You Gotta Believe - or not

Atheist minister vows to fight removal from United Church due to her beliefs

“An ordained United Church of Canada minister who believes in neither God nor Bible said Wednesday she is prepared to fight an unprecedented attempt to boot her from the pulpit for her beliefs.

“In an interview at her West Hill church, Rev. Gretta Vosper said congregants support her view that how you live is more important than what you believe in.”

Unprecedented in the UCC. Believe it or not, ordained ministers have been removed for their beliefs in the past. And it still happens occasionally in other denominations today. It’s true! Certain Muslim sects remove more than the preacher from the pulpit; but that is an anomaly.

“What's important, she says, is that her views hearken to Christianity's beginnings, before the focus shifted from how one lived to doctrinal belief in God, Jesus and the Bible.”

Sure, why not? Were any of us there? We don’t know. Or as, Rev. Gretta Vosper said, "It's mythology. We build a faith tradition upon it which shifted to find belief more important than how we lived."

I’m just wondering, who exactly, Rev. Vosper thinks promulgated the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule, and why they should be any sort of guide to ‘how one lived’ if they are the imagined preaching of a mythical person. I think she may have slept through some of her theology – and logic classes back at seminary.

Here is a bit of information that answers a question raised in my mind up in the opening paragraph:

“Vosper made her views clear as far back as a Sunday sermon in 2001 but her congregation stood behind her until a decision to do away with the Lord's Prayer in 2008 prompted about 100 of the 150 members to leave. The rest backed her.”

2/3rds clearly didn’t ‘back her’. 50 people isn’t a lot of backing.

But wait for the big finish:

"If the cost of that is that we are no longer welcome within that denomination, it will be because that denomination has defined us out of it, not because we have defined ourselves out of it."