Photo by David Barker
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