If you wondered if the thousands of clergy of the liberal United Church of Canada are always reading the Bible, or, alternatively, tend to steamy sex novels, the truth has been revealed in a worthwhile survey.
The respected United Church magazine, The Observer, surveyed a bunch of their clergy across the country and came up with the top 25 spiritual thinkers they’d recommend to the denomination’s roughly 500,000 members.
It’s the kind of thing I’d like to see done by a lot of religious organizations, from Catholic to Pentecostal, Buddhist to Sikh. Favorite authors says a lot about a group or a person.
I guessed Borg would be on top. Crossen at #3 was no surprise, but C.S. Lewis at #4 was a surprise. Maybe they haven’t really “got” Lewis.
The UCC was formed about a century ago from a combination of Congregationalists, Methodists, and liberal Presbyterians.
In 1975 or so the Anglican Church of Canada abandoned its attempts to formulate an organic union with the United Church of Canada. The effort had included a common hymn book (1972), common discernment councils evaluating postulants for ordination, and a willingness to hire each other’s people as pastors.
In the end even the Anglican Church of Canada decided that the UCC was too liberal to work with on other than an informal basis. That … is saying a lot.
I thought for sure Joan Chichester and Bruce Maclaren would be on the list. Most of the others were no surprise.
(It’s Brian McLaren.)
I am not surprised by the sprinkling of faithful such as C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright amongst the heretics with the former more than cancelled out by the later. But the striking thing to me is the number of heretics listed as Episcopalian. Other than the diocese of South Carolina and a few other spots, my former denomination is leading more away from the faith than towards it. Thank the Lord it is dying at the rate that it is. Thank the Lord they chose Katherine Jefferts Schori to accelerate the demise.
Somewhat surprised by the inclusion of Lewis and Wright, seeing that the United Church is so unitarian/agnostic generally. (It’s the church of my mother’s family, wherein I was baptized.) But it goes to show that there is still wheat among the weeds, or to go OT, there are still 5 or 10 righteous left in her.
I think that Tom Wright was only included in this article because he ‘co-authored’ a book with Borg. The book presents two VERY DIFFERENT views of Jesus. My experience of Tom (he was my teacher at McGill) is that he enfuriates liberals. In fact when I began a doctoral programme in Toronto some years ago I was advised (by some well-meaning but spineless friends) not to mention that I had studied under Tom because the liberals in the Toronto School of Theology biblical department at the time simply hated his guts and they would never take a word I said seriously – turned out to be more or less true, by the way.
Still the inclusion of Lewis is a mystery – perhaps he’s included because he wrote fiction and many liberals seem to think of the Bible and of the Christian faith itself as merely one more kind of fiction a ‘mere’ story. Or maybe it’s because many liberals don’t read all that much ‘Christian’ literature at all…maybe…