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With or Without God: Why the way we live is more important than what we believe by Gretta Vosper

Vosper is an ordained minister of the United Church, Canada's largest Protestant Christian denomination. She holds a master of divinity degree from Queen's University and was ordained in 1992. She founded and chairs the Toronto-based Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity.

Christianity without Christ ~ No creeds, no miracles, no Resurrection: Minister preaches faith without the symbolism

Charles Lewis, National Post
Saturday, May 03, 2008

Vosper's thesis is that, e.g., the bible, cross, and the title 'reverend' are "symbols that hold the church back from breaking into the future -- to a time "when the label Christian won't even exist" and the Church will be freed of the burdens of the past."

She hopes that, "The central story of Christianity will fade away," she explained. "The story about Jesus as the symbol of everything that Christianity is will fade away."

"Ms. Vosper does not believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and the sacrament of baptism. Nor does she believe in the creeds, the presence of Christ in communion or that Jesus was the Son of God.

"In With or Without God, her book that was formally launched this week [March 22, 2008], she writes that Jesus was a "Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team." She writes, "It is time to live in the current paradigm, being progressive enough to let go of the beliefs and traditions to which we've had to tip our hats and curtsy in the past but which can no longer prevail in our contemporary world."

Vosper's "focus of her 'spiritual' life is love. And since love is the common bond between all people, it is really the only thing worth believing in.

"Here in the context of seeking out harmony with all things, the purest understanding of those values that enhance and sanctify life becomes the foremost spiritual practice," she writes.

When we have constructed dogma about the divine and created rituals with which to relate to it, we have called it "religion." Religion seems to be mandated by our peculiar human need to make sense of our world. And so we construct our institutions and traditions, for our time, and according to beliefs, as we understand them ... We, too, must take up that task and work to create a world in which each person's right to find their own way is honoured, whether it involves ancient or contemporary rituals or traditions, religious or secular means, and we challenge ourselves to be open to new understandings of the Divine as they are made known to us." It's Time ~ Gretta Vosper

Vosper's Website

* God takes a holiday ...

God is tired, worn out. So he speaks to St. Peter, "You know, I need a vacation. Got any suggestions where I should go?"

St. Peter, thinking, nods his head, then says, "How about Jupiter? It's nice and warm there this time of the year."

God shakes His head before saying, "No. Too much gravity. You know how that hurts my back."

"Hmmm," St. Peter reflects. "Well, how about Mercury?"

"No way!" God mutters, "It's way too hot for me there!"

"I've got it," St. Peter says, his face lighting up. "How about going Down to Earth for your vacation?"

Chuckling, God remarks, "Are you kidding? Two thousand years ago I went there, had an affair with some nice Jewish girl, and they're STILL talking about it!"

Blasphemous Jokes

* Great American Historians, Father & Son

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007)

As a historian, I confess to a certain amusement when I hear the Judeo-Christian tradition praised as the source of our present-day concern for human rights.... In fact, the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights ... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide. Religion during most of the history of the West saw the trials visited on mankind in this world as ordained by the Almighty to test and purify sinful mortals.... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality; hated blasphemy; and feared heresy.... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake. ~ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., from his speech at the inauguration of Vartan Gregorian as president of Brown University, 1989, from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. ~ (1888-1965)

Schlesinger pioneered the new social history and women's history. He was a Progressive School intellectual who stressed material causes (like economic profit) and downplayed ideology and values as motivations for historical actors.

* Susan Jacoby on the Dumbing Down of America

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON
Published February 2008
by Susan Jacoby

"This impassioned, tough-minded work of contemporary history paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with America’s heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society—on the political right and the left. America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic."

“The Age of American Unreason picks up where Richard Hofstadter left off. With analytic verve and deep historical knowledge, Susan Jacoby documents the dumbing down of our culture like a maestro. Make no mistake about it, this is an important book.” ~ Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley

More on Jacoby: * How Secularism Became a Dirty Word
Also see: * A Cruel, Capricious Master of the Universe