A Prayer from the UCA President in a time of COVID

A PRAYER FOR COMPASSION, WISDOM AND STRENGTH

Loving and compassionate God,

You call us to love our neighbours and to be bearers of your hope and grace in our world.

Expand our hearts and vision to respond with compassion to those around us, who are struggling in this time of uncertainty, anxiety, grief and suffering.

Give wisdom and strength to our health workers, and government officials, as they provide leadership in bringing our country through this crisis.

We bring before you and into our hearts and minds:

• Those whose work and income are uncertain

• Those who are isolated

• Those who are fearful of an unknown future

• Those who live in situations of domestic violence, and whose isolation increases the control of their violent partners

• Those who are homeless, and all those who offer them support and care

• Those who are involved in aged care – our agency leaders, staff and residents and

their loved ones

• Businesses whose futures are uncertain – their leaders and staff

• School staff and students

• Those with health conditions that put them at greater risk

Give wisdom and care-filled discernment to all our Church leaders – our Councils, and local congregations, as we seek to creatively live out our worship, witness and service in ways that offer Christ’s life-giving love and presence.

Strengthen and sustain us to be your people – shaped by your abundant grace, bearers of your generosity and overflowing love.

Through Christ our Light and Hope, we pray, Amen.

WORD OF MISSION

May God our Creator renew in us the creative Spirit that brings healing and life to all creation.

May Jesus the Christ, sustain us in boundless grace and love

May the Holy Spirit fill us with courage to be bearers of God’s hope in the world,

Amen.

The last four messages...

As I approached the end of my ministry in Bellingen, I decided that for my last four messages I would say some things about the future of the church in a changing context. I wanted to be really clear - to say things that people could disagree with or agree with, but they would be absolutely clear as to what I was saying - no fudging, no having a bet each way, just telling it straight!

Good and bad theological liberalism

In this article amongst others, Theo Hobson argues that theological liberalism is made up of two streams of thought, which have often been intertwined in the past, but can and should be considered separately. The 'good' form of liberalism is "that which affirms a deep affinity between the gospel and political and cultural liberty." Whereas the 'bad' form of liberalism is "that which seeks to reform Christianity in the direction of rationalism and optimism about natural human capacities." Hobson wishes to affirm the former and reject the latter.

Unfortunately this approach seems to me to be actually gutting theological liberalism of its theology and simply affirming a kind of political liberalism with an added handwave along the lines of "...and this fits well with the gospel." My own critique of this approach is that it is doing precisely what Hobson claims to decry, by putting on a pedestal a particular set of secular, political (humanist) values and then baptising them as somehow Christian.

For myself (and in brief), I much prefer the kind of critique of liberal theology which draws from a post-modern mindset. I'd want to recognise one the one hand that in the main, the fundamental epistemological and ontological commitments of theological liberalism are a helpful evolution from the pre-modern philosophical underpinnings of some other streams of theology. But, on the the hand, liberal theology has clearly and dismally failed as a theological description, its pale "lowest common denominator" accounts of the world ("sea of faith" anyone?) losing all the power and transformative vitality of the Christian story in its specificity.

I guess in the end Hobson and I agree upon the need for a reformation or renegotiation of the liberal theological project. But my own view is that there is far more to value in liberal theology than simply its blessing of an enlightenment liberal political ecology.