(Psalm 46:4 NIV)
David Madden
Westerly, Rhode Island
August 28, 1995
In November of 1959, I went on a field trip to Old Sturbridge Village with Miss Plimpton's fifth grade class at Lincoln School in Manchester. This was an important day in my life. In walking through that living museum, I discovered a love of history that led to a lifelong love of reading. I know what Joseph Campbell meant when he said,
"All I know is what I read in books- with a little bit more added." (Boa 82)
While the volume of my reading does not come close to Campbell's, his statement applies to my life as well as his.
After my field trip was over, I wanted to go back again and relive the experience that had meant so much to me. It would be several years before I finally did and I still remember the disappointment I felt on that return visit. The magical quality that existed in my mind's eye did not exist in the place that inspired it. I would go back several more times, but it was always as if Old Sturbridge Village was a Brigadoon for me, and I was never there when the magic took place.
Eventually I realized that there was nothing significant about Old Sturbridge Village except the importance I gave to it in my mind. I have since applied this insight to other experiences in my life, including those I have had in church.
My earliest memory of church is of singing hymns in the living room of the England house with the charter members of the Community Baptist Church (CBC).
Reverend John Neubert was the minister then, and he shepherded a flock comprised mostly of young families. The congregation was filled with enthusiasm for increasing in membership and building a sanctuary. That zeal for growth was a way of witnessing to faith, and I attribute my warm memory of those days to the authenticity of that witness. The words of "Colossians 3:23-24" describe the spirit of CBC in the 1950's and 60's:
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." (NIV)
My earliest impressions of religion at CBC are what made the quest for a living faith in God as important as it has always been for me. This journey is my "inheritance", and it is of great value to me.
I remember Mrs. Fletcher playing the piano in the upstairs of the England house during Sunday School class. We used to sing "Joy to the World" regardless of the season. Another class was held in a small building that once served as a toolshed or garage. The children of the church needed every available space for its burgeoning classes. There was Vacation Bible School, Christmas pageants, new clothes for Easter, and the excitement of running on the scaffolding for the construction of the new sanctuary. I remember the emotion in Rev. Neubert's voice as he gave his final benediction to the church he had helped to found, and the tears he wiped away as he walked down the center aisle for the last time as our minister.
In the Baptist tradition, baptism is meant for those who are old enough to understand the significance of the sacrament they are receiving. Despite this attempt by the adults of the church at making baptism a conscious decision, I had no idea of what I was doing other than that all my friends were getting baptised and I didn't want to be left out. The church had a candlelight service that April evening in 1962 when Rev. Alex Elsesser baptised my friends and me. I was somewhat anxious about what it meant to be "reborn". I anticipated that something dramatic was going to happen, and I wasn't sure if I was going to like the results. Years later, I read an account by Carl Jung of his first communion that reminded me in some ways of my baptism.
"He (Jung) had been led to believe it would be a culminating experience. But once into the service he noted that it seemed to look like any other service. 'All were stiff, solemn, and it seemed to me, uninterested. I looked on in suspense, but could not see or guess whether anything unusual was going on...'" (Rollins 122-123)
I continued to be involved in the life of the church when I entered junior high. During February, it was a tradition in the mid-60's at CBC to have mission dinners. These were potluck and after we had finished eating, a speaker would describe how "Matthew 28:18-20" was being acted upon in the world. I don't remember any of the speakers' words from those evenings, but I recall that Fellowship Hall was crammed with crowded tables and there were pleasant sounds of laughter and conversation. I still can't smell ham and beans without remembering those long ago winter nights.
When I was in senior high, Rev. Walter Loomis became the third minister at CBC. The church was still a very important part of my life at that time. I was a timid young man and, as a result, I did not explore my potential and abilities as much as I would have had I been more assertive. I participated in sports during high school, but tellingly, I took part in the individual sports of cross country, swimming, and track. These sports were certainly good ways to spend my time after school, but with a little more confidence in myself, I would have probably tried out for the football team. I think I would have enjoyed going out for the high school theatrical club, "Sock and Buskin", but there was as much chance of my going on a stage as there was of going to the moon.
The church thus became the place where I found acceptance and the opportunity to grow outside of my family home. I became president of the Baptist Youth Fellowship during my junior year. I spoke for the first time in front of the congregation (briefly and with terror) in that capacity.
It was also in my junior year of high school that a young family man named Will Burrows was my Sunday school teacher. Mr. Burrows challenged us to think about what our faith meant to us. I remember some spirited discussions on the Bible which were very different from those in the Judson Bible Series with previous teachers. We were at the age when the questioning of authority, both spiritual and earthly, is a necessary part of growing up and Mr. Burrows' class provided us with a forum to ask questions about God.
I especially remember my bewilderment when I read a passage during class from "Joshua 6:20-21,27" on the fall of Jericho:
"When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it- men and women, and young and old, cattle, sheep, and donkeys... So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land." (NIV)
These verses contradicted my childhood days of singing "Jesus loves me, this I know..." in Sunday school. I had listened to my teachers and minister speak of God as our kind, loving Father. But now, with a little investigating on my own of the Bible, I saw God as vengeful and merciless. Something new had been added to my experience of faith: ambiguity.
Such uncertainty, however, did not diminish the importance in my life that I gave to church. I participated in church through all of high school, and because I went on to Manchester Community College (MCC), I continued with church after my high school years were over in 1967.
While I was at MCC, I took an American literature class that introduced me to the dark humor of Samuel Langhorne Clemens in "Letters from the Earth".
"Meantime, every person is playing on a harp- those millions and millions!- whereas not more than twenty in the thousand of them could play an instrument in the earth, or ever wanted to. Consider the deafening hurricane of sound- millions and millions of voices screaming at once and millions and millions of harps gritting their teeth at the same time! I ask you: is it hideous, is it odious, is it horrible? Consider further: it is a praise service; a service of compliment, of flattery, of adulation! Do you ask who it is that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment; and who not only endures it, but likes it, enjoys it, requires it, commands it? Hold your breath! It is God! This race's God, I mean." (Bradley, Beatty, Long 488)
The enjoyment I received from reading what those of a fundamental persuasion would probably consider to be blasphemy, tells that while in my teens, I was leaving the literalism of my childhood thinking behind.
I became an advisor to the BYF for the next few years. I went to Camp Wightman for a week in the summer of 1970, and experienced the spiritual and psychological intensity of an isolated religious community for the first time. I had a difficult time for a few days readjusting to what I referred to as "the world" after I returned home. In looking back on this experience, I can see how easy it would have been for me, a lonely, shy young man with a religious background, to have been swept away by the fervor of an evangeligal community.
However, that was not to be my fate. I continued in college, and then in the summer of 1971, I returned to Camp Wightman where I had the even more intense experience of meeting Sheila Kay, the girl who was to become my first wife. I moved down to the Mystic area in the spring of 1972 to be with Sheila. I began my teaching career in Groton, got married, and in 1976, our twin boys, Andrew and Jeremy, were born.
During this time, I was as involved with the Union Baptist Church (UBC) in Mystic as I had been with CBC in Manchester. UBC was in the last days of the Rev. Dr. Elbert "Pearly" Gates' pastorate. His eight years at UBC had been described by many people as "golden years" and I considered myself fortunate to experience Dr. and Mrs. Gates' last months in Mystic. After Dr. Gates left in 1973 (Sheila and I were the last couple he married as UBC's pastor), the church went through several years of unrest during the rest of the 70's. After growing tired of the negative atmosphere that seemed to permeate every aspect of our church life, Sheila and I left UBC and started going to the Old Mystic Baptist Church. We never joined that church and eventually returned to UBC after a year or so.
During these years I stayed active in church life. In addition to attending worship services on a regular basis, I was, at UBC, on the Board of Christian Education, a refugee resettlement committee for a family from Vietnam, and the Board of Deacons. I was also a central figure on a planning committee of local ministers who met for several months to plan a gathering of SUNL youth groups based on my vision of a coming together in the "Holy Spirit". I taught the senior high Sunday School class for a time at UBC as well during our short stay at Old Mystic.
It was during this time period, the mid-seventies to the early eighties, that I read the first of a number of books that were to have a profound influence on my spiritual growth and thinking about religion, M. Scott Peck's famous best-seller: "The Road Less Traveled". This book introduced me to many new ideas, some of which had been lurking in the back of my mind but had not yet been shaped into words.
Peck's way of blending religion and the science of psychology as a means of promoting self-understanding were a breath of fresh air for me. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with what I saw as "stuffy" dogma being the means for finding spiritual illumination. Reading Peck's book, I began to see these two ideas, self-understanding and spiritual illumination, as two ways of expressing the same thing: the discovery of the presence of God in the heart and mind. I also began to see that there was significance to the spiritual restlessness I had experienced:
"To develop a religion or world view that is realistic- that is, conforms to the reality of the cosmos and our role in it, as best we can know reality- we must constantly revise and extend our understanding to include new knowledge of the larger world. We must constantly enlarge our frame of reference." (Peck 191)
Peck's words confirmed such well-pondered contemplations on Christian faith as: Why was the transcendent experience claimed by people in the Bible now shut off from humanity, leaving us with only a secondhand account of their experience as a basis for our faith? The canonization of Scripture, to the relegation of all other knowledge and inspiration, had for some time seemed a highly dubious restriction of human experience to me. Peck's call for constant revision and extension of religious views validated my previous denial of this restriction. As I wrote years later in an open letter to CBC:
"Faith experiences are not limited to a fortunate few. The experiences of people in the Bible are fully available to me. An experience not available to me was not available to the people in the Bible. God did not reveal himself directly at one time to chosen people and then say I would have only the crumbs of someone else's testimony. Testimony serves as a means of making me aware of God's presence in my own life by seeing how God's presence was made known in other lives." (Madden 1991)
The genesis of that outlook, written in 1991, came from reading Scott Peck some twelve years before. It was apparent to me that the perspective of people in the Bible was different from that of someone living in the later part of the twentieth century. Obviously, geographical and cultural horizons were much more limited in the days of "Joshua" than they are in an age of telecommunications and intercontinental flight. Shouldn't it be just as obvious that our outlook would change to match our expanded horizons? In fact, my outlook was changing, and some of my previous religious viewpoints were being discarded.
Peck was also telling me that the doubts and questions I had sometimes seen as burdens that seemed to rob me of my peace of mind were actually necessary for spiritual growth.
"The path to holiness lies through questioning everything." (Peck 193)
If this was true, then God must want us to question Him/Her, because God surely wants us to have spiritual health, or "holiness". Reading this book was a moment of affirmation and encouragement for me. It provided an alternative to the dogmatic certainty of religion that I was beginning to see as unacceptable material for the building of an inner sanctuary.
In 1980, my good friend, Jim Corcoran, suggested I return to Camp Wightman with him for a week of counseling in a junior high "Aquatics" camp. I agreed to do this, and found that it was very good to be back in those familar surroundings again. I was ten years older, but the Wightman experience affected me as strongly as it had in the early 1970's.
I counseled camps for children and youth several times in the next few years before leading a series of young adult weekend retreats at Wightman in the mid-80's. I was in the midst of developing a personal theology that in some significant ways was running counter to orthodox Christian thought. At the same time, I was happily surprised and gratified to discover an ability to express my thoughts concerning religion in a way that was acceptable to a group of adults who were, by and large, more in the "mainstream" than I was at this time. This discovery led me to think that it might be possible, after all, to have a faith springing from my own experience while participating in a church that might not share much of my outlook.
An important factor influencing the development of "a personal theology" was the reading of two books around this time. The first was "Honest to God" (HTG) by John A. T. Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich, England. Much as "The Road Less Traveled" had done, this book gave me a viable, cogent alternative to the orthodoxy that I knew by then I could never embrace wholeheartedly. It took several attempts before I started to really appreciate what this book was saying to me. Among its thought-provoking passages is the following:
"In order to express the 'trans-historical' character of the historical event of Jesus of Nazareth, the New Testament writers used the mythological language of pre-existence, incarnation, ascent and descent, miraculous intervention, cosmic catastrophe, and so on, which according to Bultmann, make sense only on a now completely antiquated world-view." (Robinson 24)
So often, my attempt to incorporate a personal philosophy with an orthodox interpretation of faith had seemed like pounding square pegs into round holes. If the world-view of people writing in "Bible times" had enabled them to express their understanding of the mystery of God, then it should be possible, I reasoned, to use a modern world-view with similar authenticity. For this to happen in my case, there had to be an alternative to the "antiquated world-view" that placed God either "up there" or "out there". Robinson, in "Honest To God", gave me an idea of how this could be done with intellectual and psychological integrity in discussing the theology of Paul Tillich:
"I quoted earlier the passages from Tillich in which he proposes replacing the images of 'height' by those of 'depth' in order to express the truth of God. And there is no doubt that this simple substitution can make much religious language suddenly appear more relevant. For we are familiar today with depth psychology, and with the idea that ultimate truth is deep or profound." (Robinson 45)
Tillich's "depth" theology, as cited by Robinson, caused a major shift in my thinking on religion. I remember, as a child, listening to Yuri Gargarin, the first man to orbit the earth, report back from space that he saw no sign of God in the heavens. I had long since seen through the spiritual immaturity of such a statement, but until "HTG", I did not have a valid theological alternative to take the place of such a limited external perspective. Years later, I again read about finding spiritual truth in the depths when I read "Iron John" by Robert Bly.
"Freud, Jung, and Wilhelm Reich are three investigators who had the courage to go down into the pond and to accept what they found there. The job of contemporary man is to follow them down." (Bly 6)
"HTG" also provided a critical analysis of supranaturalism, including a liberating moment from the limited point of view and outdated language used to describe the first century universe, in a quote from Bultmann:
" 'There is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical (supranatural) view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age.'" (Robinson 34)
If this was true, and I believed it was, then there was no need to resolve a conflict between science and religion in my thinking, for such a conflict did not exist. Rather, the conflict was between the cosmologies of the first and twentieth centuries. There could be little doubt as to the side I would choose in such a conflict. After all, what apologist could persuade any reasonably intelligent, educated person to ignore 2,000 years of scientific discovery with the mistaken idea that such clinging to ignorance was a means to faith? The influence of this chapter in "HTG" was apparent in the same open letter to CBC mentioned earlier:
"God is found in the discovery of scientific theories and laws as well as in the discovery of the Bible. The story of the Garden of Eden and Darwin's Law of Evolution are two different paths to the same destination: truth." (Madden 1991)
Another key point in "HTG" dealt with the nature of Christ. A highly interesting view of the orthodox interpretation of Christ's life was expressed as follows:
"(Jesus) was God for a limited period taking part in a charade. He looked like a man, he talked like a man, he felt like a man, but underneath he was God dressed up- like Father Christmas" (Robinson 66)
Passages such as this helped to explain why descriptions of Christ presented in traditional, orthodox language usually fell flat for me. An interpretation given in "HTG" that saw the Christmas story, not as history, but as myth, seemed more appropriate for me.
"The myth is there to indicate the significance of the events, the divine depth of the history. And we shall be grievously impoverished if our ears cannot tune to the angels' song or our eyes are blind to the wise men's star. But we must be able to read the nativity story without assuming that its truth depends on there being a literal interruption of the natural by the supernatural, that Jesus can only be Emmanuel- God with us- if, as it were, he came through from another world." (Robinson 68)
This introduction to myth as a way of interpreting the Bible percolated down into the depths of my soul. When my brother bought me "The Power of Myth" for a Christmas present, I was prepared to receive these conversations between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers with enthusiasm. Among the quotes from Campbell that caught my imagination was the following:
"Every mythology has to do with the wisdom of life as related to a specific culture at a specific time. It integrates the individual into his society and the society into the field of nature. It unites the field of nature with my nature. It's a harmonizing force." (Flowers 55)
The idea that mythology, including the mythology of the Bible, could be looked at as "a harmonizing force" added to an emerging perspective that rejected the old idea that out of all the religions of the world, only one, the Judeo/Christian tradition, as presented in the Bible, could claim to speak the truth for all ages and lands. Reading the Bible in terms of a cultural experience, written in largely mythological terms, was also proving to be the alternative to the historical, literal interpretation of a fixed, exclusive relationship with God that had been my main approach to understanding up until then. My faith was being "liberated from the cultural prisons to which it had been sentenced" (Flowers 55). I increasingly saw this "cultural prison" as the perspective placing the drama and message of the Bible outside of ourselves. Reading Campbell's thoughts helped me to see that freedom from this prison was obtained by going inside ourselves to the source from which Biblical images derived both their form and meaning.
"If you read 'Jesus ascended into heaven' in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward- not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body's dynamic source." (Flowers 57)
With my readings of Peck, Robinson, and Campbell, among others, I had begun to find a way of interpreting the Bible and my faith in a way that took out none of the "holiness" for me while assuaging the dilemma of being called upon to participate in a "willing suspension of disbelief" on Sunday mornings in order to own a workable faith for the rest of the week. By an evolution in the search from an external, historical context to one that was primarily inner-directed and mythologically based, I had found a way to integrate my faith experience, not only with my own world, but with the natural world as well. I realized to some extent that such a view of faith put me out of the "mainstream" of traditional Christian thought. I didn't yet see how this would impact directly on my life, but I soon would.
In the late summer of 1980, I received a phone call one evening from Dr. Gates. He had returned to Connecticut after several years in Hong Kong following his tenure at UBC. Dr. Gates told me he was serving as the interim minister at Third Baptist Church in North Stonington. He asked if I would be interested in the part-time position of youth advisor at the church. At the time, my salary as a public school teacher was paying for the necessities of life, but not much else. However, even with the incentive of some needed extra money for the family budget, I would not have accepted his offer without my successful weeks at Camp Wightman from that summer behind me. I sensed that taking on a job, other than as a volunteer, that might require me to "talk the talk" of orthodox Christian thought might not be right for me. But this reluctance was outweighed by financial considerations and a recent dose of evangelistic fervor from camp so I accepted his offer the next day.
As it turned out, my reluctance came from an inner source that proved to be prophetic. I found myself, in my role as youth advisor, gravitating towards organizing events on an Association level. I had been aware for some time of the relatively large number of ABCCONN churches in the southeastern Connecticut area, so it seemed only natural to join together for activities with our neighbors. I played a large part in initiating this effort, and I believe that some good results came from it.
But the real job of a church youth advisor is to advise kids, on an individual and small group basis, in living out the precepts of the Christian faith. In this regard, I believe my efforts were not successful. Without a willingness to speak decisively about my Christian convictions, my effectiveness with the youth group was compromised. It is possible that if I had spoken from the heart, even in terms that kids disagreed with, they would have responded to a strong conviction. This might have caused them to be more willing to use our weekly meetings as a forum for expressing their concerns in a Christian environment.
Some of the reluctance to testify to the faith was a part of my shyness, which was then even more of an impediment then it is now. But more than shyness, my unwillingness to speak in clear, strong terms regarding my faith was due to the fact that I saw it as murky and weak. I carried around much doubt and frustration with Christian faith in my early thirties, and I wasn't a good enough actor to pretend otherwise. I think that the kids knew I cared about them, but I usually wasn't able to express my concern for them in a way that went past the "fun" activities we engaged in. This was not what some people in the church thought the function of a youth advisor should be, and when Dr. Gates took on the interim pastorate at UBC, I went with him. My parting from Third Baptist was not acrimonious, but I had the feeling that some people there shared my feeling that my departure was for the best.
It probably would have been best to recognize after that year at Third Baptist that youth ministry was not what I was cut out for. Over the summer I had convinced myself that my problems at Third had been mostly personality clashes, and that working with people I had known for years at UBC would make such conflicts less likely. Sheila and I had also become accustomed to the money from youth work that was no longer really "extra" and UBC was offering an increase from what Third Baptist had given me. Each year, there was to be a pay increase that made it difficult to say "No" to continuing.
The next six years at UBC were much like the first year at Third. My propensity to organize on an association level continued, and along with Mason Andrews, the youth advisor and Director of Christian Education at New London Baptist and others in SUNL, some good events, mixing both faith and fellowship were held. I helped organize some worship events in the church with the youth. There were small service projects organized, as well as some activities of a spiritual nature. I did the best I could to do a job that I hoped would justify the salary I was being paid.
Despite all my efforts, I was almost constantly anxious about what I was doing because I felt I couldn't perform the most important part of my job description, which was to espouse the Christian faith in a way that would have importance for young people. I found that I was in a genuine quandary. I didn't know how to speak from my own unorthodox beliefs and still be able to reach the kids, and I also didn't know how to speak in traditional Christian language and forms without feeling hypocritical and thus appearing "phony".
In looking back on those years, it would appear that my convictions must have been genuine. It would have made my life a lot easier, and I certainly would have done a better job, if I could have witnessed to the traditional faith in my capacity as a church youth advisor, but I couldn't bring myself to do this. I can now see a virtue in this inability to go against my emerging beliefs that was not apparent to me at the time.
My ever-deepening frustration over not being able to bring myself to play the role of the "Christian" leader finally reached a point where I decided in 1987, to leave the position of youth advisor at UBC. I believe I left on good terms. I certainly had nothing but respect and affection for the kids I had been with, many for the entire time I had been at UBC. But when the time came to leave, I did so with relief. I now wanted to attend church for the sake of worshiping in a genuine way, and not as part of a job where I felt I had to maintain an "appearance".
The opportunity to make a fresh start came in 1987 when Sheila and I invited Rev. Newell Bishop to our home to talk with us about joining the North Stonington Congregational Church. Newell's friendliness, as well as the family-centered atmosphere of the worship service, struck a responsive chord in both of us. I had a slight reluctance to leave the American Baptist fold, but I soon discovered that the United Church of Christ(UCC), of which North Stonington Congregational was a member, and American Baptist Churches were first cousins in spirit. We attended worship services regularly as a family. The UCC, I realized, was not burdened with a "taint of fundamentalism" as my pastoral counselor, the Rev. Dr. David Eaton, was to explain to me later. For all too brief a time, the joining of family and church in a spiritual atmosphere where I could have an authentic faith experience appeared to have finally come to pass.
However, there were dynamics under the surface of appearances that soon broke apart my vision of our family's future. One night in August of 1989, Sheila unexpectedly, but with what would prove to be unwavering conviction, told me that she wanted a divorce. A year later, in August of 1990, the divorce was finalized. My divorce, including the months of my efforts to save the marriage, had an impact on my spiritual life in two important ways: I began a three and a half year committment to counselling, and I returned for a time to CBC.
My divorce and the events of the year leading up to it were traumatic for me, but my response to this crisis revealed something about who I really am. During the autumn of 1989, I met often with Newell to talk with him about my disintegrating marriage. My ability to share my deep feelings with Newell came as a surprise to me, as I had always seen myself as someone who believed in the personal maxim: "Keep it to yourself". Something had developed in me that did not agree with that approach, and I found, in the midst of great confusion, a growing ability to articulate on a heartfelt level, first with Newell and later with others. I was finding what Joseph Campbell had said to be true:
"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging." (Osbon 20))
These times with Newell were an important part of my effort to keep my life together, and I am grateful for his willingness to listen to me for all those hours. After meeting for several months, it was agreed that despite the importance of our talks, something more was needed as I lived through the increasingly tense atmosphere that was developing in my home. Newell suggested two different counselors, one of whom was the Rev. Dr. David Eaton, a pastoral counselor. I thought that a spiritual aspect might be helpful in my attempt to reconcile with Sheila and I went to see David for the first time in November of 1989. It soon became obvious that counseling was not going to save the marriage. I continued, however, to see David and our emphasis changed from marriage counseling to personal therapy.
In our first meeting, David described the warm, comforting room where we met as "a holy place". It was to become just that over the years. In the sanctuary we created together for me, David taught me to understand that there are ways to see events that have happened in my life other than the interpretations I had received and assumed to be infallible. In the slow, sometimes difficult work of altering a lifetime of perceptions, the leaven of the New Testament was often kneaded into our conversations.
Listening to David quote passages from the Bible as a means of addressing my situation had a profound impact on me. His use of the Bible as a source of healing had no similarity to the dogmatic approach that had turned me off so many times in the past. I began to think of the Bible as Luther described it, not the "words of God", but the "Word of God" (Rollins 4).
I gradually began to see that it was how a person interpreted the Bible that really mattered. If the Bible was approached as a cornucopia for the soul, and not as a source
of inerrant authority, than it would yield the fruits that the soul craved. For me, this approach was accomplished by coming to an understanding that the Bible, like the Sabbath, was meant for me, and not me for the Bible.
This approach to the Bible, and to faith/philosophy seeking in general, resonated within me. The idea of accepting at face value what other people, including the writers of the Bible, had said was true about God began to ebb away as a part of my outlook. In David's study, I was becoming consciously emancipated from the the cruel, vindictive Old Testament god that I had first encountered in "Joshua" during Will Burrows' class.
David encouraged me to read books that would help me to gain a new perspective on how I saw life and my relationship to others. One of those books was "He: Understanding Masculine Psychology" by Robert A. Johnson. Johnson's premise is that a myth contains within itself the power to help people cope with the psychological elements that exist both around and within all of us. In reading "He", I had taken another step toward including myth as a way of joining my faith and day to day life into a harmonious whole. Myth, as explained by Johnson in his examination of the Parsifal legend told by Chretien de Troyes, could become accessible to me in a way that was intimate and life-changing. After reading this book a few times, the first time with a great deal of confusion, I made a tape that I listened to on my way into work. Listening to that tape now brings back memories of the spring mornings I would drive to work, rewinding the tape time and again to etch such messages as the following into my mind:
"Many inner truths are shorn of their true power by being transposed to a level inconsistent with their power and depth. Viewing the virgin birth of Christ as only a historical event will blur the sight of a vital law which is needed when you are called upon to make that interior mating of the human soul with the Divine Spirit which is the true genesis of one's individuality." (Johnson 30)
I was acquiring, in books and conversation, a body of knowledge and insight that gave me ever-increasing confidence to seek after God in the domain of my interior life. The importance of this acquistion of knowledge, not only for the individual soul, but for the sake of the world itself, was expounded upon by Emerson in his "Divinity School Address":
"Once leave your own knowledge of God, your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, as St. Paul's, or George Fox's, or Swedenborg's, and you get wide from God with every year this secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries- the chasm yawns to that breadth, that men can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine." (Pelikan 256)
At the same time, the exterior claims that I associated with formal religion had all but lost their grip on me. This led to what seemed the ironic situation of seeing myself at a high point of spiritual development while at the same time attending church on a much less regular basis.
In looking back, this situation, ironic or not, appears to have been unavoidable. The claims of literalism, which seem to be the very foundation of the churches I have been familiar with, put the faith experience outside of an individual's experience. When these claims approach the outlandish in such purportedly historical accounts as walking on water, causing the sun to halt in the sky, raising the dead, parting the seas, and ascending to heaven, then the only way to incorporate faith into daily life is to abandon any serious attempt to bring the rational side of the personality into the forging of faith. The fragmentation of personality that can then occur is seen in Jung's description of his minister father:
"Shortly before his father's death in 1896, Jung discovered that his father's resolute refusal to think critically about the church's dogmas and creeds and his tendency to repeat 'the same old lifeless theological answers' led to grave inward doubts. On one occasion, quite by chance, Jung overheard his father in prayer, wrestling desperately to hold on to his 'theological religion,' which in Jung's estimation his father had tragically mistaken for faith." (Rollins 12)
I believe that a large part of the problem I have experienced in my attempts to be genuinely assimilated into a church as an autonomous, free-thinking adult has been the church's reluctance or inability to give the perspective that
"much of our religious heritage is a map or set of instructions for the deepest meaning of our interior life." (Johnson 30)
Instead, the church has in my experience, with rare exceptions, insisted that a large part of its mission is to teach that the souls sitting in the pews are to abide by
"a set of laws for outer conduct." (Johnson 30)
It has been my observation that the more closely a church adheres to an inerrant interpretation of the Bible, the more likely it is that a pharisaic environment will exist. For people who are in the "formal/institutional" stage of Peck's hierarchy of spiritual growth (Peck, Further 119), such circumstances may be just what is necessary. But for someone who has often seen himself in a different place of spiritual development, the church has often appeared to be a place where the spiritual nourishment offered by Jesus in "Matthew 12: 1-4" has been hard to come by.
"At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, 'Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.' He answered, 'Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread-which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.'" (NIV)
Johnson also taught me, in his interpretation of a 12th century poem, that written language can bring people into spiritual health, or "holiness", even when the words are expressed outside of a Biblically centered text. I am not saying that because a source is non-Biblical that it will necessarily take precedent over a Biblical source for a person who sees the faith journey more in terms of internal meaning rather than external events. But for the person who struggles incessantly to remove the calcified deposits of dogma from an understanding of the underlying truth, it may be better to go to a source that can be approached in newness, much as those seeking a new life left the confining stagnation of the Old World for the free, open spaces of the New. If a choice is made in faith that God will be found in a new place, I believe that God makes that choice "holy" and reveals the Self to the seeker.
The second event resulting from my divorce that made a difference in my spiritual life was a return to CBC. I had been travelling to Manchester on Sundays to be with my family during the autumn of 1989. It was only natural that I would also eventually return to the church that both my mother and father were attending.
With a certain amount of trepidation, I attended a "young adult" class at the church and soon found that I felt at home among new friends. Within just a few weeks, I was looking forward to our weekly get-togethers. After the ultimate rejection one gets from divorce, it was a good feeling to experience the acceptance I was offered by the group. It also made me feel good to know that the ages of the members were not much different from mine!
Not much time passed before I learned that there was a distinct difference between the way many members of the class viewed their faith and the way I viewed mine. I was especially aware of this since I was in the midst of undergoing changes in my perception of religious "truths" during counseling with David. Now, for the first time since much of my outlook had changed, a forum existed for me to express these new viewpoints. I seized this opportunity, with what some members of the class might have felt was a little too much enthusiasm, and I soon had the unanticipated, but welcome, opportunity to teach the class.
In attending this class and being quite vocal, I was responding to a deep-seated need that had remained dormant within me for a great many years. I knew that I was, in a psychological sense, going back in time and speaking the thoughts that I hadn't had the courage or ability to express when I was younger. The people I was communicating with were not the same people I had known as adults in the 1960's, but the theology that I had been struggling with in silence for years was still being expressed in much the same way as it had been in my teens. I realized that I was being given the rare opportunity to work out some of the problems with the genesis of my faith development in both an inner and outer way.
I also realized that the purpose of the class was not just to help Dave Madden work out his issues, and I know that some people grew weary, and perhaps even angry, with the direction the class took after my arrival. It was exhilirating to have a forum at a time when new ideas were bubbling up from within me, but I regret any frustration I may have caused for those who felt left off the agenda.
I believe now that some of the conflicts that took place in our class were inevitable. The history of the church is filled with accounts of disagreements and far more between those who have challenged the status quo and those who have sought to maintain it. However, while I did not shrink from conflict and even, I must confess, welcomed it at times, I did not foresee the event that this conflict would bring about: my exclusion from teaching the class in the future.
I had always seen our discussions, even when they became somewhat heated, as a means to an end: the development of a viable faith for each participant. I also believed, naively perhaps, that honesty and openness were foundations of our class. Disagreements, when they occurred, were always, so I thought, expressed in a spirit of respect for the believer, if not the belief.
Knowing what I did of church politics and customs, as well as my inclination, at times, to enjoy a good religious battle, I should not have been as surprised as I was to find that disagreements I had seen mostly as opportunities to grow in our faith were seen by others as unacceptable and perhaps even dangerous.
There were reasons given, although not by those involved in the decision, for why I was not wanted anymore as a teacher: my teaching methods were unsatisfactory, I did not tithe, I did not attend worship on a regular basis, and, above all, there were doubts in the minds of some members as to whether I was really a Christian. If I had lived in Manchester at the time, I think there is a strong possibility I would have challenged the authority of those who decreed that I would no longer teach at CBC unless I met their standards. I think such a challenge would have been a healthy experience for both me and the church. But the long ride each Sunday from North Stonington, along with my sense that a challenge would require more energy than I was willing to expend, caused me to gradually separate from CBC.
In the fall of 1991, I resolved to visit churches in the Mystic/Westerly area in an attempt to once again find a church home. I had seriously considered returning to North Stonington Congregational, but it was still difficult to think of sitting in a pew by myself when I had my memories of being there with Sheila in the past. So with a sense of excitement and anticipation, I visited two different churches in two weeks, Saint Patrick's Church in Mystic and the Road Church in Stonington. I visited the Road Church with Ken Cote, a former member of the youth group at UBC who had become a good friend. Neither of these churches seemed to be what I was looking for.
Then, one bright September morning, I drove down to Mystic to attend another church, the Mystic Congregational Church, where Rev. Chris Emerson was the pastor. Almost from the moment I sat down, I knew I had found the place I was looking for. The feeling of positive energy in that sanctuary was unmistakable. This energy radiated from the congregation, from the associate minister, Rev. Diane Mix, and especially from Chris. The sermon that morning, like most of the sermons Chris preached, was both emotionally captivating and thought provoking. When I joined less than two months later, there were about ten others who came in with me, which was the usual monthly rate.
I have wonderful memories of a Christmas play, candlelight services, Thanksgiving evening in Noank with "church people", brunches at "Joni's", and many good sermons. But this episode of church life began to come to a close when Chris announced in the spring of 1993 that he would be leaving for a church in New Hampshire. Before Chris left Mystic in June, he married Sandra and me. In fact, we were the last couple he married as pastor in Mystic (the end of a short-lived trend for me!). Chris's departure led me to gradually move away from Mystic Congregational. I realized soon after Chris left that he had played an inordinately important role in my decision to join this latest church. As my ties to Mystic grew weaker, I found that I was reluctant to commit myself to a church again. After all, I had left four churches for one reason or other since 1987, a span of only six years. Theological differences aside, it seemed that I had a problem with church committment.
In the fall and winter of 1993-1994, I went to several meetings of the Society of Friends in Westerly, in part to avoid the recent problem that came with being attracted by a strong leader: when he goes, I go too. I also attended, in the spring of 1995, several meetings of the Unitarian/Universalist Church at the University of Rhode Island. Both of these possibilities interested me for their own reasons, but in each case, I felt a sense of self-indulgence to be attending churches where Sandra and the girls would not be likely to join me. I did find a place of fellowship and spiritual growth during the 1994-95 church year in a study group with Newell and another friend at the North Stonington Congregational Church, but this was not an experience that could substitute for a church covenant.
These days, I am not participating in church. The old conflict between the search for an authentic faith experience and the need to belong to a community of believers has brought me to a solitary place in my spiritual journey. I am not referring to solitude as a way of life in general. These days, I am happily married and richly blessed with good relationships in my family and among my friends. I have a satisfying career and the good health that is necessary for enthusiastically participating as I do in the daily world. I am referring instead to a religious solitude of the past few years. This has been a time when I have rarely attended church, but I have attended to my spiritual well-being by means of music, books, conversation, and silent prayer. I have come to see that solitude, within well-defined interior boundaries, is a good teacher.
A book that I have just recently finished reading, "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels, speaks of the need for solitude as necessary part of a faith experience. Her book, which uses the 2,000 year old papyrus scrolls found in 1945 at the Nag Hammadi site as its source, examines the gnostic branch of Christianity that existed during the first 200 or so years of the early church. This branch was branded as "heretical" by the better organized, more popular orthodox branch, and eventually severed from the church by the orthodox during the first two or three centuries of Christianity.
The pursuit of gnosis, or knowing, was seen by its adherents as a solitary, difficult process. Gnostics recognized that self discovery would involve going through significant inner turmoil. Anyone who has gone through in-depth counseling in a therapeutic setting also knows this to be true. Preceding Jung by centuries, gnosticism had a fascination with the nonliteral significance of language as a way of understanding the internal quality of an individual's experience. With such an outlook, the gnostics would have undoubtedly felt at home with the solitary discipline of Jungian dream work. In fact, the gnostic Gospel of Thomas has Jesus speaking to the very heart of twentieth century psychotherapy:
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." (Pagels 67)
For years, I had been increasingly seeing religious experience in terms of an inner reality where mythology was the coin of the realm. Now I was reading of an ancient tradition in the Christian church which affirmed my belief in the value of personal insight over institutional doctrine. In so doing, I had discovered the originating force of the conflict in the young adult class at CBC that I have previously described as "inevitable". To the orthodox, humanity needs a divinely given way beyond its own power to approach God. The gnostic, on the other hand, believed that humanity discovers the divine way for itself; it is from our own inner potential that we gain the revelation of truth.
The solitary, questioning search that had made my relationship with church seem estranged in the past and defunct in the present could now be seen as having authority that originated from the same source that the orthodox church also claimed: the writings of the first two centuries of Christianity. It was now possible to see myself as reconciled with the church by claiming this common heritage, and in so doing, coming to the realization that I had been, even when my questioning was most intense, a part of the one, indivisible church all along.
This reconciliation has come to life for me with the help of a symbolic image springing from my contemplation of Pagels' book. I see my faith journey now in the symbol of a river, rather than a road. The river that I have been travelling on has one source in the mountains and one destination in the ocean. It isn't really important that I have decided to take one branch of the river while someone else takes another. I now realize that it is all one river.
Having come to this enlightenment, I know it is still important to have a way of coping with the differences between a gnostic and orthodox approach to faith. These differences are real, and to ignore or underestimate them are mistakes which could ultimately stand in the way of wholeness, both for my conscience and for my future congregation, wherever that may be.
Heracleon, a disciple of the great gnostic poet Valentinus, has provided me with an answer to this problem. He said that the "many", that is the majority of Christians who are orthodox, worshipped in the temple courtyard, as the Levites did. It was for the "few", that is the gnostics, to enter the "holy of holies", the inner sanctuary, as the priests in Jerusalem did. Both the courtyard and the inner sanctuary are the same place of worship, and as Paul encouraged, all are to "love one another" (Pagels 101).
I realize that seeing myself in this way opens me up to the same charges of elitism that my gnostic ancestors were accused of by the orthodox church. Yet regardless of what others may think of how I interpret transcendental experience, the time may be at hand for me to bring to life the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman at the well in "John 4:23-24":
"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (NIV)
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