How does an atheist pray?

I attended my first church service in two months the other week. It was Ash Wednesday, and one of my favourite days of the church calendar.

It can't be surprising that of all the Church's holy days, Ash Wednesday would be the one that most resonates with the agnostic and the atheist. After all, "From dust you were made, and to dust you shall return," is pretty much all the agnostic can be sure of. To me, it's a call to live in the present.

There are many aspects of Christian teaching that I've learned to reinterpret, to reimagine for life in a secular age. But prayer - which the priest mentioned several times in the Ash Wednesday sermon - is something I have struggled with. I've tended to interpret it as a meditative exercise to focus us, rather an attempt to focus "God" on something we desire him to do. Since I'm not a supernaturalist, I honestly can't see the point of prayer if its purpose is to influence some external supernatural being. I can see the point, however, if its purpose is to hone our own awareness of the needs of others.

This is still insufficient, but during that Lenten service, I think I came nearer an answer. So there's a call to prayer. What do I do? I think the answer lies in a broader idea of intercession, of standing in the gap, of getting things done on behalf of others. It is the prayer of St Kevin, as imagined by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney in St Kevin and the Blackbird - "a prayer his body makes entirely."

Read St Kevin and the Blackbird here (with audio from the poet himself), or watch the video of Heaney reciting the poem below:

Navigating the TWU controversy

I've been engaged in some interesting discussions regarding the controversy over Trinity Western University, the Canadian Christian college blacklisted by CAUT for limiting academic freedom. Since TWU requires its faculty to assent to a fairly rigorous Statement of Faith, the charge (at least my main concern) is that its professors are hindered in free academic inquiry. Some major questions (eg the inerrancy and authority of the Bible) are settled in advance, and therefore they are forbidden from reaching conclusions outside the university's narrow scope.

Dr Todd Pettigrew at Maclean's Blogs is more concerned with the effect on students. How does the Statement of Faith affect assessment of students' work? How does it influence the content of teaching in the classroom?

My latest discussion turned sour very quickly, unfortunately. It can be found in the comments thread here. In the first response to my contribution, I was accused of a litany of offenses, including a "brutally literalist reading of the concept of inerrancy," being wilfully ignorant of basic comprehension and interpretation and denying the historical existence of Jesus, among other nonsense.

I am more than aware of the range of views on inerrancy within evangelical scholarship. I wrote 25,000 words on the subject for my degree. I don't for a minute ascribe to TWU a "scientific textbook" approach to the Scriptures, or any of the other things I was intemperately caricatured as saying.

But even within a very flexible, nuanced evangelical view of inerrancy, the actual historicity of key events cannot be avoided. For example, at the very least, the Virgin Birth, Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus must be treated as historical events. For most inerrantists, even those with a very broad definition of inerrancy, other events such as the existence of Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Noahic Flood and the Exodus, are also historical. The bottom line is that if the Bible treats something as a historical event, it should be accepted as historical truth.

Some of these are directly required in the TWU Statement of Faith:

We believe that God created Adam and Eve in His image, but they sinned when tempted by Satan.

We believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, fully God and fully man, one Person in two natures. Jesus—Israel's promised Messiah—was conceived through the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father as our High Priest and Advocate.

That is not to say (and I made this clear in the discussion, but in vain!) there isn't room for maneouvre in the details. On Adam and Eve, for example, the broadest definitions of inerrancy can accept the interpretation that Adam and Eve were simply the first hominids to bear the image of God, thus squaring with evolution. Details such as talking snakes and forbidden fruit would usually be taken as allegorical. But this doesn't detract from the basic historical assertion: there was a couple called Adam and Eve; they sinned; sin was brought into the human race.

In this I was accused of attributing "the wackier literalist beliefs to the entire institution in order to discredit TWU."

How far can the TWU Statement of Faith be stretched?

In response to TWU's position on Adam and Eve, Theresa (who appears to be connected to the college in some way) wrote the following:

I would say that even this insistence on an historical Adam and Eve (far removed in the distant past… even if it were a couple hundred thousand years ago…) is still building a straw man. The point, again, of this symbolic passage in the Bible (yes, Symbolic – not strictly historical) has primarily to do with morality and faith and not empirical history. Whether or not Adam and Eve were the first “sinners” is not so important as the very obvious fact that no human being since “then” is free of sin or error. If there is historical truth to the Fall narrative, you need not look any further in the past than a moment ago to see the truth of the matter.

I am not sure how this matches up to the TWU Statement of Faith. The main reason is that even I can agree with this. How is the Statement of Faith evangelical in any meaningful way if it can be interpreted so loosely as to accommodate even a liberal agnostic? I am very doubtful if Trinity Western would accept a purely symbolic interpretation of Adam and Eve. And in retrospect, it seems Theresa still wants to insist that the story is of a historical event, just that the historical aspect is not its primary meaning.

I am eager to (and perhaps will, soon) talk to someone from Trinity Western about how broadly the Statement of Faith can be interpreted. There is no doubt it requires inerrancy, and that, in its broadest form, requires at least that the Bible is historically true when it intends to be taken as historical truth.

The basic issue remains: Under the TWU Statement of Faith, a scholar is forbidden from reaching certain conclusions. If the Bible makes a truth claim, it must be accepted as truth. Sometimes it is truth about history, occasionally about science, often about morality, and frequently about God, and at various times it is allegorical, symbolic or metaphorical truth. But it remains the truth. And it seems no TWU scholar is free to challenge that.

Trinity Western & academic freedom

There's a storm brewing over a Canadian university union's decision to blacklist Christian college Trinity Western University, BC, for compromising academic freedom.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) takes aim at the university's Statement of Faith, which binds every member of its faculty. This binding document stipulates assent to some very specific conservative evangelical doctrines, including the inerrancy of the Scriptures, for example:

We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors. As the verbally inspired Word of God, the Bible is without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavour should be judged. Therefore, it is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises.

Dr Todd Pettigrew of Cape Breton University has addressed the concerns at Maclean's blogs here and here. The comments threads have been dominated by TWU students and faculty defending the institution.

I generally side with Pettigrew and CAUT, but I can sympathize with TWU students. I too studied at a conservative college that had a similar statement of faith, and in retrospect I feel I received a very good theological education. After all, it was thanks to my education there that I was able to reach my present position as an agnostic. Although I undoubtedly have not reached the conclusions the college would want me to reach, I wasn't shielded from the full array of Christian and non-Christian views, biblical criticism or critical thinking.

But teaching is just one part of a university. Universities also exist for research. Academics are expected to engage in debates, write papers, attend conferences, argue positions, publish findings and contribute to current research. How can they do this with integrity when they are in an institution that requires them never to reach conclusions outside a very tight doctrinal framework?

And make no mistake, this is about very, very specific dogmas. I find it at best mistaken, at worst disingenuous for TWU to defend itself (as many of its faculty have on the Maclean's website) by appealing to some broad, Christian philosophical foundation. The Statement of Faith prescribes extremely specific doctrines outside which its faculty cannot fall. How can free investigation of ideas take place when such narrow parameters are defined in advance?

My own area of interest, and the subject of my degree, is biblical studies. A true scholar approaches the Bible like any other document: it is a human document, open to critical interpretation, and its truth cannot be taken for granted. There have been evangelical scholars who have engaged in critical scholarship, certainly, and I have even benefited from their work. Craig A Evans, formerly of Trinity Western, is one of them.

But still, under TWU's Statement of Faith, a biblical scholar is only free to reach conclusions that fall within evangelical orthodoxy and do not compromise the belief that the Bible is "without error." In no other discipline would an academic be taken seriously if she declared in advance that she was unwilling to go outside a basic presupposition that documents X, Y and Z were infallible. In scholarship, everything is up for grabs. Nothing is beyond skepticism and criticism.

Frankly, it seems to me that evanglical biblical scholarship takes advantage of the weight of cultural assumptions and tradition when it comes to this. Christian orthodoxy has power on its side. The assumption still holds sway that religious beliefs are entitled to an automatic respect and deference that other beliefs lack.

Christian scholars cannot have their cake and eat it. Carl Trueman of Westminster Theological Seminary, for instance, wrote last week that "all theological scholarship should be done with the ultimate goal of building up the saints, confounding the opponents of the gospel, and encouraging the brethren." If your main goal is to uphold a religious agenda (and again, a very specific one, in this case very conservative Reformed Calvinism), don't call it scholarship.

Many have quite reasonably pointed out that secular university professors also have their presuppositions. Someone asked me whether I seriously thought that secular academics revisited and changed their presuppositions.

My response is that I am sure there are many professors who never change their presuppositions. But in theory they can return to the very basis of their beliefs to examine, challenge and fundamentally change them. In a secular university that can happen. Surely that possibility is fundamental to scholarship? Unfortunately, it's what an academic forced to fall in line with a tightly defined set of doctrines is forbidden to do.

(Readers may also be interested in my article for Ex-Gay Watch on the current Wheaton College controversy.)

Christmas

Have a wonderful, blessed Christmas and a happy new year.

Be like Jesus, who from inauspicious beginnings grew up to turn tradition on its head, announcing a welcome for the poor, the sinners and the outcasts.

(And don't be like Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society, who sadly appears to be having difficulty mustering up some festive cheer.)