrecked on a desert island. Two years later a search
party found him. Eagerly he showed them all he had done
in his solitude, "Is that the home you built?" they
asked, pointing to a group of leaves and boughs. "No"
he said severely, "it's the church I built to pray in".
They were touched. "And what is the other hut"
they asked". "That, said the shipwrecked man
disdainfully, "is the Church I wouldn't be seen dead
in".
When it becomes intolerant how appalling religion
can become. Historically Christians have tortured, killed,
and damned each other. People have been whipped through
the streets for being Baptists, deprived of their ears for
being Quakers. Sometimes we're so sure we're right that
anyone who disagrees with us is hardly a Christian at all.
We become like Martin Luther saying, "He who does not
believe my doctrine is sure to be damned". Here
liberals were seeking to renew faith in a way which made it
more loving and closer in spirit to that of Christ.
Paul “If I have faith strong enough to move mountains, but
do not have love. I am nothing”.
On September 11 th we saw what bigoted religion
can mean. There is something frightening about fundamentalist
Islam with its assumption with its assumption that if you
disagree with people enough you have a right to kill them.
But you can find this kind of intolerance in all the world
religions. In America Bailey Smith the head of the Southern
Baptist Church said this “God almighty does not hear the prayer
of a year”. Or in this country more than once I have
heard people say that if Roman Catholics are invited to belong
to a group pf churches they will not be part of it.
The world cannot live like this. Against this the liberal
stresses tolerance. - none of us have the whole truth,
we must be open to other peoples ideas and committed to freedom
of belief. At this point all Christians need to have
a liberal spirit.
Thirdly the liberal in approaching in an open
and critical spirit and be willing to adapt faith to new knowledge.
If you go to New York you can see this symbolised in stone.
Make your way to the West Side and there on Riverside Drive
you’ll find Riverside Church. In the 1920s the fundamentalist
controversy was raging in the American Church. In the
state of Tennessee they put a teacher on trial for teaching
evolution in new schools. In New York fundamentalists
attacked the leading liberal preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick
and forced him to resign from Ist Presbyterian. In response
Park Avenue Baptist Church called him as their minister and
built him a new Church on Riverside Drive. If you look
over the west portal you will find an extraordinary series
of sculptures. There are scientists including Charles
Darwin and Albert Einstein. Einstein was so intrigued
by this that he visited Riverside and said 'I will have to
be very careful for the rest of my life as to what I do and
what I say". So in Tennessee Christians put a teacher
on trial for teaching evolution, in New York Fosdick puts
Darwin in stone over the church door, It was way of saying
all new truth comes from God – so all truth is welcome here.
Some people I know would find that shocking
– how can you put a man who has disturbed peoples faith above
a Church door – personally I stand and cheer. I think
it is says my faith is not a pack of cards which will collapse
when new ideas come along. If we follow truth ad honestly
as we can we shall find in the end we are following Christ.
How can any church be concerned about the truth
if it is not willing to do this? What do you do when Galileo
shows the earth goes round the sun or Darwin discovers evolution
or biblical scholars demonstrate how the gospels have come
to us? At this point simple integrity and honesty demand a
willingness to change.
Now of course there are problems and dangers
with liberalism. There is danger that if you change
what you believe you may lose what is vitally important.
You may sell out something that matters. There is a
danger that it forgets that as Chesterton said “The point
of an open mind is to close it on something solid”.
But how could anyone believe in a God who had
no truth to teach us. Doesn’t Jesus say when the Holy
Spirit comes he will lead you into all truth. Our beliefs
are always provisional and open to change. Changes of
mind, changes of theology are actually what you expect in
a living faith. So if some concepts are no longer tenable
or some views of the Bible have to be given up, this is not
in any way a denial of faith. It is what it means as
the hymn writer says “To follow truth, and thus to follow
thee”.
It comes down in the end to this. Christian
faith is not something static. It changes and grows
as it faces new ideas and new challenges.
Rev'd. Martin Camroux MA
Trinity Church, Sutton
(United Reformed/Methodist)
Cheam Road, Sutton, SM1 1DZ |
