In my grandmother’s church growing up, there were all sorts of people making lots of different choices, sometimes at odds with each other and sometimes with values that did not overlap much. It occurred to me recently that although they went to the same service and said the same prayers, they were all worshiping a slightly different face of God. Do you make a distinction between the religion of each individual, i.e. the sort of conversation we have with God and how we perceive God and interpret God’s will, and the collective religion we claim to follow en masse? I’m in Alcoholics Anonymous where we each choose our own higher power.
Dear Jude,
There may be one God, but the deity people worship is perceived as differently as there are people perceiving. That is certainly not something new. The religion of the ancient tribe was corporate but the religion of each of the individual tribal members was distinctive.
This does not mean that there are not large cultural patterns. It does mean that individuals relate to those cultural patterns in unique ways. I had 130 congregations when I was the Bishop of Newark. All of them were Episcopal churches and yet within that single diocese we had traditional churches, catholic churches, evangelical churches, folksy churches, liberal churches, conservative churches, Anglo churches, Hispanic churches, Korean churches, Haitian churches, West Indian churches and American black churches. Our diocese was one of a hundred dioceses in the American branch of the Anglican Church. Those dioceses varied as widely and perhaps more widely that the individual congregations in our single diocese.
This was never much of a concern for me. I do not believe that the mind of any human being or any human institution can embrace the totality of the meaning of God. I regard it as a manifestation of idolatry when that claim is made by any religious tradition. I think the Christian faith is a pathway that I walk into the mystery and wonder of God.
I do not believe human beings can walk directly into the abstract mystery of God. We have to start where we are. For me that is the Christ path, but to walk it faithfully is to transcend all religions in general and Christianity in particular. God is ultimate, Christianity is not.
~John Shelby Spong
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