Exploring Atheism in the Context of Progressive Christianity

Gretta Vosper, director of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity, a United Church of Canada minister, and author of the bestselling With Or Without God: Why the Way We Live Is More Important Than What We Believe, declared she was an atheist in 2001. A minister who is an atheist?

       She said in most mainline churches there is a vast gap between what the clergy know and what the laity believe. What she believes most clergy know is that there is no supernatural being called God and even if there was, God does not intervene in human affairs or respond to prayer. God is merely our own human efforts in the world for justice and peace. She also believes the Bible was just written by humans, there is no heaven, and the Christian creeds are irrelevant. I’m sure most clergy were surprised the United Church let her continue in spite of her atheism. 

    Like most atheists, she has no authentically satisfactory explanation of where everything came from. You have to stop the infinite regress of asking “Where did that come from?” at some point. Asking, as atheists do, “Where did God come from?” makes no sense because the concept of God implies eternality. God has always existed. Atheists could say the same about the universe, but at some point, you are forced to give something God-like qualities like eternal existence. You have to make something into God, either God or the universe. 

    Vosper sees religion as an attempt to deal with chaos in the world. However, how does she explain order in the world? The late Bernard Lonergan, a Jesuit theologian, explained through his concept of “emergent probability” how there can be both order and chaos in the universe because God works through “secondary causes,” such as nature, without violating those causes. God is mystery, and just because we don’t understand exactly how God works does not mean God does not exist.

       I like the approach of biblical scholars who say humans wrote the Bible and therefore it has scientific and historical errors in it, because God works through secondary causes like flawed and limited human beings, but underlying it all, the Bible is inspired by God. 

       Also, in my experience, prayer does work, and I regularly hear from my clients how prayer works in their lives. Some things have to be believed to be seen. If you don’t believe in God’s intervention, you won’t see it, but if you do believe in it, you see it everywhere. Coincidences happen that are too coincidental to be mere coincidences. They are “God-incidences.”

       Progressive Christianity can be helpful, but Vosper’s attempt to leave God out does not address our existential angst. Who do you turn to when human effort fails, you fail yourself, people betray you, or you suddenly find you have cancer and are going to die?

       To be fair to Vosper, I think she has a point: we need to look for the positive common values found in all religions, and this is more important than our various creeds. She is right that our beliefs are meaningless if we do not live our faith. Believing the faith is easy, living it is hard. As G. K. Chesterton said, “Christianity has not failed, it has just never been tried.”

       In fact, it has been tried by individuals who Christians call “saints,” who always put more emphasis on living the faith than on doctrine. As one of the most famous, Francis of Assisi, said, “Preach the gospel wherever you go, using words if necessary.” 

       So yes, let’s be progressive and update our faith in the light of contemporary scholarship, but let’s not throw out God with the childhood religion, as atheists do. Let’s have an adult faith. In God, not Gretta Vosper.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. www.brucetallman.com