Conversation with Atheist Minister Gretta Vosper – Current Context
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Rational Doubt
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/01
Editor’s Note: I think you’ll enjoy this update in the ongoing saga of Clergy Project member and United Church of Canada minister, Gretta Vosper. In a recent interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, she tells us about her thoughts on preserving and propagating the values (not the supernatural beliefs) that progressive religious communities have provided up until now. I think she has an important point. This interview is lightly edited. We thank Scott, who has posted here before, for sharing his interviews with the Rational Doubt Blog.
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By Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Founder of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have been a controversial in Christian culture in Canada, willingly or not. For those that do not know your background and activities, please fill us in.
Gretta Vosper: I am currently a minister in the United Church of Canada. This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination and I’ve been serving a congregation in West Hill – the very east end of Toronto – since 1997.
A few years into our work together, I realized that the church language I had grown up with was problematic. I had been taught to use such language to describe concepts and ideas that could be better described using plain English.
It misled my congregants to think I believed in a supernatural, theistic being called God, which I did not. It also prevented people without such beliefs from experiencing what I call the “off-label” benefits of the church community – belonging, recognition, affirmation, and an increased sense of well being that comes with those things.
After engaging my church community in a conversation about that dissonance, we began the work of creating a theologically barrier-free space. West Hill is now a haven for those who do not believe any religious concepts as well as continuing to serve those who believe, but do not need theological language.
Unfortunately, rather than my denomination recognizing that it had, over the past many decades, trained leaders to serve this constituency, my denomination chose, instead, to retreat to a more conservative theology.
In doing so, our work at West Hill became controversial among those who did not know what we were doing or why. Their complaints led to a heresy trial, which is currently being conducted under the guise of a “Disciplinary Review.” The end result may be that I am stripped of my credentials and no longer able to serve my community in leadership.
Jacobsen: You are involved in an organization called The Oasis Network. There is a brief statement of values on the website:
People are more important than beliefs.
Reality is known through reason.
Meaning comes from making a difference.
Human hands solve human problems.
Be accepting and be accepted.
What does the organization do in the community of the formally irreligious or the formerly religious?
Vosper: The Oasis Network has grown thanks to people experienced the “off-label benefits” of church. They do not hold religious beliefs, but they want to create meaningful community. Also, there are others who have no experience of church who are also looking for a place where meaningful dialogue happens and deep friendships can be nurtured.
Each Oasis community operates autonomously but collaborates with all the others. Research indicates that in order to provide the kind of experiences that allow people to flourish, communities need to meet weekly; so Oasis communities do that. They can pick whenever they want to meet but most of them have found that Sunday morning is the best time – it’s not a school or work night and most people have it free.
Oasis gatherings replicate the church gatherings without the doctrine and, for the most part, without the religious trappings you’d expect to find in church. For instance, there is a speaker each week, but most Oasis communities don’t sing. They welcome a variety of local musicians who are happy for a gig with a really attentive audience.
West Hill still sings, because it grew out of a tradition that the congregation adapted beyond doctrine. So we sing songs and hymns that have no mention of God or Jesus but reflect the humanitarian values we espouse. And people don’t, of course, pray to an interventionist God but some of them – not all – like West Hill, allow for a time for participants to share stuff happening in their lives – good or bad.
And there is a coffee time when some of the most important stuff happens: people get to know one another, become involved in one another’s lives. It’s magical, if I can use that word!
Jacobsen: What is the relevance of such as organization now? How did you become involved with it?
Vosper: I think Oasis communities are filling a very important need in a world that is emerging from social experiments for which we cannot predict the outcomes. As I’ve noted, there are serious off-label benefits to religion related to personal well being. This may sound self-centered, but personal well being is related to our ability to engage in our communities and the world beyond our front doors. We have built our social democracies with the input of people who felt good enough about themselves and confident enough about what they had to offer that they engaged beyond their own “tribe” in the wider community.
Liberal Christianity transfers positive social values in a way that conservative iterations do not. As a result, the great liberal Christian institutions of the twentieth century helped embed those social values we cherish in our communities.
We are now watching the demise of those Christian institutions. And it is easy for those who do not hold religious beliefs to dismiss the death of these institutions as a good thing. But it isn’t. Liberal Christians helped negotiate the social fabric of our nation, mitigating the effects of the fundamentalist versions of its own story and the individualistic relativism of an unchecked libertarianism.
What the loss of institutions like United and Anglican Churches of Canada might mean for the future of Canada’s social democracy is unknown but I’d be willing to bet it will be a meaner, and less comfortable country than what I was privileged to grow up in. Also, it will be subject to the influences of those two powers – religious fundamentalism and individualistic libertarianism. That isn’t a pretty picture. So I think the loss of these institutions might be tragic.
Jacobsen: With a very rapidly growing, and often young, irreligious population in the country, what can or should be done to accommodate them? (e.g., developing secular or atheist churches, or Sunday Assemblies, or organizations such as The Oasis Network, etc.
Vosper: Building on my concerns for Canada’s social democracy, I think it is very important that we find ways to engage individuals in communities that present humanitarian values as central to each person and every neighborhood.
Liberal Christian institutions that are closing churches every week need to assess the cost of those closures which, as I’ve said, go far beyond their statistical and revenue losses. Perhaps their legacy could be using money from the sale of those buildings as an investment in the future. They could lay the foundations for secular communities like Oasis, by taking the ethos that those institutions have nurtured that define this nation, and craft it in ways that speak to and engage new generations and their emergent needs.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Gretta.
Bio: Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Founder of In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.
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References
The Oasis Network. (2017). http://www.peoplearemoreimportant.org/.
Vosper, G. (2017). http://www.grettavosper.ca/about/.
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