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"People no longer feel obligated to attend services on Sunday morning pretending to believe things they know are not true in order to get rewards they doubt are even available."
-- Robin Meyers*
From time to time, people who read my essays express wonder that I was never tried for heresy. I never was, but I was charged with heresy, only under undefined terms: "Conduct Unbecoming A Clergyperson."
In January 2009, a church official wrote to my accuser that the bishop's council of advice "after serious consideration of the matter declines to take any action" -- prompting said accuser to conclude that "the church does not have the courage of its beliefs."
For those who still wonder why I remain undefrocked, here are selections from a lengthy question/answer document the accuser filed with the ecclesiastical authorities in his campaign to have me disciplined.
One of two things seems evident: either my answers to his questions did not sufficiently offend the theological sentiments of the church officials involved, or -- as I was told by one of them some years later -- they figured (correctly) that I would plead "not guilty," thus setting the stage for a trial they figured (again, correctly) would become a public spectacle for which they had little stomach.
Indeed, such luminaries as John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg and Harvey H. Guthrie were willing -- one of them eager -- to testify for the defendant, never mind the torch-and-pitchfork bearers.
All that probably accounts for the oddity that only once since my retirement more than six years ago has another priest asked me to take a liturgy for him or her. That one invitation came from a colleague who was soon on his way out of the state and the diocese to another parish far away. No problem. I love my Sunday morning routine with coffee and the New York Times. We go to church on Saturday, anyway.
So, the question-answer exercise: See what you think.
Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God and was inspired by God? If not, what is the Bible?
I do not so believe. The Bible is one of the most remarkable collections of literature in the human epoch, containing great wisdom, much useful history, interesting mythology and ethical principles. It provides an opaque window on the world of antiquity and, therefore, on how our spiritual ancestors in the Mediterranean world extracted meaning from and for life.
Do you agree with the catechism's explanation of the Trinity as "God in three persons?" If not, what is the Trinity to you?
I find the language and concept of the Trinity to be impossible to consider in an Enlightenment world. The Trinity to me is an abstraction constructed out of bits and pieces of scripture and tradition that are fundamentally meaningless in the 21st Century.
Do you agree with the catechism that Jesus was completely human and completely God, all in one person?
Inasmuch as "Jesus" was a very common given name (Yeshua) among first century Palestinians, it is possible that the Jesus we meet (variously) in the gospels is a fiction or an amalgam of persons and personalities that came to limited prominence in the first third of the first century CE. I am struck by the humanistic ethic represented in such sayings as "love your enemy" and "turn the other cheek," which are attributed to a Jesus of Nazareth. However, I don't know how anyone can make a credible argument that a human being is anything other than human.
If a candidate for confirmation were to ask, "Did Jesus, the Son of God, rise from the dead?" what would you say to her or him?
I do not teach that Jesus is the Son of God because those words have no concrete or rational meaning. I tried to acquaint my students with the various depictions of Jesus in the gospels and to imagine how it would be to live closely with such a person who said such things as he is credited as having said. I teach that if Jesus was born, he would have died. I suggest that his memory was sufficiently incandescent among his survivors unto the second and third generations that a movement grew up around his ethical teachings and eventually became an offshoot of synagogue Judaism ... That's as far as I go in the resurrection department.
At your ordination mass, the bishop asked you if you would "be ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's Word." What would be your answer today?
"Erroneous" and "strange" are relative value judgments. How people think and then act upon their thinking will be erroneous if the thinking and resultant actions have adverse consequences. If the consequences are good for all concerned then the doctrine of teaching is not erroneous. A "strange" doctrine would be one that would teach (among other things) exclusion, cruelty, malediction, ungratefulness and mischief. I would, indeed, try to banish such doctrines.
And so it went with my detractor, branching off eventually to a one-on-one encounter during which he asked me why I was intent upon resisting orthodoxy, that being, he said, "The faith once delivered to the saints."** I had forgotten what had been my reply to him until I picked up Robin Meyers' book footnoted below and read the chapter called "Faith As Resistance to Orthodoxy."
My reply was something like this:
First: The word "heretic" comes from Greek and means "one who chooses," as in choosing to believe differently than does a dominant majority. Second: Orthodoxy is to Christian Pharisees as the Sabbath was to Jewish Pharisees. The Sabbath was made for man, and the thousand and one do-and-don't requirements hedged about it turned it into a burden that extinguished the light and joy the Sabbath was meant to bring to those who wished to enjoy it. Likewise, rote orthodoxy stifles thinking and pens in those who would be inquirers. If anything, orthodoxy is the enemy of faith, which in the Greek New Testament appears as pistis -- "courage to trust." I like to think that I encouraged those whose pastor I have been all these years to trust themselves to think, question, doubt and, if necessary, dispute what they can't wrap their minds around. To abet that freedom, I saw to it that there was at least one major liturgy each week in which none of the historic creeds was recited. If that be sin, then I am guilty.
The quotation at the beginning of this essay comes from Robin Meyers' book. Robin is a friend and colleague of more than 30 years. He was kind enough not only to have endorsed one of my books but also to have inscribed a gift copy of his own latest book to me as follows: "For Harry Cook: A partner in crime!" Read his book, and you'll see why.
*Meyers, R. Spiritual Defiance: Building a Beloved Community of Resistance. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press. 2015. p. 50
**The General Epistle of Jude, v. 3
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