Posted by
Catmman on Thursday, March 27, 2008 2:50:16 PM
What do you call people who take Jesus, God, or any mention of the Divinity out of their "religious services"? Christians? Atheists? Morons?
That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today – Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto's West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across the country.
But at West Hill on the faith's holiest day, it will be done with a huge difference. The words “Jesus Christ” will be excised from what the congregation sings and replaced with “Glorious hope.”
Thus, it will be hope that is declared to be resurrected – an expression of renewal of optimism and the human spirit – but not Jesus, contrary to Christianity's central tenet about the return to life on Easter morning of the crucified divine son of God.
Generally speaking, no divine anybody makes an appearance in West Hill's Sunday service liturgy.
It’s Easter without God and Jesus Christ! What a breakthrough! Now all we need is a Toronto Argonauts game on the telly, and the West Hill congregation won’t have any reason to attend at all.
The pastor, Rev. Gretta Vosper, has had it with “Big God-ism” and wants to turn the West Hill United Church into a New Age encounter group. Vosper says that the world has outgrown Jesus Christ and the church is finished unless it gives up God, Jesus, and pretty much the entire Bible, except possibly for the Sermon on the Mount. Her new book, With or Without God, makes plain her hostility to the tenets of Christianity over the last two millenia and the need to replace God with Human.
So. We now have a "church" (presumably including not only the Pastor, but also the congregation) who has made no bones about replacing Christianity with Secular Humanism and New Age mysticism. Continuing...
She wants salvation redefined to mean new life through removing the causes of suffering in the world. (not Eternal resurrection of the body and spirit, to never die again. Made possible through the atonement and resurrection of the Savior). She wants the church to define resurrection as “starting over,” “new chances.” (not The reuniting of the body of flesh and bones with the spirit for eternity. Made possible because of Christ's triumph over death). She wants an end to the image of God as an intervening all-powerful authority who must be appeased to avoid divine wrath; rather she would have congregations work together as communities to define God – or god – according to their own worked-out definitions of what is holy and sacred. She wants the eucharist – the symbolic eating and drinking of Jesus's body and blood to make the congregation part of Jesus's body – to be instead a symbolic experience of community love. (not the central act of worship in many Christian churches, which was instituted at the Last Supper and in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed in remembrance of Jesus's death).
Speechless.