There are some things I just don’t get. For instance, why would an atheist want to be the pastor of a Christian church? And why would the denomination or congregation of which that person is a pastor want him or her to remain in that position? Those questions are provoked by an article from Ecumenical News International entitled, “Dutch ‘atheist’ pastor urges church to discuss whether God exists”:

A pastor of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands who came to prominence after publishing an “atheist” manifesto has challenged the general synod of his denomination to discuss whether God exists.

Many clergy and lay church members would find such a discussion helpful, the Rev. Klaas Hendrikse said on 5 January in an open letter to the church’s general secretary, the Rev. Arjan Plaisier.

What exactly is supposed to be the point of such a conversation? The existence of the church pre-supposes the existence of God–if God is not real, then the church isn’t the church, but a social or political or literary club. Now, if that’s what the Protestant Church in the Netherlands wants to be, or if that’s what Hendrikse wants to lead, that’s fine. But please don’t confuse such an entity with the ekklesia built upon Jesus Christ.

In his letter, Hendrikse recalls a survey conducted by the Dutch ecumenical broadcaster IKON in 2006. This found that one in six clergy of the denominations affiliated to the broadcaster either do not believe in the existence of God or is unsure about this. By far the largest of the seven affiliated denominations is the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN).

Assuming the accuracy of that survey, all I can say is that the PKN is apparently in even more trouble than its mainline counterparts in the United States.

The pastor wrote his letter in response to a recent article by Plaisier in the official Protestant church magazine, in which the general secretary referred to Hendrikse’s book, and discussed the issue of belief in God.

In the article, Plaisier acknowledged that many people raised as Christians in the Netherlands find it difficult to believe in the existence of a personal God. “Many have difficulty [believing in] God as he was held up to them in their youth. That is the image of a Father in heaven, a God who knows you personally and to whom you pray as a Friend.”

Plaisier urged Dutch Protestants to, “come together in the name of Christ. If we are all open, even with our doubts, to talk about God and what it means to believe in him.”

In his response to Plaisier, Hendrikse noted that the Protestant church has traditionally seen itself as a broad denomination. “But when I read you, then it seems that in the PKN there is only room for those who agree with the existing confessions of faith, and who do not go on to ask awkward questions or give any indication of doubts.”

Hendrikse’s complaint is akin to that of the person who walks into a chess club and demands to play rugby, and who then complains about the attitude of the club members when they turn him down. The PKN is presumably a church, not a debating society. Hendrikse isn’t asking “awkward questions,” or giving “any indication of doubts”; he’s on record as repudiating the One who is the foundation and sole reason for existence of the organization of which he is a leader. What he’s demanding is a public forum in which to indulge his theological eccentricities, something that the church is under no obligation to grant him.

In his book, Hendrikse tells how his conviction that God does not exist has become stronger.

“The non-existence of God is for me not an obstacle but a precondition to believing in God. I am an atheist believer,” Hendrikse states in the book. “God is for me not a being, but a word for what can happen between people. Someone says to you, for example, ‘I will not abandon you’ and then makes those words come true. It would be perfectly alright to call that [relationship] God.”

If I read this correctly, Hendrikse is a member of the Humpty-Dumpty school of linguistics. For him, words have no meaning, and no connection to anything real, so if he wants to call building a house for a homeless person “God” rather than “service to God and neighbor,” he can do that. For that matter, I guess if he wants to call a one-night stand that both people enjoyed “God,” I suppose he’s free to do that, too, if he’s so inclined. And he should be free to do that–just not in the pulpit of a Christian church, where presumably the worship of the One who is called the “Word of God” means that language actually does have some connection to reality. Whether the PKN is such an institution is, however, obviously open to question.

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