Author: Bruce Tallman

Since 2002 I have been a full-time spiritual director in private practice in London Ontario. I have published two books on spiritual direction for spiritual directors. One of them, "Finding Seekers," is a best seller in the field. I have also published two books on spirituality for the general public. The latest one is called "God's Ecstatic Love: Transform Your Life with a Spiritual Masterpiece." It is a 21st century update of Francis de Sales' classic "Treatise on the Love of God." See Amazon.com The London Free Press has published hundreds of my articles on spirituality, theology and ethics and I have facilitated marriage preparation with over 3500 couples since 1988. For more information see www.brucetallman.com

Stages of spiritual development: a comprehensive guide

Most of us are familiar with intelligence quotient (IQ) tests. In 1995 Daniel Goleman published Emotional Intelligence a groundbreaking book based on the idea that how well you did in life depended not on IQ but on EQ, your emotional quotient, that is, how well you got along with others. Perhaps there is also a SQ, a spiritual quotient. Your SQ would be how far along you are on the spiritual journey as mapped out over the centuries by various spiritual thinkers.

    In the sixteenth century, Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross outlined the stages of the spiritual life, from complete union with evil to complete union with God. 

     In the first stage, that of pagan life, one gives into temptation and doubt about God and lives in desolation. Eventually, through the grace of God, one may be converted to belief in God. This can occur rapidly (the “born again” experience) or gradually over time. 

    During the conversion stage, doubt about God disappears but temptation remains strong, so to survive spiritually one must move to the next stage, which is purgation, or “the dark night of the senses.” One must separate from evil by purifying one’s senses and learning virtue, and the best way to do this is through active contemplation, particularly prayer and scripture study.

    Eventually, one gets to the stage of illumination, or spiritual betrothal, where the spiritual life is going well and there is lots of sweet consolation. It’s like being engaged to be married to God.

    The next stage is shocking because it seems as if God has abandoned you. In this stage, temptation is gone, but so is consolation. The thinking here is that God has not actually deserted you; instead, God is trying to move you from a faith based on feelings to a faith based on conscious decision, a much more unshakable faith. In this spiritual desert, which people like Mother Teresa went through, doubt is strong. The only solution is to keep choosing to believe.

    The final stage is divinization, not that you become God, but you are in total union with God. All temptation and doubt are gone. You are fully your beloved’s, in spiritual marriage.

    Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) had a more generalized map. In the aesthetic stage, the sole focus is on self-centered pleasure. Eventually, you realize this is causing yourself and others great pain, and so at this point, you can choose to enter the ethical stage. In this stage, becoming “holier than thou” is easy until you realize you also fall short of your ideals and need God’s help to be truly holy. When you surrender to God’s grace, you enter the religious stage.

     Empirical research on stages of faith has been conducted in the past twenty years. By conducting thousands of interviews, James Fowler of Emory University mapped out six stages.

    Briefly, in magical faith, one thinks of God as a cosmic Santa Claus. In mythical faith, one takes every scriptural story as historical, scientific fact. In group faith, one believes whatever one’s group believes. In personal faith, one starts asking questions like “what do I really believe?” Here, people often feel they are losing their faith, but they are actually going deeper. In paradoxical faith, one accepts paradox, for example: Jesus is the only way to God, and yet there are other ways. In sacrificial faith, one becomes willing to lay down one’s life for principles like justice or freedom for all people, not just those of one’s own religious tradition.   

    SQ, like all spiritual things, cannot be exactly quantified. You cannot say your SQ is 100 or 160. However, if over the years, you have a deeper, more contemplative, loving, ethical, grace-filled and service-oriented spirituality, if you can embrace paradox and all people, and think freely for yourself, you can be assured, given the spiritual maps above, that your spiritual IQ is growing.

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

The Teaching of Oneness: Addressing Global Issues Together

  The central teaching of Jesus was oneness. This idea’s time has surely come. All humans are becoming increasingly tied together in a fragile web with each other and nature. In this time of climate change, worldwide trading, television, and the Internet, we are learning that what affects other humans and the natural world affects all of us.

    Yet lingering ideas of separateness continue to kill us. To the extent we think we are separate from nature, we continue to decimate rainforests, overfish oceans, and pollute everything, believing it won’t impact us. To the extent we think we are separate from other people “out there,” we will continue to wage war on them, believing we can do so with impunity.

    In Spanish, the devil is “el diablo” and we speak of an evil plot as “diabolical.” The “di” at the beginning of these words means “two.” Evil then divides what is one into two, dividing or separating oneness.

    In the mythological Garden of Eden, the devil, disguised as a serpent, tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so they started the endless process of dividing everything up into good and bad. Before that, they were innocent, everything existed in harmony, and they “walked with God in the garden” (Genesis 3:8). No friction existed between them and God, man and woman, or humans and nature. All was one.

    Right after eating the fruit which God forbade, they hid (separated themselves) from God, came into conflict with each other (Adam blamed Eve) and were alienated from nature (driven out of a natural paradise).

    Jesus came to teach oneness and put everything back together. He prayed for his disciples and all people “that they may be one, as you God are in me, and I am in you, that they may also be one in us” (John 17: 21-23). He saw himself as one with the lowliest person on Earth: “As you do to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you do it to me” (Matthew 25:40). 

    Jesus was against how society was divided up according to status and privilege. So, he welcomed those of no account in his day: children, women, prostitutes, the sick and the handicapped. His directive to “love your enemies” was all about reconciliation, community, and oneness. Jesus felt so close to God that he said, “God and I are one” (John 10:30).

    If we felt our oneness with nature, we would treat it as part of us. If we felt we were one with other people, we would treat everyone better, particularly our spouses. As it says in Genesis, when a man and woman marry, “the two become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). If we really believed in this oneness, we would realize that whatever we do to our spouses, we do to ourselves. We would “do unto others as we would have them do unto us” (Luke 6:31). In other words, we would obey the Golden Rule.

    If we believed God saw us as united with him, we would trust that God would never punish us because it would be God’s self-punishment. We would have no fear of hell, which is basically separation from God. We would constantly sense God’s presence. We would affirm with St. Paul that “God is in, over, and through us” (Ephesians 4:6) and “I live, yet not I, but God lives within me” (Galatians 2:20). We would treat everyone, regardless of age, gender, nationality, or religion, with the utmost respect, like the temple of the divine they are.   

    The church and all of humanity need to focus on this core teaching of Jesus — oneness. We will only survive if we understand that we are all in this together with God, other people, and nature. This sense of oneness is the key to addressing what ails us.

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

The rationality of religion and the faith of science

Many today have concluded that religion is fundamentally irrational, and science is the only model of rationality. However, science and religion are more similar than most people think. They both start off beyond reason and become rational later. 

    Anselm in the 11th century defined theology as “faith seeking understanding,” thus balancing those who said all we need is faith with those who claimed all we need is science. In the 13th century, Aquinas carried on Anselm’s agenda of putting divine revelation and human knowledge together. At a time when universities were first forming, these doctors of the church defined the criteria for western scholarship from then on. Since then, most mainline churches have had a healthy respect for the role of reason in religion. In fact, in the Anglican church, they believe the three basic pillars of the church to be tradition, scripture, and reason. Blind faith is immature faith. 

    The great pioneers of science – Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin were religious and hoped their findings would confirm their faith. They believed all truth comes from the one God; therefore, there can be no ultimate contradiction between religion and science.

    It is true that people become religious from promptings of the heart. The heart is beyond reason, but has reasons of its own, as Pascal said. God is most readily experienced through faith, prayer, ritual, and acts of compassion. However, whereas religion is more intuitive and right-brained, theology is the rational attempt to understand religion and is more left-brained and logical.

    Whether you think science is rational and religion is not depends on your definition of reason. In medieval times, thinkers such as Anselm and Aquinas defined reason as the faculty which knows our place in the universe and that there are divine mysteries beyond human understanding.

However, science eventually predominated to the point where some scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, subscribe to positivism, the belief that only what can be proved by science is rational.

    The truth is that science, like religion, starts beyond reason and then becomes rational. Science is based on the faith that the universe is logical. No scientist would begin to do science if they did not have this faith, if they presupposed the universe is beyond understanding. The scientific search for the simplest theory is motivated by the belief that such a theory exists. Charles Townes, a Nobel Prize winner for physics, said: “Science is so successful, we are enthralled. Many people don’t realize that science involves assumptions and faith…nothing is absolutely proved.”

    Beyond that, science is increasingly coming face-to-face with mystery. The strange, logic-defying things quantum mechanics tells us happen at the subatomic level of the universe make Christian theology seem more and more reasonable by comparison. If you don’t reject science because it is full of mystery, incomplete knowledge, and paradox, why would you reject religion because it is also full of mystery, incomplete knowledge, and paradox?  

    When you plunge into the depths of religion, science, and the universe, you must first let go of rationality and be guided by intuition, imagination, wonder, and awe. However, religion, science, and the universe are all secondarily rational. Religion has theology, science has theories, and the universe has material and spiritual laws.

    Dawkins believes that science and religion are opposites, with science totally rational and religion totally irrational. However, they are on parallel paths of trying to understand the universe, and at a deep level, the differences are superficial.            

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

The Power of Detachment in Relationships

    What most people are looking for in a relationship, whether inside or outside of marriage, is someone who is totally attached to them: completely committed and passionately in love. 

    While we tend to think of detachment negatively, as disinterest, aloofness, or lack of feeling, exactly what we would not want in a relationship, if we look at it in a different way, it is an important virtue in any relationship, whether with God or another human being.

    Detachment in most world religions means “inner freedom.” Jesus never used the word but it was implicit in his spirituality: the ability to let go and let God. Detachment is about “not my will, but Thy will be done,” surrendering to the divine, putting your life in God’s hands.

    Detachment is a key Buddhist virtue, and Meister Eckhart, the great Christian mystic, believed that in relationship to God, detachment was more foundational than love. We cannot love God fully and unconditionally as long as we are clinging to our ego. Like the rich young man who chose not to give up his wealth and follow Jesus, our ego-attachments can block our love of God.

    Detachment is likewise crucial with human relationships. You cannot really love someone if you are attached to your agenda, how they should look or how the relationship or marriage should be. Your list of characteristics of the ideal mate: good-looking, healthy, wealthy, sexy, professional, romantic, etc may prevent you from appreciating someone right in front of you.

    The key to any relationship is acceptance, to accept your partner as they are, with all their faults, and to celebrate their differences from you, the things not on your list. Hopefully, they will also be detached from their agenda and accept you as you are with your faults and differences.

    The most important thing is to be attached only to God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments is that we should put God first in all things, nothing should come before God. It is crucial to put God before everything, including human relationships. Then you can exist in the single life, in a relationship, or in marriage in inner freedom.

    So many people are stressed-out about their relationships. If they are not in a relationship they are obsessed about when they are going to meet the right person. If they are in a relationship they are obsessed about where it is going or if it is going to end in marriage or not. If they are married they often wish their marriage was better, or wish they were not married at all. 

    It is very easy to let your attachment to a relationship or marriage get in the way of your relationship with God. I have known people who stopped attending their place of worship or gave up their spiritual practices or compromised their morals and self-esteem and basically sold their soul, all in an attempt to maintain a relationship. At that point the relationship has become an idol, that is, they have put it above their relationship with God.

    It is important to do your part to make a relationship or marriage work, but it is far more important to put God first, keep your integrity, not make the other person into an idol, and detach from the outcome. If you let go and let God, the outcome will always be better than if you cling to a relationship out of fear of being alone or some ego-need. 

    The relationship is going to end at some point anyway. Even if you get married it may end through separation, divorce, or death of your spouse. Besides that, God has called some people to be single, it is not God’s will that they be with someone. God has something greater in mind, some charitable work, social justice project, or mystical marriage, that is, marriage to God.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and marriage coach. www.brucetallman.com

Exploring Divine Love Amidst Human Pain

Why does God, who is supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, allow disasters? Why does God not prevent all accidents, illness, famine, and war? Why does God allow suffering in general?

       In 2005, some Christians maintained that, because New Orleans had a reputation for being “sin city,” God sent Hurricane Katrina to punish them. Pat Robertson, a US televangelist, claimed that God had punished Haiti with hurricanes and earthquakes for “making a pact with the devil.” A few centuries ago, John Wesley believed that the great Lisbon earthquake in the 1700s was God’s wrath against sin. 

       Such explanations must be categorically rejected. In the biblical story of the woman caught in adultery, when asked if she should be stoned to death as the Law of Moses demanded, Jesus replied, “Let the one who has never sinned cast the first stone.” All her accusers walked away because they knew they had sinned too. If God struck New Orleans, Haiti, or Lisbon for their sins, God would have to do the same to all of us. 

      God did not want or cause an earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest countries on our planet. A more widespread explanation for Haiti’s poverty and woes is that foreign countries rejected Haiti when its slaves revolted and gained independence, it has had a string of brutal and corrupt governments, and Haiti is geographically located in a hurricane zone and on a fault line.

       God does not want or cause suffering in general either. We know that God allows human freedom, which is the cause of most human suffering. God also allows a certain freedom in the natural world. Most of the time, nature serves us well, but natural laws will proceed even if humans are in the way. God did not cause the earthquake in Haiti, the shifting of tectonic plates did.

       Getting back to our question of why God allows suffering, we also have to ask: to what extent should God eliminate suffering? Should God eliminate all pain? Pain, which is part of nature, serves us well in most cases. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain tells you to withdraw it. If God eliminated our ability to feel pain, we would quickly destroy ourselves. Pain is also a great motivator. Most medical and social breakthroughs have come from seeking to alleviate or prevent pain.

       Most of us have experienced a broken heart from being spurned by someone we loved. To eliminate all pain, God would have to make us into robots who could not do unloving things like rejecting people. However, we would also be unable to love since love requires free choice. 

       Pain also serves us well spiritually. The ecstasy of gaining love and the pain of losing it make us more humble, wise, and compassionate. Suffering should not be glorified; no one should purposefully seek it. However, we can use it as a great teacher.

       Just as we suffer if our children suffer, God must suffer with us. In fact, that is what the cross, the central icon of Christianity, is all about. It declares that God knows what it is like to suffer as a human being. God suffers with us. The cross is the universal symbol that God is not in bliss, off somewhere else, while we suffer on earth. God is right in the middle of our pain. God is always on the side of the crucified, no matter what their nationality, race, or religion.

              Sometimes, though, the suffering is so senseless that there is no adequate explanation. As Rabbi Harold Kushner said long ago, sometimes all you can do is drop your theological explanations and be with people, hold them in your arms, and cry with them in their grief. That’s what God does. God does not leave us alone in our sorrow.

       The international response to Haiti was due to God moving people’s hearts and consciences to reach out and help take this crucified nation off its cross. The response has been like the beginnings of a resurrection: God overcoming horrific pain and death. Perhaps, Haiti will eventually be fully resurrected as a much safer and stronger nation than before. Let us all pray that this is what happens.

       Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and religious educator of adults. www.brucetallman.com

Boost Your Spiritual Growth with These Easy Practices

If you adopt any of the following suggestions, it will have a big impact on your spiritual growth.

    Get to know a homeless person and try to find out how they became homeless.

    Read the scriptures of another religion.

    Start the day with prayer, meditation, scripture reading, or any spiritual reading. It will set the tone for the day.

    At the end of the day, keep a spiritual diary and record where you met God that day or what God taught you. Record your prayers and review them later to see if they were answered.

    Use natural breaks in the day, like meals, coffee breaks, or when you shower, drive, exercise or wait in line to think of others in prayer.

    Extend your present daily spiritual practice from 15 to 30 minutes or 30 minutes to an hour.

    Adopt a child or family in a developing nation through World Vision or a local charity like Save-A-Family-Plan and develop a relationship by writing back when they write you.

    Volunteer to visit people in jail, read to the blind, be a friend to the mentally ill, or help prepare meals and clean up at a local church soup kitchen.

    Hire the person on the traffic island with the sign that says they will work for food or money.

    Attend the place of worship of your own faith regularly if you do not do so.

    Prepare yourself before going to your place of worship by praying or reviewing the readings beforehand.

    Visit the place of worship of another denomination. For example, if you are Presbyterian attend a Mennonite service.

    Visit the place of worship of another religion. Christians could attend a local mosque. Muslims could attend a synagogue.

    Get to know someone of a different religion and find out what they believe.

    Check out www.beliefnet.com, a vast website where you can learn about any spiritual or religious tradition and dialogue with those in it.

     Join an online prayer community like that at  www.sacredspace.ie. You can put your prayer requests out there and pray for the requests of others.

    Get to know the writings of a major spiritual thinker like Thich Nhat Hahn or Henri Nouwen.

    Do a “retreat at home.” Take a whole morning, afternoon, or evening once a week or once a month to pray or meditate more deeply.

    Attend a local retreat center like the Michaelite Fathers just outside London, or Five Oaks in Paris, Ontario.

    Get to know the Enneagram, a powerful tool for spiritual growth and awareness at http://www.enneagraminstitute.com.

    Learn new ways of praying, like Centering Prayer, Ignatian Prayer, Taize Prayer, or learn new ways of reading scripture, such as Lectio Divina.

    All these things will help you on your spiritual journey.

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

http://www.brucetallman.com

Deepening Spirituality: Wisdom from Modern Sages

The ideas below come from my ongoing reflections on the works of some of the greatest sages of the 20th and 21stcenturies, people like Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Merton, Ken Wilber, Karen Armstrong, and Richard Rohr. I think about their ideas until I make them my own, then rewrite them in my own words. Here are some of my favourites:

    A proof of God everyone can experience: we long for truth, freedom, goodness, and happiness and we long to have all these supreme goods to the max, which is what God is, so what we all long for is God.

    The loyalty of Jesus is not to Catholics or Protestants, Muslims or Buddhists, but to anyone who is suffering, whether believers or non-believers. Jesus is always on the side of the crucified.

    Religion gives wider meaning to our lives. It makes us realize we are children of God, not just producers and consumers.

    It is important to plumb the depths of at least one religious tradition. If you chase ten rabbits you catch none. If you dig ten shallow wells you never reach water.

    Full conversion is intellectual (wisdom), emotional (compassion), and moral (individual and social responsibility). Conversion is many-sided.

    Meaning is the bottom line in life, not money. Money is important, but life without meaning is not worth living.

    The truly religious do not take themselves too seriously. The ability to laugh at yourself is similar to humility. A sense of humour is a sign of spiritual health and holiness. It is the joy of the gospel.

    God does not want suffering. The only cause of suffering, beside human folly, is natural processes which are necessary in an evolving universe. Human folly is inevitable but unnecessary.

    Religion and spirituality are far more about intuition than reason. Theology is very rational, but reason is very limited. It does not understand the ways and reasons of the heart.

    Your relationship with others, particularly your partner, can be part of your spiritual practice.

    Your true self is love, peace, and joy, and so the only real sin is to act contrary to your true nature, to violate who you really are, to not let your own God-given holiness shine forth.

    Wisdom permeates everything, enters into our souls, and urges us to be friends of God. 

    God must be very familiar with letting go, because humans insist on being in control. God very seldom gets what God wants. This explains most of the problems of the world.

    The purpose of evolution is to bring everything to the point where compassion and wisdom can be born through humans, so that the survival of only the fittest no longer applies.

    Humans only live fully if freely joined to God. Therefore, God works by invitation not force.

    Jesus chose a child as the model of discipleship. If we lose the qualities of our inner child: humility, innocence, playfulness, creativity, and genuineness, we have essentially lost our soul.

    Mysticism, the profound experience of God, gives us the courage and energy to do justice.

    Our desires are God-given gifts meant for living life to the full. Contrary to Buddhist teaching, desire is not evil. It is good to desire good things. This is the Holy Spirit working in us.

    Most atheists think religious people are out of touch with reality. Most religious people think God is Reality, and therefore, atheists are out of touch with reality.

    What matters is not so much doctrine as internal transformation. Kindness and goodness are praised by all religions, humanists, and atheists. These virtues are what unite all people.

    Let no one delude themselves that knowledge of the path is an adequate substitute for walking in it. To know spiritual truth is one thing, to live it is quite another.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and an educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

What the world needs now is healthy masculinity

There is a lot of toxic masculinity floating around in the world these days. It most often shows itself socially as violence against women, and politically as dictatorship. People seem enthralled right now with the strong male who claims he will make everything right for their country. Putin and Trump exemplify this.

       Males have been in power for a long time, and in that time, they have done a lot of good – they have been responsible for most of the world’s medical, legal, political, and scientific advances. However, there is no denying they have also done a lot of damage – men have caused most wars and crimes.

       When healthy, every man has four basic instincts: to be a servant-leader, to defend the weak, to be wise, and to be loving. God has given these instincts to men as gifts to be used in the service of others.

       Carl Jung, the great 20th-century psychologist, found that these male instincts manifested in every age and every culture’s history, religion, mythology, and literature. This discovery led Jung to hypothesize that males must participate in a “collective unconscious,” and these instincts, which he called “archetypes,” are the contents of this vast unconscious mind.      

       In the contemporary literature on male spirituality, four archetypes have predominated: the Sovereign, Warrior, Seer, and Lover. These show up in a vast array of ways: the Sovereign manifests as the president, king, CEO, father, or pope; the Warrior is present as the soldier, policeman, sports hero, or prophet; the Seer shows up as the medical doctor, professor, minister, priest, or shaman; the Lover archetype can be seen in the musician, poet, contemplative, or worker for the poor.

    Healthy males keep all four archetypes in balance. When out of balance, the shadow male archetypes start to show up. The anti-Sovereign is the Tyrant, for example, the domineering boss, or the Abdicator – the absent father. The anti-Warrior is the Sadist – the terrorist or bully, or the Masochist – the victim. The anti-Seer is the Manipulator, for example, the negative politician, or the Fool – the men portrayed in television sitcoms and commercials. The anti-Lover is the Addict – to pornography, alcohol, or drugs, or the Frigid – the emotionally dead male.

       The male archetypes are not going to go away, they are hardwired into the male soul. We need the good archetypes to prevent the bad ones from manifesting. Boys need good role models such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Pope Francis, or the bad archetypes will take over. 

    Jesus had all four archetypes in perfection. Churches refer to him as priest (Seer), prophet (spiritual Warrior), and king (Sovereign), and he is the icon of the loving male (Lover).                      

    The world awaits the coming of males with all four archetypes in this perfect balance. Fortunately, there is an organization that is promoting this, The ManKind Project. It’s goal is to produce  healthy males, men who are kind, thus the “ManKind” name: (see http://www.mkp.org). The Project’s motto is “Changing the world one man at a time.” 

      This is a worldwide men’s liberation movement involving about 100,000 men who train other men in the healthy male archetypes. It is not a specifically religious movement, but it is deeply spiritual. Any man, religious or not, can join. I have been involved for over 25 years, and it has changed my life in numerous positive ways.

Bruce Tallman is the author of Archetypes for Spiritual Direction: Discovering the Heroes Within (Paulist Press, 2005). http://www.brucetallman.com.

Debunking Myths Between Catholicism and Anglicanism

Etiquette in interchurch dialogue nowadays prescribes emphasizing your own church’s weaknesses and the other church’s strengths. However, Connie Woodcock, an Anglican, breached this in attacking the Catholic Church based on stereotypes in “Thanks but no thanks, Pope Benedict.” Bob Ripley, a United Church of Canada minister, was much more balanced in “Rome bends rules in a conservative way,” but even with him, a few stereotypes slipped through.

       In the interests of reconciling Protestants and Catholics, it needs to be said that, while there is some truth in both sides’ stereotypes of the other, the reality is far more complex.

       Before I begin attacking stereotypes on both sides, I want to note “the sudden invitation to become a Roman Catholic while remaining Anglican” was not an “ill-conceived attempt at church poaching” as Woodcock claimed. It was simply the Pope’s response to numerous requests from Anglicans. Also, the format Benedict proposed is not new. Ukrainian Catholics, who are part of the Catholic Church, have their own distinct liturgy, and their priests can marry, but bishops are celibate.

       Woodcock’s first stereotype about “why Catholicism turns us off” is “the Pope’s infallibility.” Ripley likewise said, “The authority of the Pope is, of course, non-negotiable.” The reality is Catholics consider 99.99% of what the Pope says to be “authoritative,” not “infallible,” and we are taught to follow our own informed conscience, not blind obedience.

       Woodcock also complains about Catholicism’s treatment of women with “second-class standing.” The reality is that every priest is aware that most Catholic parishes would not survive without the immense contribution of women.

       Woodcock rails against Catholic teaching on birth control, but the reality is the Catholic church promotes the Billings method of natural family planning which is quite safe and effective in preventing unwanted conception.

       She also derides “top-down imposition,” but the reality is that Catholic lay people regularly give their input to priests and bishops in parish and diocesan councils. Woodcock states that in Anglicanism, there is “lots of room for varying shades of opinion,” whereas she seems to think Catholicism is one monolithic block. The reality is there are social justice people, evangelicals, liberals, conservatives, charismatics, intellectuals, prophets, and mystics of every kind all inside the Catholic Church.

       On the other hand, Catholics often hold the stereotype that the Anglican faith originated with Henry VIII, but the reality is that the Church in England was one of the earliest established, and Henry merely built upon what already existed.

       Catholics also have the stereotype that the United Church of Canada is exceedingly liberal, anything goes, and there is no central authority. The reality is there are many conservative United Churchers, and the church is governed by a central General Council that sets policy for it every three years.

       All Christians would be much more tolerant of each other if we focused on reality rather than stereotypes.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director. www.brucetallman.com

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