You don’t have to believe in God to be a Christian minister. This Deep Thought of the Day is the religious expression of progressive leftism’s decades-long dedication to empty social platitudes in place of higher values of substance. [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]She doesn’t use God-language and Christological formulas or believe in key Christian principles …[/perfectpullquote]
An atheist minister is being kept on by the United Church of Canada in a move being welcomed as “an important gift” to a denomination rapidly losing any and all relevance. The “Reverend” Gretta Vosper had faced an ecclesiastical court hearing over her standing as a church minister because of the seemingly relevant fact that she is a self-professed atheist. But the church and Vosper now have reached an agreement that allows her to retain her position.
Godless Woman of God
A column in the UC Observer, a publication partially financed by the United Church, predictably hails this bizarre development. In doing so, it provides further proof that basic logic and sheer common sense are no barriers to the advancement of mush-minded progressive thought.
“She doesn’t use God-language and Christological formulas or believe in key Christian principles: divine omnipotence, the Trinity, the virgin birth, to mention only a few,” Christopher Levan writes of Vosper. “And that bothers many who can’t imagine how someone, claiming to be an ‘atheist,’ could also minister in a Christian denomination. We’d like her to sound like ‘us,’ and if she couldn’t abide by our Basis of Union, she can’t be part of us.”
Gretta Vosper
Levan isn’t pointing out the obvious. He’s mocking those who would dare to question Vosper’s ordination as a godless “reverend.”
In his eagerness to regurgitate the banal formulas of “diversity” and “inclusion,” this frighteningly pre-programmed automaton lampoons the concept that a community of believers would expect its religious leaders to share the most rudimentary faith tenets of those they minister.
Randomly throwing President Trump into the mix – because he has replaced Satan (not mandatory to believe in) as the embodiment of spiritual evil for these people – Levan goes on to pepper even more leftist inanity into his argument.
Having an atheist minister “is an important gift in the current context where populist politicians play on our fears, preaching an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy,” he writes. “Now isn’t the time for lines in the sand or walls that divide us. How many United Church lawn signs proclaim: ‘All are welcome’? We have again made that real. Amen!”
Was this wooden script written by a human being or an AI bot?
Empty Vessels
Progressive Christians, of course, can profess whatever beliefs they like, no matter how incoherent. It is remarkable, though, that they can’t grasp that watering down religious belief to the point of meaninglessness strips a church of the very authenticity it so desperately wants to claim. It constantly amazes me that progressives fail to understand this simple point as they subvert and conquer previously respected institutions. Yes, you can add girls to the Boy Scouts. But they’re not the Boy Scouts anymore. How hard is that to get?
The United Church has lost more than half its membership since it started embracing leftist beliefs, like so many other Christian denominations, in the 1960s. By allowing an atheist to serve as a consecrated minister, it has lost all meaning as a Christian denomination. The church showcases its completely pointless teachings on its official website. “The Bible is the shared standard for our faith, but members are not required to adhere to any particular creed or formulation of doctrine,” stupefyingly pronounces the church.
Which of course is the goal of such false ministers as Vosper. What she wants most of all is to transform Christianity into a branch of secular humanism that retains the respect and devotion of religious belief. Faith without faith. Vosper wrote up her empty vision of an atheistic “church” in a 2016 article published by The Times Literary Supplement. It summarizes the heart of what can be called her belief system and deserves to be quoted at length:
But there are valuable elements of social cohesion that can be traced to religious affiliation and which are worth pursuing. For better or for worse, religion has been, through much of our history, what wove the moral fabric of our communities. It brought us together, bound us to one another with ritual and symbol, reminded us of our importance in the story of our world, bequeathed our sacred truths to the next generation and the next, helped us to create meaningful lives in our broken world, and made us accountable to each other even as we were accountable to our gods. We thought those things were central to religion but, in truth, they were central to our humanity.
What Vosper calls for here is reaping the good fruits that so long came with authentic Christian belief but minus the hard work that comes with practicing that annoying authentic Christian belief. Like so many modern materialists, she mistakes the trappings of religion with the core supernatural forces that give meaning to believers’ lives. In this, she echoes the mindless prattle of high-profile cafeteria Catholic politicians like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who champions abortion while professing to cherish a faith that proscribes baby murder in the harshest of terms.
