From a member of long standing of a large UCA congregation:
I am not sure if i have anything of interest to add to the subject of progressive Christianity but one thing I am certain of is that the God Of My Youth, The God that I call GOMY, for me, no longer exists , if in fact he ever existed. Now that I have come to that conclusion I have to decide what sort of God do I need in my life, if I wanted a God that makes sense in the 21st century. The difficulty is that GOMY is probably the God that by and large is the UCA God . So where do I go now?
God that I call GOMY, for me, no longer exists , if in fact he ever existed. Now that I have come to that conclusion I have to decide what sort of God do I need in my life, if I wanted a God that makes sense in the 21st century. The difficulty is that Gomy is probably the God that by and large is the UCA God . So where do I go now?
See for forty years I have been a proud member of the Uniting Church and some thirty years prior to that in one of its founding churches . One night many years ago it dawned on me that GOMY doesn’t talk to me . I pray to him but he doesn’t talk to me . Now that is not a difficult thing for the creator of the world to do I would think. But no not a word not even a throat clearing or whisper. So the next question that occurred to me was, does GOMY, or did GOMY ever really exist? Is the God that I was taught to pray to just a figment of my imagination.
What sort of God could I expect, in the 21st century, to be a legitimate and acceptable God. You know the sort of thing , a God that has been around for billions of years, not for no more than eight thousand years . Would this modern God want to be worshipped and can I pray to this God , can I ask this God to do stuff or change the weather?
For the past 10 or 20 years I have tried to do the GOMY – modern God shuffle. You know the sort of thing, try to change words during the hymns and prayers to words that make sense to my current thinking . Trouble is that the pattern it is too incessant and there is nobody speaking my language . I am thinking that it is all too hard . I am never going to change the GOMY worshipers in my church . I will just keep enjoying the fellowship of people I have known for many years and keep doing the shuffle . Still I can dream of a 21st century church . Sounds like fun.
oOo