In the grand scheme of “who annoys Nathan most” there’s a bat­tle between the rabid anti-theists and the waf­fling liberals.

They seem unlikely bed­fel­lows. But lib­er­als like Spong and his ilk, and athe­ists like Dawkins, work off each other in a sym­bi­otic way — both pulling peo­ple away from Chris­tian­ity like a fat frog pulls moths away from a lamp.

Today I read a post where an athe­ist asked what reli­gious believer fel­low athe­ists would mourn in death — and many admit­ted an admi­ra­tion for Spong — some even claimed that it was read­ing Spong that lead to their atheism.

I’ll be sad when John Shelby Spong passes away. It was by read­ing his writ­ings that I started to shed my fun­da­men­tal­ist views, and if it were not for him, I would not be the happy athe­ist I am today.

Then I read this arti­cle on the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald about how sig­nif­i­cant Jesus is to his­tory. The author, a politi­cian, couldn’t quite decide what his response to this his­tor­i­cal Jesus should be…

From what­ever per­spec­tive we come, think­ing peo­ple ought to be able to agree, the birth of Jesus was a good day for mankind. I sus­pect I may never quite shake the child­like hunch that there is some uniquely divine imprint on the cen­tral indi­vid­ual of the human story. Happy Birth­day, Jesus.

But the rabid com­menters on the arti­cle were quick to point out what his response should be.

I don’t believe the argue­ment that with­out reli­gion we would not have morals, if we fol­lowed the morals of the Church we would be burn­ing alter­na­tive medecine prac­ti­tion­ers (aka witches) and would say good­bye mul­ti­cul­tural Aus­tralia. Sorry Christ­mas day is a sad day for human­ity it made hatred justifiable.

The anti-slavery move­ment was founded in Enlight­en­ment prin­ci­ples — all men are equal, and all that — prin­ci­ples that the Chris­t­ian churches fought every step of the way, until at the very last the unques­tion­ably cor­rect fight was joined by some fringe (at the time) Protestants.

It’s funny how we all read his­tory dif­fer­ently and often with the prej­u­dice that comes with our philo­soph­i­cal views.

Once you get to the point of lib­er­al­ism — of dis­trust­ing and sec­ond guess­ing the only account we have of God com­mu­ni­cat­ing to the world, or of rein­ter­pret­ing his­tory through a post­mod­ern lens, you may as well pack the whole thing in. Which is why this “shock­ing” bill­board cam­paign from a Lib­eral Angli­can church in New Zealand doesn’t actu­ally shock me at all… it sad­dens me.

It cre­ates a dichotomy between “pro­gres­sive” Chris­tian­ity and “fun­da­men­tal­ist” Chris­tian­ity. What it actu­ally means is peo­ple who reject the Bible and read it through the lens of cul­ture and peo­ple who believe the Bible and inter­pret cul­ture through it. When did they think the Bible was cul­tur­ally rel­e­vant? Was the cul­ture of Corinth — where a man was per­mis­si­bly sleep­ing with his step mum — really that much dif­fer­ent to our sex charged cul­ture today? Did peo­ple really only dis­cover sex­ual free­dom in the 1960s?

Here are some quotes.

Fun­da­men­tal­ism believes that Chris­tian­ity is essen­tially about indi­vid­ual sal­va­tion and admis­sion to an after-life off the planet. What one believes rather than how one behaves is para­mount. This planet is merely a test­ing ground.

Pro­gres­sive Chris­tian­ity how­ever empha­sizes behav­iour above belief. How one treats ones neigh­bours, ene­mies, and planet is the essence of faith. The cel­e­bra­tion of the birth of Jesus is a cel­e­bra­tion of God in every birth and every person.

For fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians the incar­na­tion is about the mirac­u­lous arrival of a baby soon to die and by his blood save us. For pro­gres­sive Chris­tians the incar­na­tion is about the mir­a­cle of this planet earth and all life that exists here.

It came with a pretty bizarre string of com­ments where peo­ple clearly strug­gle to artic­u­late a cohe­sive log­i­cal view on the incar­na­tion from a “pro­gres­sive” standpoint.

This one is from a com­menter named Matthew who shared a series of state­ments he no doubt believes are quite profound.

“If Jesus is the prod­uct of divine insem­i­na­tion (in what­ever for­mat) and not the seed of Joseph, then he is not human, his cru­ci­fix­ion means noth­ing because he has no con­nec­tions to human­ity, it’s just God killing him­self to prove he can.

If how­ever (as must be true) Jesus is an enlight­ened being birthed from the union of a man and a woman, then his life and his death can be seen as a state­ment of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of human­ity, not some freak show that sim­ply excites Mel Gib­son fans.”

I’d counter this claim with the notion that if Jesus isn’t part divine then all aspects of his divin­ity are lost and the whole thing falls down. If he’s just human then there’s noth­ing that “con­nects” him to God. And why does Jesus require a human father in order to be human? Why isn’t a human mother suf­fi­cient? There are so many prob­lems with the logic of the super­nat­ural when peo­ple try to trans­late it into a ratio­nal framework.

If it “must be true” that God can’t inter­vene in the womb of a per­son then what’s the point of hav­ing a God to begin with? What’s the point in believ­ing in a God who didn’t become flesh?

At that point it’s far more hon­est to be an athe­ist and join some sort of com­mu­nity group like Rotary where you actu­ally do good things and don’t cause trou­ble for the true believ­ers — though one sus­pects Spong isn’t actu­ally too dis­ap­pointed by the fact that his teach­ings lead to atheism.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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