Time to Grow Home?

Neil Whitehouse reflects on the themes of the Modern Church 2024 national conference.

In the nineties I sat in seminars of INFORM, to receive information on new religious movements from the practitioners themselves. So the focus of this Modern Church conference, ‘Finding the Sacred in the 21^st Century’ was not new to me.  But I had left London for Montreal in 2001 and delighted in the quality of presentations to help me to catch up and consider how to be a progressive Christian in this growing soup of spiritualities.

It was a glorious time to ‘compare and contrast’ that often exposed the disfunctions in Christian life. To witness the struggle of Rev. Jide Macaulay to survive as a gay Nigerian Christian and to offer Church to the LGBTQI+ community was inspiring, especially as I have had my own battles within Methodism that paled in comparison. Such courage and vulnerability is a powerful expression of social justice and the importance of faith. Why bother? Why risk your own life to practice your religion? Wasn’t this a demonstration of how good religion can save people from despair and self-hatred?

Many people grow away from Church or create their own spiritual practices because of the negative stories and restrictions. Within the Church there is often disdain or downright hostility to different practices, especially ones that fall between traditional faiths, ones we know less about. A dose of humility towards ordinary peoples’ spiritual journeys would be a good first step. Explain to me how pagans are not necessarily New Agers; yoga belongs to a world view that challenges our ways of describing reality; millions find meaning in the beauty of crystals and discover meditation without a religious interpretation. How is it some prefer their new religious family to their blood relations, even when these are good and loving? It was early Christian experience, so why is it so suspect in others?

When Covid struck it provoked a wave of demand for basic access to sacred power. How to pray? What does prayer offer? Could prayer cause harm? The Christians who were already interested in general spiritual practices were the first to be asked. To renew my knowledge of this rich and complex phenomenon gave me fresh confidence to engage in authentic conversations with strangers.

But I am left with a ‘day after’ feeling. Mostly it is a puzzlement. It is not comfortable. I came away wrestling with the many stories of unkind attitudes, fearful judgements and marginalization of Christians who have taken an interest in the quests of our neighbours. I guess this is inevitable, given the extremes we can find within the Church. We tolerate so much that is ostensibly harmful. Homophobia, sexism, discrimination, ostracization, bullying, manipulation. A Church for sinners is a dangerous place. But are there limits? And who can say what they are? Perhaps those limits are to be expected beyond the Church too.

I brought a Green perspective to the conference. The Gospel of Jesus Green claims home for all, not just for humans as a biological reality, as a human endeavour we are already putting into practice. Other speakers spoke to the crisis of climate change and species extinction, and ‘home’ popped up as key to many spiritual practices and motivations.

This perspective explains the deeper source of my puzzlement, that the spirituality beyond the Church is more able to handle change. It exposes how the strengths of church-going can create a weakness; the presumption that Sunday worship is enough. How much does the beat of Sunday worship, the sacred time of the Christian year undermine our readiness to participate in change; the paradigm shift, towards sustainable civilization and respect for the earth?

I reflect on the Titanic tragedy and how it was caused by a collective error: the advice that ships facing the risks of icebergs should ignore the faster speeds that new technology had made possible. It was ‘business as usual’ that sank the Titanic. It should have slowed down. Our challenge as a species is to celebrate life that brilliantly uses less of the earth without denying progress in health, education, opportunities and culture; this sort of growth, rather than growth that denies we inhabit a finite planet.

Billions of people find the earth is sacred and include it in their practices. It is our common ground for respectful enquiries into different views and beliefs. Might listening to the cry of the earth also bring a religious humility to treat one another better, including Christian to Christian, along with a reconciliation with the faith practice in wicca or atheism? Perhaps. A perspective that makes the state of the earth foundational to spiritual enquiries will not find the status quo acceptable, nor the future as open ended as ignorance suggests.

‘Behold I am doing a new thing’ (Isaiah 43:19) would have been a fitting subtitle to our conference theme, the vision for a sacred umbrella of Green actions to unite us all.

Rev Neil J Whitehouse is author of ‘The Gospel of Jesus Green: Home for All, Not Just for Humans’ (2024).

(available through the publisher www.WipfandStock.com ) or www.neilwhitehouse.com