Hello UConvo

Several people have been reading my blog from the Yahoo Group UConvo · Universalist Convocation, which describes itself as:

This is the mailing list of the Universalist Convocation -
while sanctioned,this is not an offical list for messages from the Universalist Convocation, but a “chat” list for folks with Universalist Convocation concerns and topics.

Hello and welcome! Who are you? What do you do?

The Universalist Heritage and universalism

Scott Wells at Boy in the Bands says, in part “But this goes to the point that, though exiting the fellowship of the Unitarian Universalist Association, I’ll still be a Universalist. Or a universalist. Not sure which, yet.”

I was going to reply at his site, but this comment sort of grew.

Having grown up in a liberal Christian tradition which assumed universal salvation without ever formally describing it in terms of a realised theology, I have found the existence of a denomination of Universalists (even if defunct) fascinating and I would hate for that tradition to be lost.

I am increasingly seeing a difference between “I hope God won’t send anyone to hell” and “I believe God will save all”, and to hold to the second in the face of the hostility and laughter of both most Christians and most secular agnostics there needs to be a clear witness and support available.

All of which is a long winded way of saying that the Universalist tradition shouldn’t be allowed to be forgotten because it is the only example I know of universalist theology being proclaimed by a group and not just individual theologians or individual believers in the silence of their own hearts.

Speaking from a place with little to no effective UU presence (I am the only person I know who knows what the UU is and that there is a UU church in my city, and only because I came across American UU bloggers) it seems clear to me that the Universalist tradition is not being upheld by the UU.

The UU does not speak, as far as I can tell, with a common voice on any matter; but even the UU Christian Fellowship do not proclaim the central Universalist message; that although we are imperfect yet we have been saved.

I know of universalist ministers in the Anglican church, in the (Australian) Uniting Church, in pentecostal churches and in the UU. This is good; but their witness is limited by history and organisational structure. Better a Universalist minister than another universalist one.

A Personal God

I’ve been reading some comments on whether God is a person by Stephen Lingwood at ReigniteUK. Stephen quotes another blogger PeaceBang as saying:

I don’t have a personal God in the way that all this LORD stuff would suggest,but I certainly do believe in some impersonal force of moral imperative, by whatever name. I have said many times and in many places that my own sense of what God might be wavers and changes and gets lost on many days.

but disagrees, saying that for him “As much as I know it’s not rational, and not fashionable, God does feel like something that I can communicate with like a Friend.”

I’m with him there; though I would deny that approaching God as personal Friend is irrational.

There have always been non-personal metaphorical depictions of God. God is a refining fire, the ground of our being, the ruach, the rock of ages. These depictions have historically been balanced with an understanding of God as Person – first in almost material form (God walking in the Garden of Eden or living on Mt Sinai) and then in increasingly spiritualised form; but a Person nonetheless. Trinitarians add complexity to the mix; but don’t deny that God can be approached as a single Person.

Fosdick once gave a metaphor of God as the Pacific Ocean. I’ve swum in the Pacific Ocean, always within 20 metres of the shore, playing in the surf. The Pacific Ocean isn’t Bondi Beach; and I don’t know its depths or power. But it has a nearside, and I can approach that nearside.

In the same way, I would affirm that God is surely more than a person. The view of God as a big beard floating over the three-tiered cosmos, moving the sun with his hand is a worldview that has passed.

But I would also say that to be greater than a person, God must be at least a person. A small baby is greater than the sun, for the baby is self-aware, it’s spinning atoms have somehow given rise to a being and not just a thing. In the same way, a God who merely a force is lesser than I am and never worthy of worship.

So I affirm my belief in a supra-personal God, the ground of our being, the force behind all that is and will be, the breath that animates all life, who can be approached as a person and a friend.

Introduction 1 – Mennonite Pledge of Allegiance

So what is out there in terms of short introductions to liberal Christian faith? Until I get bored I’m going to find and post (short) descriptions of faith.

I’m deliberately ignoring important differences in intent and audience between creeds, confessions, statements of faith, pledges of allegiance, catechisms, short introductions, etc. If it’s short, and it describes a liberal Christian faith, then it’ll do.

First off the line, the pledge of allegiance by June Alliman Yoder and J. Nelson Kraybill, president of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary:

I pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ,
And to God’s kingdom for which he died—
One Spirit-led people the world over, indivisible,
With love and justice for all.

(hat tip to Philocrites)

Initial Impression:

Wonderfully short but packing quite a theological punch. Focusing on the Kingdom and not on individual salvation; leaves open universalist understandings of the triumph of God’s love without expressly proclaiming them.

Specific Comments:

The phrase “I pledge allegiance to” probably works better for Americans who are used to the concept than, eg, Brits and Aussies who usually find it rather strange and weird. That is, I understand the attempt to undermine and radically co-opt the USA’s nationalist pledge of allegiance in favour of a commitment to the Kingdom of God vs. the Kingdom of Caesar; but I only understand it from an intellectual point of view. It doesn’t speak to me on an emotional level.

Like many of these creeds that I’ve found, a lot of complex theology is hinted at, but never fully faced.

This pledge obviously keeps things vague by mentioning that Jesus died for the Kingdom, but not mentioning the classics of credal Christianity – atonement and resurrection.

Is the “One Spirit-led people the world over, indivisible” the same as the “One holy catholic, apostolic Church” as understood from a Protestant ‘invisible Church vs. visible Church’ perspective? And if not, why the emphasis that the (Holy?) Spirit-led people are indivisible? Because it is patently obvious that Christians are hardly indivisible – there are divisions all over the place.

Not sure I like “with love and justice for all”. It’s not so much what it says as the phrasing – it’s like “Drinks for everyone!” or “Ponies for all!”. Maybe it’s just me.

Lady Liberty Through Christ

I’ve never been to Memphis, USA. Maybe one day I will, and when I do I will be able to admire the 22 metre high Statue of Liberty Through Christ that a local megachurch has spent $260,000 US dollars building.

Tennessee Guerilla Women explains:

Wielding a giant cross, a tablet of Ten Commandments, and “Jehovah” etched on her crown, she is the Bible Belt’s very own copycat Statue of Liberty.

So Lady Liberty, who has for a century symbolised enlightenment values of liberty, (including inter alia, the separation of church and state) has been coopted to “[prove] that Jesus Christ is Lord over America, he is Lord over Tennessee, he is Lord over Memphis.”

The church’s pastor explains that “the teardrop on his Lady is God’s response to what he calls the nation’s ills, including legalized abortion, a lack of prayer in schools and the country’s “promotion of expressions of New Age, Wicca, secularism and humanism.”"

On second thoughts, maybe I won’t go to Memphis after all. I’m not sure I’d be welcome.

One hundred and fifty spears, ten canoes, three wives … trouble.

I went and saw the film 10 Canoes yesterday. I don’t know how extensive the cinema release of this film will be (it did win a Special Jury Prize at Cannes 2006 but is hardly a mainstream blockbuster), but if you can you should see it.

Set in Australia’s Arnhem Land, It is a multilayered film, a story told by a storyteller, retold by another. It mixes myth and reality, and reality interpreted through myth. Unlike virtually every other film yet made about Indigenous Australians, it does not tell the story of their encounter and interactions with the European newcomers, but tells an internal and self-contained story, set long before the first Dutch sailor set foot on the shores of Western Australia.

Check out the website.