The interest in the papal election last month was quite extraordinary. It was curious to see the church and its mission analyzed so intently on the front pages of secular (and often anti-church) publications.
No doubt one reason was that a Canadian, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, was considered a frontrunner. But that alone hardly explains it.
Perhaps it has something to do with our need for heroes, for icons. And the pope, as leader of the largest denomination of Christians and the inheritor of the faith’s oldest episcopal see, is nothing if not an icon.
Before I go further, let me be clear that I’m not suggesting the pope replaces Jesus as an icon for our faith. But humans need living icons. The Dalai Lama fills a similar role for many people.
Is it, I wonder, that as we make our way through life, with all its ups and downs, trials and joys, we look to certain people—perhaps to certain positions as much as anything—to help us measure where we are?
To help us believe in our strength despite our weakness?
We are in a period of great religious upheaval. In the West, numbers of churchgoers are declining while the number of people interested in God and spirituality, and especially Christianity, remains fairly strong.
I think many people today would like to believe, or think they ought to believe, more strongly than they do about matters of faith.
In a high-profile religious leader such as this bishop who has inherited a church community historically grounded in the New Testament, it is easy to believe that this person represents the kind of robust faith many people would like to have.
That’s why I encourage you to read the excellent discussion in this issue between Tom Allen and Rev. Will Ingram moderated by the Record’s Andrew Faiz. It dispenses with the notion that a strong belief without doubt is what defines real faith.
Real faith does have doubt. It always has. Many of the great saints, theologians, mystics and holy people have expressed how often doubt almost overwhelmed them.
And at least in the West, it will be crucial for Pope Francis to find ways to encourage discussion and debate around these questions for all Christians, not just Catholics.
And as we engage in these issues, perhaps we will find that they are less about doubt in God than about doubt in the church’s teachings about God.
Harvey Cox, a Baptist minister and the former Harvard theologian, has put forward the theory that the last 50 years in the history of Christianity are the beginning of the Age of the Spirit.
He contrasts the current interest in spirituality and trying to find common ground with other faiths with the previous 1,700 years which were dominated by the church and its theologians focusing on defining dogmas (foundational beliefs) and doctrines (other teachings).
Cox has certainly put his finger on something. Much of the recent commentary on Roman Catholicism and the pope focused on the fact that most Western Roman Catholics simply ignore a number of the church’s teachings concerning sexuality, for instance. But they are still drawn to the spiritual element of the faith.
That strikes me as no different than Presbyterians. We have noted for some time that the struggles and debates are really between those who are concerned with preserving the doctrines of the church and those who are more interested in discovering the activity of the Holy Spirit in the wider world.
These approaches are not so much opposed as just having a completely different focus and concern. The opposition that arises is in some sense accidental and perhaps that is why each side is so puzzling to the other. The most frequent question from either side is essentially: “How can they believe that?”
Perhaps the answer is simply to trust God and enter into the conversation. Because is it not in the Word that God is to be found?
