Monday, May 05, 2008

What does Christianity look like without Christ?

Read about Gretta Vosper and decide for yourself. It kind of resembles an incoherent, thoughtless, empty void to me.

I’m guessing Vosper won’t be using I Corinthians 15:12-19 as the reading text for a sermon any time soon. If you want to explore Vospers theology further, the church has a podcast.

From perusing their web site, it seems that West Hill resembles more of a liberal social club than a church.

Spiritual growth is found in reading “The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter” by Peter Singer, John Shelby Spong's “A New Christianity for a New World” and Vosper’s recent book in which Jesus is described as a "Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team.”

What’s truly odd is that church whose pastor doesn’t believe in “the Resurrection, the miracles and the sacrament of baptism” would have the following on the “Our Banner” section of their web site:
As those who gather together to worship God and who seek to understand our lives using, among other means, the scriptures studied and the stories and letters written by the early followers of Jesus, we call ourselves Christians. The name carries a variety of implications, some we might claim and others we might deny. To say one is a Christian carries as much specificity as saying that a flower is red; the depth or hue of the colour, without further distinction, being utterly incomprehensible.

Christians are brought together as one, however, in the acts through which we respond to God with thanksgiving. In the sharing of the bread and cup through Communion, in the celebration of faith through Baptism, in the holding of each other through Prayer, in our Witness through service, in each of these things, we find the opportunity to return praise to the Divine for what we see as its activity in our lives.
From a past sermon, it seems that some of Vosper's congregation have found her “ministry” troubling.

HT: The Corner

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