Trans people will be participating in the Changing Attitude England’s conversation at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo on 2nd March as we pursue the ‘deeply Christian’ vision of ‘Life in all its fullness’, by which we mean, at the very least, ‘treating each person as a unique individual of inherent worth.’
What are the elements of a Christian community, cell, gathering or congregation needed to create a seamless, healthy, spiritual, deeply relational, visionary, Christ-like movement? What does life in all its fullness look like and how do we assemble a model of Christian life and theology based on this, working to achieve this?
In September, five members of Changing Attitude England met in a London garden one afternoon to explore our beliefs about God. I had circulated a position paper beforehand setting out my thoughts as a framework for our conversation. The five of us who met in the garden, plus one, wish to extend the conversation we began by organising an open event on 2nd March 2024 at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo from 10.00 to 16.00 when we hope many of you will bring your own experience to the gathering, exploring our understandings of God in our human awareness and vision raised by the question What kind of God do we believe in?
Many in the Church of England are involved with movements and campaigns for justice and equality: for women, LGBTQIA+ people, black and ethnic minority people, those living in poverty, the abused, those denigrated and despised as unwelcome and unwanted immigrants. All these campaigns and movements are transforming our moral universe despite the resistance of many in the Church. Progress towards creating a healthy Church, working towards the full equality of all creation, rooted in the Jesus essence of life in all its fullness is the vision of the progressive, spiritual, prophetic, evolutionary movements working constructively together.
On Wednesday afternoon, 6th September 2023, five members of the Church of England met for three hours in a London garden. Two members of the group were unable to join us. When I first suggested that we met in person, I did so because I wanted to know whether my ideas and visions were off the wall or accorded with their experience of Christianity today. By the time we met this week I knew my ideas weren’t off the wall. For several months I have been writing and circulating a series of papers. Tuesday’s blog, What is the Christian Story today? was the briefest outline of elements of our thinking. It is time to explore whether this can be converted into a movement within the life of the Christian Church. In the course of the coming weeks I will publish some of the other papers I circulated. This blog is the briefest survey of evolution, Christian origins, Western Church history from the sixteenth century, contemporary crises and possible responses.
Unless spiritually and mentally and conceptually we are drawn towards and become immersed in an open-minded, open-souled, open-hearted, unconditionally loving presence, the dream of God will not come to be. People will reject Christianity and walk away from the Church. They will find healing and truth wherever men and women recklessly, generously pour ointment on feet, where tears and love flow and the broken hearted are healed.
In an article in last Saturday’s Guardian, Ben Okri describes how he has found it necessary to develop an attitude that he refers to as existential creativity. Okri believes we have to be strong dreamers asking unthinkable questions. Our whys ought to go to the core of what we are. Then we ought to set about remaking ourselves. The Archbishops of the Church of England claim to believe a radical (brave) new Christian inclusion is called for. For this to become a reality we, too, need to be strong dreamers asking unthinkable questions going to the core of what and who we are as people of God, called to set about remaking ourselves in the image of Jesus the Christ.
We are living through a three-decade long period of regression in our national life, a regressive movement found in other countries. I observe regression taking place in the social, political and religious realms. Fewer people speak with an independent mind, rooted in the wisdom that comes from commitment to truth-telling, integrity, and a deeply embedded set of values, whether they are grounded in Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Moslem, Hindu, philosophical, agnostic or atheist traditions. The regressive era we are living through needs an infusion of Wisdom teachers and practitioners. Without them, we lack the people capable of teaching us about ourselves, our behaviour patterns, insecurities and anxieties and addictions.
I’ve been reading The Christlike God written by John V. Taylor, formerly Bishop of Winchester and published in 1992. There is much in the book that echoes my own ideas about God, creation, evolution, and contemporary contemplative life. In the penultimate chapter, Dwell in me, I in you, (John 17.21,22), Taylor writes about the author Charles Williams and his use of the word coinherence to describe the relationship between God, the divine other, and us, human kind, Homo sapiens. I believe the universe, the divine Mystery and human life are seamlessly interwoven, coinherent, as Charles Williams describes.
