I was almost an Episcopal priest, and now I don’t call myself a Christian. How did that happen? In the writing of the book I realized that the story I had been telling about what happened was not the whole story. I had been telling people that I left institutional Christianity because the church was sexist—which is true—but I also left institutional Christianity because my faith in God had changed dramatically. I no longer believed what I had once believed. I also told people that I lost faith in God, but I realized that isn’t exactly right either. I didn’t lose my faith. I left it….
People assume I’m an atheist, but I’m not. I don’t know what I am, but if I had to choose a label I’d choose agnostic. When I say that people usually ask me if I think God exists, and I usually give them the answer that my teacher, Gordon Kaufman, used to give me: The question of God’s existence isn’t the right question because it won’t get you very far. It’s a question human beings can’t answer. If we take God’s mystery seriously, then we can never know. I think there are better questions that we can be answering: What does a particular vision of God do to those who submit to it and to those who won’t submit to it? What difference is my version of God making? Who is it harming? In one of his books, Kaufman writes, “The central question for theology… is a practical question. How are we to live? To what should we devote ourselves? To what causes give ourselves?” He argues that theology that does not contribute significantly to struggles against inhumanity and injustice has lost sight of its point of being.
I can’t know if God exists, but I do know the word God is operating in the world, running around doing all kinds of work, good and bad, and I think, as a theologian, I have a responsibility to think critically about the kinds of gods we make and worship and to try to come up with versions of god that might make the world a more just and life-giving place for everyone.
–Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking Up with God: A Love Story
Provocative, penetrating, honest and real. Sentilles, in chronicling her own story, chronicles the journey that all of us must take in search of our own humanity. Would that institutional religion were big enough to embrace and affirm her work.
–Atheist Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, in a blurb for Sentilles’ book
June 8, 2011 at 10:41 am
Atheist Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong
I wouldn’t read anything that Bishop Spong recommended to read or endorsed.
This person story is sad in deed, and seems to be a lack of trust, commitment, and lack of sound Christian teaching in the Word of God.
Seems to me she like many others are putting there trust in what men say and rejecting the teachings of the Bible.
June 8, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Regardless of whether she’s putting trust in men, I think she’s pretty straightforwardly admitting to, and advocating for, what her Christian background should enable her to identify as “idolatry”.
In Christian theology, we understand God to be the center around which everything else revolves, and the Bible pretty strongly condemns putting anything else in His place. We are to love Him above all else. By contrast, she suggests that we consider things like social “causes” the most important thing. Fighting “inhumanity and injustice” is very important, as far as it goes, but it’s not as important as God Himself. (Anyway it ultimately makes no sense to give allegiance to things like justice if one doesn’t believe in the Lawgiver behind it.)
So, she claims not to know whether God exists, but she is living as if she were sure He didn’t—at least not the God of the Bible. If He does exist, idolatry is really bad.
Maybe all that means is that agnosticism isn’t exactly an option, if it’s thought through.
June 9, 2011 at 7:58 pm
We should pity the poverty of this woman’s spiritual life. Having done the practically obligatory stint of agnosticism in my late teens/ early 20s, I can testify that the thin gruel of agnosticism will not sustain life.