© Revd Rex A E Hunt
Director,
The Centre for Progressive Religious Thought, Canberra
May 2004
An address given at the North Ryde Informal Fellowship, Sydney, NSW
PIONEERS OF PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY
When we decided to establish The Centre for Progressive Religious Thought in Canberra in 2002, it was not only in response to what we felt we heard in much of Jack Spong’s writings, but for me it was also a personal trip back to my theological roots.
When I was a theological student back in the mid 1960s I was introduced to the thinking of one of America’s great theologians - Henry Nelson Wieman. As a result of that introduction his thought very quickly became part of my life. Wieman was a former professor from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, and in one of his books, The wrestle of religion with truth, his second one actually, published in 1927, in the opening chapter he says:
“With respect to religion there are three classes of people: the religious
rationalizers, the irreligious rationalizers and the religiously inquisitive.
The first class may think about religion from the outside to defend it; the second class may think about it from the outside to destroy it. But only the third class thinks about it from the inside with a view to discovering precisely what may be the good of it. It alone honestly inquires into its validity, its conditions and consequences...” (Wieman 1927:35).
Seeking to explain his comments a bit more, Wieman went on the describe, in general terms, each class or group.
The first group, the religious rationalizers, are generally very devout and earnest people. They acquired their religion in childhood or youth, or in some profound experience later in life, and it is a very precious thing. But it is complete and finished. They have nothing more to learn about it. They have only to enjoy it and use it.
All their religious discussions are not forms of inquiry but devises for stimulating further experiences. Anything that has the hint of intellectual investigation about it and which is then applied to their religion, they bitterly resent.
The second group, the irreligious rationalizers, also refuse to enter into any form of inquiry. Some of them studied it, in Sunday or boarding school, but it was presented in such a way they became sick and tired of it. For them it is a frightful bore, a foolish superstition, an evil influence.
On the other hand, the third group, the religiously inquisitive, are intellectually alive. They do not think merely in order to defend. They think in order to understand. Wieman says:
“Religion may be no less precious to them than to the first group, but for them the most precious things are subjects for investigation” (Wieman 1927:37).
And again - and please excuse the non inclusive language:
“... the first class, the devout and unthinking, have been the happiest,
strongest and most effective of religious folk... For as soon as a man begins to think about anything, it begins to change for him. It takes on diverse shapes and hues. It swims about like a fish in the sea. Only if he refuses to think about his religion... can it remain unchanged like sardines in a can.
“But the man who thinks about his religion will not find it always the same. Like fish in the stream it not only changes but it may come and go... It is plain that he must live a much more adventurous life of the spirit than do the devoutly unthinking” (Wieman 1927:37-38).
Those of us shaped by a progressive theology know, in the current theological climate - especially in this city (Sydney) with its two fundamentalist bishops building bunkers of exclusiveism all over the place - that we do live “a much more adventurous life” if we want to swim against the tide and not turn into a sardine!
But the exciting thing about all this is that we don’t have to begin back at scratch because there have been several ‘progressive pioneers’ who have gone this way before us. So let me very briefly remind us all of some of those who are our pioneers of the progressive faith, here in Australia.
While my mentor Henry Nelson Wieman was publishing, and pushing boundaries, an import to Australia from Scotland, the Revd Dr Samuel Angus, professor of New Testament and Church History at St Andrew’s College, Sydney, was also making waves of his own. His 1923 address delivered to a Student Christian Movement conference provoked controversy and aroused the opposition of theological fundamentalists. For 20 years the battle raged within the then Presbyterian Church in NSW, right up to his death in 1943.
Angus’ crime: in the words of a fundamentalist today, “he rejected all the major doctrines of Christianity including the Trinity and the Inspiration of Scripture. Unfortunately they lacked the numbers to take decisive action against him” (sgeard@farmwide.com.au).
Fifty years later, in 1992, again at St Andrew’s College, Sydney, another import from Scotland, Revd Dr Peter Cameron was charged with and found guilty of, heresy. His crime: preaching a sermon “supporting the principle that women should be ordained..., (and) argued a case that the Bible had to be understood within the context of the times in which they were written” (The Presbyterian Fellowship Web site). But before his Appeal was heard, Cameron resigned from the Presbyterian Church and returned to Scotland - a minister in good standing with the Church of Scotland.
As a writer from The Presbyterian Fellowship said, both these cases illustrate “the fallacy of trying to determine theological truth by the votes of the majority” (The Presbyterian Fellowship Web site).
While my parish minister in Warrnambool, in Victoria, in the mid 1960s, encouraged me to read Angus, several influential Australian ministers of our recent past studied with and were greatly influenced by, Angus. Some of those men (because in those days ordination in Australia was, except in only one case, only open to men) included: Bill Hobbin, Dudley Hyde, Ted Noffs, Charles Birch and Norman Webb.
In 1996 Winifred Ward told of the work and theology of these former Australian Methodists in her book, Men ahead of their times. Perhaps a glimpse into one of those named might be sufficient for us to relate to their progressive thinking.
A theological student at Leigh College, Sydney, in the 1930s, Dudley Hyde was never far from institutional trouble. During his student days he was even suspended from studies because of his liberal or ‘modernist’ beliefs.
In 1974, twenty years before he retired and wrote his book Rescuing Jesus from the church, Hyde wrote an article called ‘Church guilty of gigantic Watergate coverup’ (November 1974) for Ted Noffs’ Journal of Values. In that article Hyde said:
“We ministers have seen through the absurdities and lies and contradictions and fallacies of Methodist theology for forty years but we have never been game to tell our congregations. We have known for forty years that half the stories in the Old Testament and the miracle stories of Jesus and the Virgin Birth and the Physical Resurrection were simply not ‘true’ in any sense in which the ordinary man understands the word ‘true’” (Quoted in Ward 1996:47).
That is, while academic theology may be able to provide an honest theology for the churches, it is the theology of ministers in the pulpit, who will need to offer an honest theology in the churches.
Parish minister, anti-Vietnam War protester, educationalist, social activist, broadcaster, progressive theological thinker - Hyde was all these. And through all these changes and challenges one theological element remained real for him: “that Christianity essentially is commitment to Jesus as Lord, not adherence to dogma and creed” (Ward 1996:81) - a faith statement he learned from Samuel Angus, his mentor.
And there are other more recent names I could add to this list from this part of the world: David Tacey, Norman Habel, Colalie Ling, Dorothy McRae-McMahon, David Carter, Ian Tanner, Shirley Murray, Andrew Dutney, Francis Macnab - a diverse group of theological, biblical and liturgical ‘progressives’. I am sure your list would contain other names as well.
Today, our progressive theology is being nurtured within a world-wide network. While the Centre for Progressive Religious Thought is based in Canberra, it is in a much wider network of progressive or liberal groups, including Sea of Faith, Unitarian, and the various Centres for Progressive Christianity... and such thinkers and writers from around the world as: Jack Spong, Marcus Borg, Gerd Ludemann, Robert Funk, Karen Armstrong, Dom Crossan, Sallie McFague, Bernard Scott, Miriam Therese Winter and Lloyd Geering - to name only a few from another very long list. We are not alone!
In all this there seems to be two areas of commonality:
(i) to present a theology which is intellectually credible in relation to modern knowledge, and
(ii) to offer safe places where, in the current “unhealthy and destructive climate that exists today” (The Presbyterian Fellowship Web site) as one person has described it, such honest and open exploration can take place among supportive colleagues.
But... and often there is a ‘but’. I am also reminded of a story about a debate that happened around 250 years ago. A struggle emerged within the faculty of Saint Thomas’ School in Leipzig between the school’s cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, and its rector, Johann August Ernesti, a pioneer in the literary, historical and critical study of the biblical tradition.
Ernesti wanted to make the study of religion - the analytical, intellectual perspective - the sole purpose of the school. Bach claimed the biblical text “was designed to release within the reader an intense sort of spiritual activity: faith” (Westerhoff 1979:21). The teller of this story, John Westerhoff, went on to say:
“...the rationalists, with their emphasis on theological reflection... have dominated the church’s intellectual life. While those scholars never won the people’s hearts or had any great success in training the masses in their methods, they did influence our understandings and ways. However, it is not that their understanding and ways are unimportant; it is just that their emphasis on the intellectual mode of consciousness has contributed to the demise of intuition and the sickness of the spiritual life” (Westerhoff 1979:22).
This is an important warning which progressive theological thinkers ignore at their own peril. And they are words which Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar also takes seriously, even if only partially.
The benefits of a reasoned faith or theology must go beyond academia. Members of congregations can not longer be left in the dark or in some soft literalism on matters which seem to require belief in six impossible things before breakfast! But progressive religious thought should also take the next step - to explore what David Tacey calls ‘the spirituality revolution’ - about “finding the sacred everywhere, and not just where religious traditions have asked us to find it” (Tacey 2003:4).
The regressive appeal of fundamentalist certainty has to be taken seriously. No doubt about that. But so too does the search for spirituality - heart stuff not just head stuff, even progressive head stuff - where respect for mystery and doubt and uncertainty along with an intimacy with the sacred, is paramount. Not to “champion premodern religious categories but, rather, (to) introduce new and altered concepts of the sacred” (Tacey 2000:7). Because progressive theology and spirituality are much closer together, than either is to fundamentalism.
If we can also bridge that ‘great divide’ (Ranson 2002) perhaps then we can be like fish who swim against the stream rather than ending up as sardines.
Bibliography:
Ranson, D. 2002. Across the great divide. Bridging spirituality and religion today. NSW: Strathfield. St Paul’s Publication.
Tacey, D. 2003. The spirituality revolution. NSW: Sydney. HarperCollins.
Tacey, D. 2000. Reenchantment. The new Australian spirituality. NSW: Sydney. HarperCollins.
Ward, W. 1996. Men ahead of their time. VIC: Collingwood. Joint Board of Christian Education.
Westerhoff, J. H. 1979. “Contemporary spirituality: Revelation, myth and ritual” in G. Durka, J Smith. Aesthetic dimensions of religious education. NY: New York. Paulist Press.
Wieman, H. N. 1927. The wrestle of religion with truth. NY: New York. Macmillan Co.
Web sites
Stephen Geard. “Review: A whiff of heresy. Samuel Angus and the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales”. <members.ozemail.com.au/-sdgeard/reviews/emil01.html>
Karen Fredericks. “Heresy”. Green Left Weekly. <www.greenleft.org.au/back/1992/82/82aiw.htm>
The Presbyterian Fellowship. “The Peter Cameron Heresy case”. <www.iform.com.au/homepage/pf/page22.htm>
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