orthodox, catholic AND protestant, with small letters

I've had it in mind to do this blog post for a while now.

The three (current) major organizational groupings of Christianity are Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. Some time before the Reformation and before the rise of Islam, the third great grouping was the Nestorians, who spread from the Mediterranean to China, but there are only 200,000 of them left now. There are other small groups that don't fit into the three large groups - the Mormons spring to mind - but for most purposes, "three major groups" is close enough for jazz.

As it happens I'm part of the Protestant grouping, which gives me more flexibility in cherrypicking bits from the various traditions. I like to say that tradition funds my exploration rather than restricting it. There is a danger in cherrypicking - you can leave out important aspects because you don't happen to like them. I'm aware of this risk. The counter-risk of taking the whole package on is that you take on some really stupid stuff uncritically because it's historically part of the whole, even if it doesn't apply well any more (or even if it was a bad idea from the start). This is the essence of being protestant-with-a-small-p: To take a critical stance towards your tradition (including, in my case, the Protestant Reformation itself and some of its historically and culturally rooted assumptions). Protestants with a capital P haven't always been good at this.

I'm also orthodox-with-a-small-o. I've talked about this before in "Orthodox, open-minded, skeptical and happy". And I'm catholic-with-a-small-c, that is, I consider myself a part of the whole Church-with-a-capital-C, which exists across time and space and merely organizational boundaries (and doctrinal boundaries, which aren't necessarily the same thing any more). I suppose - I just realized this - that the "open-minded" bit = "catholic", and the "skeptical" bit = "protestant", kind of.

I'm not sure what my point is. Perhaps it's that these labels are more useful when we think about their original intents than when we use them as the names of tribes. And that all the bits are important; nobody has everything right and nobody has nothing right.

It's also part of my continuing attempt to find a way to describe myself. I really like the Gospel of Thomas, a very likely early although non-canonical gospel text which may preserve genuine sayings of Jesus. (I treat it as a Scroedinger's cat in this regard, neither affirming nor denying.) At one point in it, Jesus asks his disciples, "What do you say I am like? Or to what will you compare me?". John says, "You are like a philosopher of the age." Peter says, "You are like a holy angel." But it's Thomas who "wins". He says: "My mouth is unable to say what you are like." I sometimes think that not only is my mouth unable to say what Jesus is like, it's unable to say what I'm like either. Apparently this is part of the point of centering prayer: you sit wordless and eventually you realize who God is and who you are beyond all the words.

I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.

Faith Convergence

There seems to be something in the air that's leading many people of faith to say, "This is ridiculous, the things we have in common are more important than our differences. How are you, anyway?"

Brenda recently sent me some stuff around the Draft National Statement on Religious Diversity. The statement itself is fairly bland, as you might expect - apparently a horse designed by a basically liberal committee, with wide consultation, isn't a camel; it's an amoeba. But I was amazed at the, um, diversity - no, the multiplicity of interfaith initiatives that are going on. It's a hive of activity. Perhaps a relatively small number of people are involved in a large number of initiatives, but it seems too many for a small group to sustain.

At the same time, I've heard several people reflecting aloud that maybe it's time that Christians started to coalesce back into a new grouping that reflects recent changes. The first to say this to me was Nicky Jenkins, who works as a community celebrant and is a graduate of the same celebrants' course as me. The most recent is this guy who visited Cityside earlier this year and said:

"Since CrossWalk America walked across the U.S. in 2006, we have been insisting that there is a more inclusive, compassionate form of Christian faith emerging at the grassroots in America that is almost entirely overlooked in the popular media.... While this emerging faith is not homogenous, and cannot easily be labeled as “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative,” certain characteristics tend to cluster in these communities:

• openness to other faiths
• care for the earth and its ecosystems
• valuing artistic expression in all its forms
• authentic inclusiveness of all people - including God’s lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (lgbt) community
• opposing the commingling of Church and State
• promoting the values of rest and recreation, prayer and reflection
• embracing both faith and science in the pursuit of truth".

It makes me want to revise my "future history" for the fictional World of Biddy and May's so that rather than Pope Gregory XVII opening up the Roman Catholic Church, instead a new unified church coalesces more or less spontaneously and in a non-hierarchical, ground-up manner.

It also makes me think that something like my fictional White Star Order is likely, almost inevitable.

One thing I have to say, though, is that I hope we don't go the path indicated by Matthew Fox's new 95 Theses (posted at Wittenburg in imitation of Luther). I agree more or less with many of his formulations, and I know that "theses," in the original Luther context, are questions for debate rather than articles of faith (does Matthew Fox know this?). However, I think he's taken the wrong direction in proposing specific theological formulations, including an explicit Christology (nothing is more guaranteed to divide Christians than Christology):

"15. Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things)."

Must we? I don't make a sharp distinction between them, because I'm not a classical Liberal drawing from the 19th and 20th-century debates about "the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith". This isn't an essential distinction for me to make in order to make my faith work. If it is for Matthew Fox, then good for him; but I think that the way forward for faith convergence is not this. Rather, as he says later:

"38. A diversity of interpretation of the Jesus event and the Christ experience is altogether expected and welcomed as it was in the earliest days of the church."

Now, that I can get alongside (apart from the pretentious wording).

Orthodox, open-minded, skeptical and happy

This comes out of this discussion (originally on proselytism) over at “I would knife fight a man”.

I said:

I'm (more-or-less) orthodox, open-minded, skeptical and happy - not necessarily all at once, but certainly in rapid alternation... you know that optical illusion where you can see either the vase or the two faces, but not both at once? But you can switch between them by a bit of a mental adjustment? Like that.

So what does that look like, then?

Well, when I'm saying my Trinitarian rosary in the mornings while commuting to work, I'm in an orthodox mindset. I am sincere in that orthodoxy; I approach God as Trinity, Creator, Redeemer and Holy Spirit of Wisdom.

And yet at the same time - and by a small mental shift I can engage this mode instead - I'm aware that this is a finger pointing at the moon, "that art thou, and yet that also is not thou", that the Trinity is a cultural construction quite possibly rooted in paganism (which, being of Celtic ancestry and very slightly Christopagan leanings, I'm perfectly comfortable with). I'm also happy to consider other people's religious formulations which differ from mine as being, in this sense, equally valid - that is, equally lenses through which they look for God. (Think of it this way: We all have imperfect vision, so we all need glasses, but perhaps your glasses don't help me and mine don't help you. Doesn't mean that mine don't help me and yours don't help you.)

Hence openmindedness. While affirming orthodoxy, I feel no need to assert it as an exclusive truth in the modernist sense (I've given up describing myself as "postmodern" even with disclaimers, now; I'm going for "transmodern").

It's very important to me that I affirm the Incarnation and Resurrection, for example, but I'm not going to try to "prove" them in some propositional sense, as I would have once as a modernist Evangelical. (Much less do I feel the need to "disprove" them, as modernist Liberals often do.) They are meaningful for me and in affirming them I gain more ability to make sense of the universe.

Skeptical? I'm definitely skeptical. I went to a hypnotherapy seminar recently at which the presenter spouted pure New Age hogwash for about 60% of the time. We got Atlantis, we got the Indigo Children, we got the 2012 prophecies, the lot. At lunchtime I had to hold myself back from saying loudly, "I'm not really hungry now, after all that FRUITCAKE."

Any time anyone tries marketingbabble, businessbabble or bureaucracybabble on me, skeptical is definitely what I am. Being openminded doesn't preclude skepticism for me. My openmindedness (at its best) takes the form of, "While I don't actively affirm what you are affirming there, I'm not going to set out to deny it either; that's not necessary for me in order to hold another viewpoint. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. I don't think so, obviously, or we'd think the same." My skepticism takes the form of holding things which haven't been convincingly presented to me, or about which I have causes for suspicion, in suspicion. They're innocent until proven guilty, but they're definitely under suspicion. I'm not going to believe them to be polite.

And happy? I'm happy. That has a lot to do with having a positive self-image, good external life conditions, and personal flexibility (which is part of good mental health). Skepticism and open-mindedness don't render me unhappy because I'm happy to keep things in Schroedinger's catbox for extended periods. Orthodoxy doesn't render me unhappy because I use it, it doesn't abuse me.

I've rambled. I need to sharpen up my thinking on this. But, hey - this is a blog. This is why you don't pay me money for this stuff.

Oh, afterthought/edit: Back to the image of the faces and the vase. You can look at it and, by a small act of will, see faces. With another small act of will, you can see a vase. But with a third small act of will, you can see an abstract image that isn't actually a vase or faces, just some marks that suggest vaseness and faceness to your mind, which is primed to recognise patterns like that. That's important too.