Over the last few weeks we have been engaged in the process necessary to get a new incumbent, including the production of a parish profile, which is supposed to attract the very best people to apply. Parkinson, of Parkinson’s law fame, always used to say that the best advert would contain both the benefits and the drawbacks of a job and would elicit a response from exactly one person who would be the one person who was prepared to do the job for the money! However, just to be sure, we can’t help but keep on listing the attractions of Colwall, so I guess we will have more than one person applying. So it is very tempting to write a holiday brochure: “Colwall nestles on the slopes of the Malvern Hills, and is a village having its own shops, a doctor’s surgery, three pubs and three churches.” Three churches now. Is that a benefit or a drawback? Actually, going a bit further a field there are Baptists, Roman Catholics and Methodists in Ledbury, Quakers and URC in Malvern and any number of free churches around. Why do we have such variety in religious belief?
Well, as our second reading shows, the church has been divided since apostolic times. And at the current moment we have people in the Anglican church who are intent on dividing it further. Division happens in religion in a way it doesn’t happen in Science and I think the root of the problem lies in the nature of authority in religion. Take the current issue threatening to divide the Anglican church. Ostensibly it is about homosexuality and to a lesser extent about ordaining women as bishops. But I don’t think this is the main motivation of those who want to separate themselves from the body of the church. What they are worried about is that accepting homosexuals or women as priests threatens the authority which they use to guide themselves in religion. If you accept these things, it is hard to say that the bible contains an infallible guide to life and it is just as threatening to the authority of the Pope. And if you don’t have some form of infallible authority in the church, where are you? Anybody, it seems could then set themselves up as authorities and people will follow them, and it seems that something like this had been happening in the Corinthian church. It’s interesting incidentally, that some followed Paul, some followed Cephas (that is, Peter), some Apollo and some Christ. Did they think Christ was just another prophet? Well, Paul soon puts paid to that idea and says in no uncertain terms we should all follow Christ, a point we should all bear in mind when thinking about division..
Now there is another factor in this divisive tendency and that is the question of identity. People use religion as a badge, a sense of belonging. This is nowhere illustrated more clearly then the Jews and the Samaritans. To an outsider, the difference between the two religions was negligible, but they hated each other, and time and again Jesus was at pains to dispel this antipathy. If you know one thing about Christianity it is that Jesus said, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” and went on to illustrate this with the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus hated the bad feelings that divisions inspire and so should we. People are not monsters because they believe different things from us.
So where is the problem with authority? Why can’t we have something cut and dried? Probably the most fundamental difficulty is that in religion we are dealing with something, someone, God, who is unknown and unknowable. If you want to know the purpose of life you need to know the purposes of the creator and the creature, the thing created, ourselves, will not be able to understand those purposes. Now we believe we are created in the image of God, which I think means we can comprehend something of those purposes in a way that animals cannot, but nevertheless, at the heart of religion there must be a mystery – and more than a mystery, something unknowable. How many of the words we use about God, omnipotent, omniscient and so on, seem to be meaningful, but simply may not make sense. Just think of those two phrases irresistible force and immovable object: they cannot both exist and probably neither do. It is just not sensible to talk about things like that and I would classify a lot of talk about the Trinity into that category. God is not going to be able to be described by human words. But think of how much conflict there has been in just this area. Conflict about things we cannot hope to understand.
Another problem with authority is that things change. Paul wrote in a letter to the Corinthians, “it is better that women keep silent in church.” Did Paul think he was writing the New Testament? No. Did Paul write this with the intention it applied to all churches and for all time? I doubt it. Society changes and after a couple of thousand years it changes a lot. What is authoritative at one time needs revising for another time and usually another place. Authority needs to be able to change and it changes at different rates in different places.
The third problem with authority is that it is so close to power and power can corrupt. The prime example was the church in the Middle Ages, with perverted morals and an eye to the main chance. The popes at that time were concerned about their property and their armies, not about the gospel for the world. The church’s only power should lie in the Cross.
In a way, diversity in religion is an answer to these problems. Each different church is saying we look at things in this, our own, way and that can be a useful criticism or it could be an extra bit of insight. But I’m not saying that some of them aren’t just plain wrong. On some of the more extreme sects, I am inclined to use that caveat, “Caution: may contain nuts”.
So how should we approach people who differ from us? The first thing to keep in mind is always that we might be wrong, or at least may not be in touch with the whole of the truth. This doesn’t mean we can’t have firm beliefs. I believe that Jesus was the son of God; but I am not so sure of what that might mean. Nor does it mean we can’t think rationally about religion. I can’t see how you can possibly justify papal infallibility and I would be pretty resistant to any moves to bring this into the Anglican scheme of things. But of course Roman Catholics and Anglicans can work together and often do: they are both trying to be followers of Christ. That’s what Christianity is all about, not following obscure statements of doctrine. What I would hope is that all those who can say, “Jesus is Lord” could work, and indeed worship, together. But in the normal course of events, people will want to pursue their own ways and patterns of thinking.
When it comes to other religions the differences are greater, but the same principles apply. There are things that matter and there are things that don’t matter and the problem is to tell them apart. At one extreme, a religion which involved human sacrifice is simply wrong and should be banned. But we are not going to have many arguments with a religion that led to actions that are consistent with the sermon on the mount and it is actually those same considerations which should apply to all our differences. Love your neighbour as yourself. We may disagree, but we should not disobey this command.