This is the Nicene Creed:

1. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
2. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.
3. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
4. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
5. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
6. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
7. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.*
8. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
9. He has spoken through the Prophets.
10. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
11. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
12. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Word count: 223
Points: 12 (although I guess that depends on how you divide it up)

Bear in mind that this statement was written in a time when Christian orthodoxy was taking considerable pains to define itself in such a way as to avoid heresy. A lot of thought and planning went into this creed, and yet there it is; elegant, simple, clear and above all, succinct. If the above describes your faith, and you’re not being sneaky with any of your words, using hidden meanings or anything like that, you simply mean what you say, then as far as your beliefs go, you’re a Christian. That’s what this Creed was designed to determine. Simple.
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This is a brief comment on something that just caught my eye and jogged my memory. Every now and then someone points out that affiliation with a Christian church has declined steeply over the last half century in New Zealand. Now, I’m not the sort of myopic person to think that trends in my own neighbourhood are global indicators of anything. But my other and perhaps more interesting thought is that this shows much less than one might suppose. The nature of the relationship between Christian faith and official membership of a denomination has shifted significantly. The reality is that this generation, as opposed to that of the mid twentieth century, is much less likely to see official membership as important. This is all the more so in large evangelical or Pentecostal churches where the question of church membership might never even arise.

It was interesting to see this thought reflected in an article in the LA Times today, citing a study that illustrates the fact that a decline in church affiliation is not the result of a lack of religious conviction in young people.

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Time to wax theological just a little. More or less all Christians in the Western world – and plenty of people who aren’t Christians as well, are familiar with Pentecostalism. It’s a brand of Christianity born at the beginning of the twentieth century with a strong emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and also the gifts of the Holy Spirit, with a special emphasis on what they refer to as the “gift of tongues.” I might say more about that another time, but for now I just want to comment briefly on the Pentecostal emphasis on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and the way that it relates (or does not relate) to the New Testament.
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Just recently I blogged on the billboard erected by St Matthew-in-the-city. I said at the time that it was an act of desperation from a brand of religion that wants to effectively give up its religious nature but still retain its spot in the church, jettisoning anything that might connect it to (eeeew) Christianity, and trying to be hip and risque by poking crass fun at Christianity itself.

Although whoever comes up with ideas like this is apparently in the bizarre headspace where he/she thinks that the non-Christian world will admire this, the reality is somewhat different. For quite some time now I have consistently noticed that such tactics never achieve the stated (although probably false) goal of “getting people to think” or “encouraging serious dialogue” about faith in the modern world. Claiming Christianity while rejecting God and virtually everything that the Christian faith teaches does not make people look credible. It makes them look ridiculous. Genuine sceptics toward Christianity simply see straight through these attempts to be relevant as a way of selling out and living a ruse.

While I don’t share her take on the meaning of Christmas (largely because it sounds like she attributes no theological importance to it at all – and because of her heretical comment about guitars in church), I did appreciate the comments of the ever lovely Kerre Woodham in the New Zealand Herald:

I do wish churches would get back to core business and start laying down the moral law, delivering thundering nightmare-inducing sermons and ministering to the poor.

My dad always said no good would come of allowing guitars and folk songs into services, and he was right. All this faffing around trying to be edgy and relevant is embarrassing. It’s like watching your parents dance.

St Matthew-in-the-City is the latest culprit, with its Saatchi & Saatchi-generated billboard depicting a dejected looking Joseph and a disappointed Mary in bed. The caption read: “Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow.” Implying, of course, that God is the Man – capital “M” – in the sack and Joseph is a poor second.

The billboard has generated much debate, with some saying it’s offensive and others saying religious maniacs need to lighten up. Predictably, Family First is in the offended camp.

But really, Bob McCroskrie’s great-great-grandfather was probably the first man to cover the legs of pianos in Victorian England, so as not to offend the sensibilities of the ladies. The Catholic Church had a milder response, saying the billboard was inappropriate and disrespectful.

On the other hand, archdeacon Glynn Cardy is beside himself with excitement, saying the agency has fulfilled the brief. He says the church wanted to get people to think more about the meaning of Christmas. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst, as seen in Jesus?

Although I don’t think the billboard was especially offensive, I think it was probably just a bit too arch. I don’t know about you, but Christmas has never been about God and sperm. It’s a time to be with people you love, sharing what you have with those who might need a bit of help and for me, it’s about doing a moral stock take. How much have I done for others this year, and what more could I do? Not wondering whether bodily fluids were ever mingled between God and Mary – or for that matter, Joseph and Mary. St Matthew-in-the-City prides itself on being “at the progressive end of the Christian continuum”, but the way it’s promoting itself, its future seems more assured as a venue for fashion shows rather than a place of worship.

[Emphasis added]

As one person said on St Matthew’s website: “Glynn Cardy, As one atheist to another, take my advice: get yourself out of the Church and try working for a living.” People can see straight through the absurdity of rejecting everything that makes Christianity distinctively Christian while trying to retain a position among its ranks (and even drawing a paycheck from it!). In spite of the claims about encouraging thought and discussion, the stunt has not worked. It has caused a lot of people to notice how antithetical to Christianity the action was, it has caused umbrage among plenty of Christians, and it has sent the liberal defenders of such messages to become extremely defensive, disappointed that the outcome – amazingly – was not in their favour. In a word, “duh.” This self-serving publicity gimmick failed to get anyone talking seriously about the meaning of christmas. It failied to stir up any genuine theological discussion of any kind, as far as I can tell. All it did (as was probably the plan all along) was to get people talking about Glynn Cardy and his church. Well, he got it, in spite of the fact that he might not have liked the way it turned out. That anyone at St Matthews might have hoped for anything other than what they got just demonstrates how painfully out of touch with reality they really are.

Glenn Peoples

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St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church in downtown Auckland offended a few people with a Christmas billboard.

I can’t think how…

Archdeacon Glynn  Cardy dubs the church’s brand of faith as “Progressive Christianity.” It’s a faith that “believes the Christmas stories are fictitious accounts designed to introduce the radical nature of the adult Jesus.” What’s surprising is that the Rev Cardy actually appears to think that this is a good humoured lampoon against traditional, orthodox Christianity. As everyone knows, historic Christianity teaches that God had sex with Mary, right?

How can ludicrous caricatures like this possibly portray liberal/progressive Christianity as anything other than juvenile and ignorant (or perhaps dishonest, misrepresenting the faith of others so as to burn a straw man). Click the link at the start of this post, and what you’ll see, unfortunately, is more of the same misrepresentation and false bravado at the courage involved in crass religious humour.

The billboard didn’t last, and has been vandalised already, little more than five hours after it went up. I’m no fan of vandalism of course, but people can hardly be amazed here. Imagine a billboard along the lines of “Jews, for the last time: It’s just a wall. Get over it” or “Ah, Hillary Clinton. Imagine thinking that a woman could become anything.” It would hardly wash to say “All we really want is to lampoon women,” or “But we were only making fun of Jews. JEWS!” It’s an ironic twist that in a rather self serving defence, maintining that Jesus is all about accepting the rejects and rejecting the powerful, this church is actually offering a justification for attempting to publicly make fun of mainstream Christianity and write it off as “fundamentalist,” apparently banking on the fact that it will be unpopular (rejected?) enough that not too many people will care.

The fact is, so called “progressive” Christianity has few reservations about stunts like this because it has little to offer and is somewhat desparate. Within, for example the Presbyterian and Anglican churches here in New Zealand, they are losing the war and are a shrinking voice, fading into the oblivion of obscurity. By contrast, evangelical congregations are on the rise and at a national level the decisions being made are more in keeping with traditional Christian belief than ever before in the last 30 years. People are (for what I take to be obvious reasons) taking seriously the fact that it’s frankly a bit facile to expect to be given church resources as well as recognition as a Christian movement while denying more or less all of the truth claims of the Christian faith, from the resurrection of Jesus to the virgin birth, or even in many cases the very existence of God.

It isn’t a surprise that the churches that are experiencing growth are the evangelical churches that do not try to divorce the moral aspects of Christianity from its claims about reality. I have no reason to think that attention-seeking tactics like these are going to change that.

Glenn Peoples

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Pope Benedict: "Come on in, the water's lovely!"

There are Christians in the world who sincerely believe that if only Christianity would be come more liberal and “with the times,” renouncing traditional and unpopular doctrines and practices, it would gain more respect for its “relevance.” They are wrong, plain and simple. For a skeptic to observe a religion that holds beliefs that he regards as false, that’s one thing.  For a skeptic to observe a religious person who wants to keep his name tag so that it can have continuity with a historical movement, but who is frankly so embarrassed by what it teaches that he wants to water it down, hide less acceptable aspects of it, change some bits to try and make it look more palatable to those who reject it outright, end up with something that the skeptic still thinks isn’t really true, but now thinking that it’s going to look better to an unbelieving world because it’s relevant – that’s a spectacle of a whole other kind (and not in a good way).

I make no secret of my Protestantism, and my grounds for being one are very conservative and old fashioned. But this I know: Whatever theological baggage you might think the Catholic church may have taken on board over the years, they are pretty faithful when it comes to not jettisoning beliefs just because they aren’t popular. There’s something basically respectable there: No BS, you accept the faith or you don’t, but it aint changing to suit you. As numerous Christian movements go the way of trying to change in the mistaken belief that it will help their survival, disllusioned members of those movements may quite understandably look to Catholicism for a contrast.

The Pope knows this. He, like plenty of other Catholics, Anglicans, and Christians in general, knows that Anglicanism isn’t what it used to be. The current Archbishop of Canterbury, along with numerous changes (or perhaps reductions) in belief and practice in recent decades, are testimony to a liberal shift in a movement that is experimenting with survival tactics. Individual congregations do provide welcome exceptions, yes, and I don’t want to overlook that. But an an official level, it aint pretty. This is an opportunity for Catholicism, and they aren’t missing it.

The Church of England may see a “flood” of traditionalist members moving to the Roman Catholic Church following an offer by Pope Benedict XVI to welcome Anglican priests and worshippers, a religious group said.

The Vatican said yesterday it has set up a special structure to integrate Anglicans and enable the faith’s married priests to become Catholic clerics.

“It could well be a flood, provided the terms and conditions are favorable,” said Stephen Parkinson, director of the Anglican traditionalist group Forward in Faith. As many as 1,000 priests could convert, he said today in a telephone interview. “We haven’t seen the fine print yet.”

The offer may be the most important step toward unity between the two churches since they split in 1534 over Pope Clement VII’s refusal to grant King Henry VIII an annulment to his marriage. Traditionalist Anglicans have threatened to quit their church over the ordination of female bishops and acceptance of homosexual bishops and same-sex unions.

The Vatican’s new structure for Anglicans, dubbed “personal ordinariates,” would allow married Anglican clergymen to be ordained as Catholic priests, though not as bishops.

SOURCE

It’s not only a very smart move, but also one that will improve the priesthood by reintroducing the existence of married priests (the unwarranted prohibition on marriage among preists has, I am certain, contributed to way too many scandals in the church). It’s not a change in policy on clerical marriage, but it’s a start.

It’s official. Se the Vatican’s statement HERE.

(Hat tip to NZ Conservative. See also the discussion on this over at Being Frank.)

Glenn Peoples

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"Bishop" Brian Tamaki

It’s not common to find a well resourced and organised, well presented, enthusiastically socially proactive, theologically conservative (for the most part) and outspoken Christian church in New Zealand. The combination of all four is a rare commodity. So in recent history when Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church showed up, it naturally attracted a lot of attention, both good and bad. It was all of those things – plus a few other things. But in part because of those four things all together, it was like a lighthouse for a number of disenfranchised Christians who felt that other churches really weren’t going to make the kind of difference they wanted to see.

Added to this package, however, were a few other things – things often seen as the darker side of some Pentecostal churches. There had always been an intense focus on the church’s leadership, in this case just one man, Brian Tamaki, who took the title “bishop” in spite of the church not having an episcopal leadership model. All of the church’s publicity, including its own television broadcasts, were centred on one individual. Mr Tamaki was at the centre not because of any qualifications that made him knowledgeable or especially skilled at anything in particular, but rather because of the belief that he is God’s chosen man. A very strong emphasis in Mr Tamaki’s teaching on submission to church leadership (I’ll never forget – “If you don’t have a pastor, you’re heading for disaster”) was also a concern for many, as it raised the spectre of unquestionable authority, or at very least the sustained focus on such submission suggested an unhealthy imbalance towards human authority. It’s also a common feature in charismatic movements like this – and Destiny is no exception – that a great deal of authority to teach the Christian faith is vested in those who at times almost seem to flaunt the fact that they have no theological training. Such, we might be told sometimes, is the stuff of old stuffy religious people in ivory towers, all we really need is a strong leadership above us, a leadership that is in touch with God. In the eyes of many, it’s like a 16 year old boy with no licence being given the fastest car in town. A respect for one’s teaching that has not been earned, but which is taken very seriously by the flock.
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In Perth in the year 1559, John Knox preached a sermon that is credited by some with kick starting the Reformation in Scotland. Knox aroused the parishioners to destroy the religious idols and graven images of the saints in their churches. In reaction to the uproar, Mary of Guise sent troops to lay siege to Perth, but in defence of the new protestants, Alexander Cunningham, 5th Earl of Glencairn, defeated Mary’s troops by leading a force of 2,500 soldiers against them. These were stirring times where people were prepared to pay the ultimate price for their convictions.

Four and a half centuries later (today, in fact), I visited Knox Presbyterian church here in Dunedin, named after the Scottish Reformer himself. If you’re lucky enough to visit what is really a lovely church, here’s what you’ll see. First, before you enter the front door, you’re greeted with this:

It’s a bust of the Rev Dr D M Stuart, the conservative first minister of Knox church.

Once you enter the church, here is the stained glass window that dominates the view:

Click on the image for a larger view. Along with the four evangelists, the stained glass image features St. Andrew (Patron Saint of Scotland) and St. Margaret (11th Century Queen of Scotland). The figure on the bottom right is D M Stuart, and the man on the bottom left? John Knox himself.

Make a sentence out of the following words: his in grave Knox is turning John.

Glenn Peoples

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I found this on my hard drive. It’s a short piece I wrote back in 2005, shortly after the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

The Pope: Do They Love Him or Hate Him?

Moral Integrity vs Popular Tokenism

On Friday the 8^th of April (New Zealand Time), the city of Rome saw its biggest funeral of all time, the funeral of Karol Jozef Wojtyla, better known to the world as Pope John Paul the second.

I watched with interest as current affairs show Campbell Live interviewed from Rome funeral attendee Catherine Hebblethwaite, co-author of The Next Pope. She explained, as host John Campbell nodded in agreement, that while many millions of people may have disagreed with the Pope’s teaching on moral issues, they nonetheless all looked up to him as a “great moral figure” worthy of respect and admiration. In fact this is not an isolated perspective. From a wide range of people, politicians, celebrities and Hollywood stars, religious figures and so forth, the message is fairly consistent. “While we disagree with his views, we think he is a great moral ‘figure’.” Well actually, that’s half true. People usually don’t say that they disagree with his views now that he’s dead, they just happen to have spent the last decade vilifying them.

Just how much sense does this really make?

What does it take to make somebody a great moral teacher, leader or figure? Presumably, one would think, it has something to do with a person’s take on moral issues. If the stances that a person takes are moral, and if they teach and encourage their admirers to uphold moral virtue and avoid moral vice, then they’re a great moral teacher. Right? If some aging Palestinian went around telling all his followers to go to crowded transport terminals and blow themselves up, or if a writer encouraged all his readers to molest children, or if he preached to the masses and urged them to burn down the homes of black people, we wouldn’t call him a great moral teacher. He would have to preach a message that we really do embrace and consider moral. He would have to be a person who upholds what we consider to be morally virtuous and noble. He could not be somebody who taught against the moral values that we hold dear, or we would not consider him moral.

What is it about the Pope then, that makes leaders like Helen Clark, along with Hollywood celebrities and just about everyone else, say that he was a great moral teacher or leader? What is it about him that appeals to their moral senses?

Could it be the way the Pope shared their commitment to personal sexual autonomy, and how he managed to avoid the shackles of traditional sexual mores when it comes to stuffy old institutions like Christian marriage? Maybe it was the way he said that all relationship choices as equally valid, regardless of whether one comes to embrace heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or anything else? Perhaps they think his morals were top-notch because of the way he viewed a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy on the grounds of her right to use her body as she sees fit? Or perhaps they were attracted to his stance on sexual safety, how he agreed with them that condoms save lives and provide the answer to avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, rather than prattling on about outdated moral artefacts like abstinence. Yes, it’s just obvious why so many people praise this moral figure. Clearly he spoke their mind!

There is the odd exceptional person who is honest about it all. Some people realize that it’s dishonest to go about moping and mourning the loss of a “great moral teacher” while believing that he was really a moral idiot who got just about everything wrong as far as morality is concerned. Occasionally you’ll hear somebody say, “Why are we sobbing in the streets over the inevitable death of a man who, in reality, didn’t have much time for those of us who didn’t toe his company line?”¹

But where are the Hollywood celebrities who say “The Pope claimed that abortion is morally on par with murder. He condemned the homosexual lifestyle as immoral. He said that women ought not to be priests. He believed that abstinence, rather than condoms, is the way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. He said that people who have sex outside of marriage are sinning. Yes, he really was a great moral teacher.” It’s strange that while we hear all this trendy talk about what a great moral figure he was, we never hear about which aspects of his morality made him so great. It seems Hollywood stars and Helen Clark have one thing in common: They know which side of their bread gets the butter. If they tell the truth about what they think about the Pope’s moral teaching, they’ll end up calling him a bigot, and they’ll be unpopular. So instead they opt for some suitably vague patronising rubbish about what a great moral figure the guy was, in the hopes that people will saw “aww, they really do care!”

Before anybody gets all up-in-arms at me for having a go at a nice old man who has just died, I’m not. I’m having a go at people who say that they are sad at the Pope’s death because he was a great moral figure, when in reality they think he was a morally twisted bigot. I think the pope was a great moral teacher because I think, generally speaking, that he was correct in the moral views he upheld. That’s the difference between having moral integrity when you say that somebody was a good man, and being a hypocrite who bows to popular politically correct token gestures and poseurism. Say what you mean, the public is not so stupid that we don’t know it already.

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Thanks Dee Dee for bringing this story to my attention.

A former board member of the Lakewind Church in Tennessee has sued the church and its pastors, saying that he was injured when he fell after the spirit took him during a church service.

According to the complaint, Matthew Lincoln was participating in the evening service at the church when a visiting minister touched his forehead after Lincoln came to the altar.  “Mr. Lincoln received the spirit and fell backwards striking the carpet-covered cement floor . . ., causing him to sustain severe and permanent injuries.”  Lincoln alleges that the fall aggravated a pre-existing back injury, rendering him unable to work.

I find this to be (apart from hilarious) rather revealing. It wasn’t the pentecostal leaders who made him fell – right? It wasn’t peer pressure, his own silly expectations or the desire to look spiritual in front of his peers. Right? It was the Holy Spirit – Right Mr Lincoln?

So why is he suing the church? They didn’t make the Holy Spirit do this, did they? Why isn’t he suing God for the 2.5 million dollars he is seeking?

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