Oct. 14, 2007

Anniversary Present

By Harry T. Cook

In this autumn season I am observing the 20th anniversary of becoming rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in the Detroit suburb of Clawson. About 15 of the past 20 years have been very happy. Parts of the other five were not all that happy because of conflict with those who found themselves unable to respond to my left-brained approach to things. Yet, I have survived and, to an extent, prevailed.

The other bump in the road was the uproar caused by my first book, now 10 years old. The book was called Christianity Beyond Creeds. In it I advocated moving the two creeds (the so-called Apostles’ Creed dating from the second century C.E. and the Nicene Creed (ca. 325 C.E) from the pages of the prescribed liturgies where their recitations are mandated to a section of the Book of Common Prayer known as “The Historical Documents.”

In that section at pages 864-878 now appear The Definition of the Union of the Divine and Human Natures in the Person of Christ (being one of the Acta or proceedings) of the Council of Chalcedon, 451 C.E.), and The Creed of St. Athanasius (ca. 500 C.E.).

The first thing you notice about the vintage of any of those documents is that the most recent one is 1,500-plus years old – all composed well before the epoch-making observations of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein. None of this is to say that the creeds are unimportant. They are, in fact, priceless documents deserving of careful study and preservation.

However, to require recitation of any one of them – including the two that are mandated for regular use in the church’s liturgies – as if they were meant to account for the beliefs of 21st Century Christians is tantamount to saying modern science ought to be teaching alchemy, astrology and intelligent design when it is well known that such enthusiasms are no substitutes for chemistry, astrophysics and evolutionary biology.

It seems to me more than strange that in 2007 people remain content to stand up in church and say with one voice that they believe a first century C.E. Galilean named Jesus was (or is) the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father … through whom all things were made … that he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary … that he rose again [from the dead] and ascended into heaven … and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Not one of those statements can bear the slightest weight of rational inquiry. They are relics of the belief system of a prescientific age. One might say they are only metaphorical and employ symbolic language. I used to excuse my recitation of the creeds on those grounds. No longer.

The creeds as they are now and have been for all this time used by and in the church have been a serious retardant to the development of useful theologies that can take their place in the marketplace of other inquiries. A creedal church is a frozen church – trapped in the amber of ideology, trying to set forth immutable truths in a world that has long-since discovered that there are no such things outside the needy human imagination.

If the enterprise known as religion is to earn intellectual respect, its exponents will need to apply the methods of scientific inquiry to their creedal propositions. When they do so, they will discover very quickly that the ideas of only sons of gods, their virgin births, resurrections and ascensions do not stand up under such rigor.

Some of my critics tell me that I should never have been ordained in the first place, or, in the second, that I should seek de-certification as an ordained Episcopal minister if my attempts to be intellectually honest preclude taking the creeds as seriously as canon law and the rubrics appear to mandate.

I have also been told just to shut up about it. It is that last piece of advice that I shall take to heart. Henceforth, I will stand mute during the liturgy at any point at which the recitations of the creeds are required, as those who wish to recite them do so in the same freedom of conscience I claim for myself in not doing so.

It will be my anniversary present to myself. I trust no one will begrudge me its enjoyment.

 © Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.