By: Gretta Vosper

Gretta Vosper — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 19:26:11 +0000

Thank you for sharing Mr. Topping’s ideas through his own words. His depiction of a secular society “whose dreams for the future are restricted to climbing to the top over other people,” is a convenient caricature but does not reflect the passionate engagement of secular people with issues that are of extreme importance at this point in humanity’s history, much of it led by individuals with no use whatsoever for traditional Christianity. Nevertheless, his call to speak to people’s imaginations, “to render explicit what’s tacit, and to help people see things that are there in this wonderful, beautiful, often broken but promising world” is the central work of both the church and its leaders. The United Church of Canada has been about that work throughout its history. Unfortunately, reaching out to evangelical immigrants to stave up its membership, action Mr. Topping seems to support, was misguided. In doing so, it turned abdicated its responsibility to those who “graduated” from its own pews as the result of its contemporary perspectives on the Bible, God, and the person of Jesus. Like Mr. Topping, most prefer to consider them failures rather than assessing how the church has failed them. The rejection of its responsibility to the fastest growing demographic in the country – those who identify as having no religion – has risked far more than the church’s bottom line. Canada’s social capital is most deeply invested in its Christian congregations. As churches dwindle and die, they are not being replaced. Reduced voluntarism, philanthropy, and community engagement are the result; our local communities already feel the challenges of those losses. Refusing to value the “off-label benefits” of religion – primarily increased subjective well-being – the church has continued to isolate itself and make itself increasingly irrelevant. Had it, on the contrary, valued the values at the core of Christianity and provided theologically barrier-free space for those having no need of Christian language or symbol to wrestle with the challenges presented to us by the complexity of contemporary life, it may still be on the speed dial of the Prime Minister. Alas, the choice was made long ago. The future of the church and its impact on contemporary society will continue to be limited by that choice.

Comments on: ‘Count on what’s true to do its own solicitation’: VST’s Richard Topping on preaching to a skeptical world

By: Gretta Vosper