Sea of Faith Christchurch Group

At our next meeting on Friday 12 June, Hugh Thorpe will briefly introduce the subject of water in Canterbury and answer any questions we have. This is an important topic and there is currently a Canterbury Water Management Strategy programme which is consulting with the public for its views.

Hugh belongs to our group and is a real expert in the field. He is a Research Fellow at the College of Engineering and hydrology and ground water are the areas that he teaches and does research in.

In May 29-31 1934, during the Nazi ascendency in Germany, a synod of Protestant clergy and laity met together and agreed what is now known as the Barmen Declaration. In what sounds to us rather traditional language, they stood firm against the Nazification of the church. Confessing churches were formed, breakaway minorities that stood out against the Nazi-dominated state churches (the German Protestant church is a federation of a number of provincial churches, and some but not all had a pro-Nazi hierarchy).

While most churches have the Apostles Creed and perhaps the Nicene Creed written into their constitutions, very few make mention of anything more recent than the Reformation. The Barmen Declaration is distinguished as a modern creed through having been adopted by a number of German churches. The firm and unambiguous stand against Nazism also helped to give the church credibility in the post-war period. Albert Einstein commented:

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

You can find the text of the declaration here

At our next meeting, on 22 May, Wendy introduces us to the historian Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book Doubt: A History. The author traces the forms doubt has taken through many cultures and eras. “Only in modern times,” she notes, “is doubt equated narrowly with a rejection of faith.”

Having listened to an interview with the author on the Speaking of Faith programme from American Public Radio, I can only say that she has a most interesting perspective.  She emphasises the positive contribution that great doubters have made in the past and does not agree with the common assumption that doubt is mainly a modern phenomenon.

What she has to say is relevant to our contemporary scene, where doubt is almost exclusively seen in opposition to religion and where certain believers face off against certain unbelievers.

The Sea of Faith in Australia has a review here.

At our next meeting, on 8 May, Ian Crumpton talks about the telescope’s role in changing our perceptions of our place in the scheme of things.

“It is now 125 years since Charles Darwin in the book “the origin of species” began to get an idea for the first time of the true dimensions of the evolution of life on our little planet; it is exactly 60 years ago, that E Hubble was able to show for the first time with certainty, that the Andromeda cloud was another milky way, which like ours, consists of about 100 billion stars. We know today that there may be about 100 billion such galaxies in the universe – an enormous arrangement that would have to leave
humans just as dumb, shocked and wondering as the divine appearance in the book of Job (38-41) left the litigating just man, the one who was almost going under at the supposed injustice of the world.” Eugen Drewermann

Our next meeting is a book review evening.

I’m planning to review a section of Drewermann’s book on Jesus of Nazareth in which he looks at Jesus and money. In trying to understand why Jesus warned so strongly against money, Drewermann presents an interesting, but rather alternative view of money (the debitistic view). He also gives a surprising interpretation of Jesus’ words and deeds, one that finds a coherent thread in relation to money,  integrating a variety of seemingly disparate stories and teachings.  Drewermann gives us a highly relevant, if radical and disturbing, perspective on our globalized, largely capitalist world and its current economic woes.

You are invited to introduce us to any interesting and relevant books that you have been reading lately.