You will likely be aware of the media interest in the atheist bus ads currently running in England: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Recently the Freethought Association of Canada has indicated its intention to run these ads in various Canadian cities. So several Saturdays ago I opened my Globe and Mail and there was a full page ad from the people of the United Church of Canada, and me being one of those United Church people. The ad presented two boxes where you could check off your vote, the original wording of the English ads and a second, "There probably is a God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life." I should also add that the more visible atheist movement was also the front page story of the United Church Observer in February and that article got picked up by the Globe and Mail.
So that is the immediate background to this talk but the longer view goes back to my days as a graduate student in the history department of McGill University. The general area I was interested in was the Reformation in England, Henry VIII and all (most of which I have forgotten, I must say), but when it came to researching and writing a thesis my advisor suggested that I look to Scotland. So it was I wrote a thesis on the early Scottish covenanters and the political and military role of the Scottish clergy from 1638 to 1643. The Scottish Covenanters were the authors of the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, actual documents that circulated throughout the country for people to sign. People were captured by the vision that as a people they were in a unique relationship with God, that God had called them as a privileged people. Well, if you have any acquaintance with that period of history you will know that a few short years later Oliver Cromwell and his forces invaded Scotland and the destruction of the country was such that it took decades to recover. I was reading the original documents and secondary sources for my thesis back in the late 1960’s and I was deeply struck by how similar the theology and the attitudes sounded to the Afrikaner theology and attitudes that were the underpinnings for white rule in South Africa with apartheid.
So it was that studying intensively the late 1630’s/early 1640’s period of Scottish history shaped me before I entered theological school. To give you a taste of the impact, if I were to express my Christian faith as a composer of music then I would be a minimalist like Philip Glass. I have a great deal of sympathy with the book written during World War II, The Christian Agnostic. And in my first or second year of theology I read for the first time, The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Published in 1951, just six years after the defeat of the Nazi regime and in the midst of the rise of communism in Russia and China, the Cold War coming to a boil, it is a book that condemns Communists, Fascists, Nationalists, and early Christians. Part of Hoffer's thesis is that mass movements are interchangeable and that true believers will often flip from one movement to another. Furthermore, Hoffer argues that these movements spread by promising a glorious future but the motivations for mass movements are interchangeable: religious, nationalist and class-based movements tend to behave in the same way and use the same tactics, even when their stated goals or values are diametrically opposed.
If you google Eric Hoffer’s name you will get a short summary of the book and learn that it has been published in 23 editions between 1951 and most recently in 2002. It is still pertinent today. And if you google his name the summary of the book is a whole lot easier to read than the book itself but I would still commend the book to you (and I have a copy here that I did not put in a garage sale yesterday so if someone wants the book and you can put it in a garage sale it is here for the taking).
As a result of my graduate work in 17th century Scottish history I entered theological school with a great deal of fear, yes I think fear is the right term, of ‘the true believer.’ And fear of ‘the true unbeliever’ too. I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie Religulous by the comedian Bill Maher. It is a fun movie to watch. Maher is militant in his scorn of religion but he also interviews fringe religious people to make his points. How serious is one to take that, other than to have a good laugh? Richard Dawkins, as another militant atheist, wrote in The God Delusion that he wanted to see all religion disappear because people like me, moderate as I am, make it possible for the crazies of the religious world to exist in this world. But that is like suggesting that science should be abolished because it has made it possible for nuclear bombs to be developed even if it has also made it possible for the eradication of many former childhood diseases. What is your attitude to ‘the true believer?’ Or, for that matter, ‘the true unbeliever?’
Let’s return to the statement, “There probably is a God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life." Or, if you like, “There is probably isn’t a God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.” You decide which box you would tick off on that ad the United Church put in the Globe and Mail. I want to share a few thoughts about my vote, inviting you to consider how you would vote and why and all of these comments have this backdrop of ‘the true believer’ or, as it might be, ‘the true unbeliever.’
First, let’s be clear about the word, ‘faith.’ In theology, the primary meaning of faith is trust with the supporting notion of loyalty. In theology, faith is verbal and its primary meaning is not beliefs. Faith in English is a noun, not like love that can be used as a noun and a verb. However, faith in Christian theology is always verbal in the sense of having to do with an abiding sense of trust. This sense of trust is always open to doubt, indeed, cannot function without doubt, and it is never water tight. I got married in 1966 and I spent that summer in Sonningdale, Saskatchewan, living in a little one room shack with no telephone and working as the United Church student minister in four little communites. I got home to Ontario on a Wednesday night, having bused it from Saskatoon to Toronto because there was a train strike at that time. We got married on the following Saturday not having seen each other for four months. Barbara and I communicated by letter and one phone call from the end of April to the end of August. I remember being in that one room shack, knowing in my head that I was scheduled to get married on the 3rd of September and wondering what was I doing. A true believer wouldn’t have a doubt. A person of faith is open to questions, second guesses and weighing options. Faith as trust does involve leaping into the dark. You hope you leap with all the wisdom you can muster but you still leap. I had a root canal this past week; I put my trust in my dentist
Second, true believers come in many forms and varieties. It is for that reason that I asked that a little quote be included in the announcements today. It speaks to me a lot: “…I think of the dignity that is ours when we cease to demand the truth and realize that the best we can have of these substantial truths that guide our lives is metaphorical – a story. And the most of it we are likely to discern comes only when we accord one another…respect…. Beyond this – that the interior landscape is a metaphorical representation of the exterior landscape, that the truth reveals itself most fully not in dogma but in paradox, irony, and contradictions that distinguish compelling narratives – beyond this are only failures of imagination: reductionism in science; fundamentalism in religion; fascism in politics. (Barry Lopez, Crossing Open Ground quoted in God in All Worlds, ed. Lucinda Vardey, p. 671.)
Truly, for me, true believers are those who champion reductionistic science, fundamentalist religion, fascist politics and I fear all three. For instance, as I was reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion I was aware within myself that it was the materialism or naturalism of his science that irked me for it seemed like an article of faith that could not be touched. Can the whole of life be reduced to elements, chemicals? Am I only a bag of fluid, chemical compounds arranged in a particular way? Well, we could get into a discussion on these three, reductionism, fundamentalism and fascism but they all speak to me of a true believer..
As a way of ending, I do have this profound belief that all theology is grounded in story, my story and your story. Story or stories have been part of this talk. In fact, if I removed all the stories out of this talk it would come down to my deep distrust and fear of true believers, whether those true believers are conservative Christian fundamentalists or liberal Christian fundamentalists or their kind in other religions. And ditto in science and politics. Story is so often camouflaged by intellectual beliefs where we easily get to slinging opinions at one another.
So why do I say that there probably is a God? Most of the time, I experience God’s absence. However, over the years I have developed a life of spiritual practices, spiritual practices that shift and change but which are rooted in the Christian tradition and those practices provide focus and backbone to my life. Occasionally, through those practices the absence of God which is my primary felt experience becomes a presence. My words are totally inadequate but the result is a joy and a purpose for which I am deeply grateful.
