Christ as our Oasis

I've offered my grumpy take on the United Church's singular failure as a Christian denomination to address the out-there atheism of the Rev. Gretta Vosper. I figure she's in no way faithful to the vows of ordination clergy undertake in the UCC and so do the majority of members and clergy I talk to. Some are puzzled, lots are bemused,  a few get angry. Why doesn't the United Church just part company with Vosper and her non-theist congregation, they want to know. It appears that the "Big Tent" UCC just doesn't want to make a fuss even though our Moderator Richard Bott has assured us:

The dance between these core values, how they interact with and inform each other, is one that we continue to explore as followers of Jesus and children of the creator. As a Christian church, we continue to expect that ministers in the United Church of Canada will offer their leadership in accordance with our shared and agreed upon statements of faith.



Honestly this feels as though leaders are dancing around the issues and this is an example of the wonderful United Church at its embarrassing worst. I was intrigued by a recent article in The Atlantic about the initial success of secular congregations in the US and their failure to thrive over time:

Secular congregations such as Sunday Assembly and Oasis—a similar group started in 2012—seek to offer a solution. Both were founded by faithless seekers hoping to carry on certain aspects of religious life: the community, the moral deliberation, and the rich sense of wonder. When they were growing so rapidly in their early years, these congregations were heavily covered by media outlets. “The Hot New Atheist Church,” gushed a 2013 Daily Beast headline about Sunday Assembly. HuffPost noted that the number of assemblies had doubled in a single weekend in 2014...

But even as the growth of “nones” has revved up in the intervening years, the growth of secular congregations hasn’t kept pace. After a promising start, attendance declined, and nearly half the chapters have fizzled out... Building a durable community of nonbelievers, it turns out, is more complicated than just excising God...  

If the sudden emergence of secular communities speaks to a desire for human connection and a deeper sense of meaning, their subsequent decline shows the difficulty of making people feel part of something bigger than themselves. One thing has become clear: The yearning for belonging is not enough, in itself, to create a sense of home.

Wise words, which we might heed. Hey, I'm all for people having the freedom to gather as they choose providing it is not hateful or designed to exclude others -- everyone needs some form of oasis. At the same time a denomination which is clearly Christian in its foundation and purpose might learn from those communities which struggle to find purpose without a Higher Power. In the United Church we are formed around Jesus the Christ, or so I was told, and still believe. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/secular-churches-rethink-their-sales-pitch/594109/