NB: an earlier version of this post was published as a comment at JuicyEcumenism.com
The United Church of Canada has been in the news this week, since its general council meeting has elected a new (and gay) moderator and passed resolutions on a number of social and environmental issues. Some writers (as reported by Charles Lewis in his recent article in the National Post, " Political stances on Israel putting the United Church at risk: study", or Mark Tooley in his post "The Imploding and Very Liberal United Church of Canada" on the conservative Christian blog "Juicy Ecumenism") suggest that we persistently put liberal social values ahead of theological consistency, to the detriment of our membership numbers and ultimately of our church. Mark Tooley, for example, argued that our outgoing moderator couldn't even say what the central beliefs of the United Church were, and pointed out that we have a minister who's an outspoken atheist, and another who says publicly that we concentrate on social issues to the detriment of theology.
But it seems to me that the authors of these articles, particularly when they choose this sort of evidence to back their arguments, don't grasp what, for me, has always been the central tenet of the United Church - not adherence to liberal social values, but commitment to non-hierarchical organization.
I’m a member of the United Church and have been all my life, though I’ve flirted with other denominations from time to time. Anglicans have great music; Catholics have great mystics; but I always come home. And it's that lack of hierarchy that keeps me coming back.
The United Church gives a high degree of autonomy to individual congregations and to individuals within congregations. We’re expected to use our own minds and to find out for ourselves what faith means, and continually discuss and find ways to agree, or to disagree without flying apart. The original structure of the church made this necessary (since it was a union of several churches whose theology didn’t perfectly align). The Moderator doesn’t speak for all of us or tell us what we do or should think; he, or she, speaks for him or herself on matters of individual faith. The job of the Moderator is to keep us from flying apart through centrifugal force. So far our Moderators have done a great job.
So we can have an openly atheist minister (Gretta Vosper). Faith is a journey, and in my experience it is undulatory. At times we have more and at times we have less, and we can trust God to support us through our process. Rev. Vosper speaks as a member of the United Church, and one we welcome; but she speaks for herself.
We can have another minister, Rev. Connie denBok, who thinks we forgot about Jesus in the 70′s because we got too involved in social justice (as reported in by Charles Lewis in "The Split in the United Church" (National Post). It is her honest opinion, but it’s only one. She speaks as a member of the Church, and as a highly educated and thoughtful observer, but she speaks for herself. She does not speak for me, or her congregation, or the United Church as a whole. Some people may agree with her; others won't. (I don’t, because I don’t think we forgot about Jesus. But that’s me.)
We can have a Moderator who denies the divinity of Christ (though it's not clear that we ever did). He doesn’t speak for me or for most of the Church. The Moderator's job is not to teach the members theology or to tell us what we should believe. His job is to tell the truth as he sees it, and carry on the work of the church. He did a fine job.
The whole point of the United Church is that we believe that Christians can see God, Jesus and their own faith from widely different perspectives and still be part of the same church, and still be carrying on the same glorious duty, every single one of us (even the atheist) still loving God and forming part of Christ’s body. In the United Church is not my job, or my minister's, or the Moderator's, or indeed anyone’s, to tell my neighbour what or how she should believe. It's our job to help each other find our way, not to dictate what that way should be.
Our outgoing Moderator, Mardi Tindal, was perfectly capable of telling the reporter what the central beliefs of the United Church are – the Creed is right here – but she, like other Moderators, does not presume to tell the members of the church what they should believe or how (as she explains). Faith is a personal matter, and a process, and it is for each individual between themselves and God. The United Church supports its members in our daily efforts to open our hearts to God and to magnify God’s grace in the world, however we are called to do that. This is surely, for me at least, the primary thing a church should do. I have faith that we all, individually and as congregations and denominations, are participants in the ongoing life of the body of Christ on Earth, of which the United Church's non-hierarchical, inclusive "big tent" approach is a vital part.
