Progressive Spirit is now one hour! (Technically 54 minutes to accommodate top of the hour news). Both the 54 minute and 29 minute versions are distributed to stations each week. The longer version will go to podcast. Ask your local public radio station to carry Progressive Spirit!
I am thrilled to have my conversation with Gretta Vosper be the first show in the now expanded Progressive Spirit!
Gretta Vosper is an atheist minister in the United Church of Canada. She is the author of With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean In A World Beyond Belief.
She is the leader of an exciting community in Toronto, West Hill United Church, that has been under fire from its larger institution for moving beyond the language of the church.
Gretta discusses the work of this community and her own struggles with the larger institution. Because of her theological views she was reviewed and declared to be "unsuitable" for ministry.
Is there a larger story, though? Gretta also talks about how the liberal United Church in order to grow has accepted into its clergy pentecostals and fundamentalists without examining their theology. The result, according to Gretta, is a church that is losing its progressive principles in order to increase its numbers.
In this interview she discusses her review process with the denomination, what she means by "atheist", the doublespeak of clergy who use the word "God" but do not mean it the way it is commonly understood, and the need for communities who want the ethical and spiritual vitality of a community without the archaic language of theism.
- KBOO