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Conference Seems in Transition, Stumbles Over Change Theme
Volume 29 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: March 20, 2015
I don’t know, perhaps it was the early announcement of Marcus Borg’s passings (see obit page 14), but something seemed to predispose me to be disappointed with this year’s Epiphany Explorations conference. Maybe it was just a dip in form.
Call it full disclosure, or call it rampant subjectivity or unrealistic expectations. Perhaps after Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan in other years my biases were showing. As a result, the tone of what I have written may turn you off, or maybe it just fits into the overall tone of this issue of Island Catholic News.
While I may have in turn been dissatisfied with some of the key content of the conference, certainly the opening pre-program presentation by Don Evans of Our Place, the United Church’s social service centre here in the city proved exemplary.
I don’t know, perhaps it was the early announcement of Marcus Borg’s passings (see obit page 14), but something seemed to predispose me to be disappointed with this year’s Epiphany Explorations conference. Maybe it was just a dip in form.
Call it full disclosure, or call it rampant subjectivity or unrealistic expectations. Perhaps after Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan in other years my biases were showing. As a result, the tone of what I have written may turn you off, or maybe it just fits into the overall tone of this issue of Island Catholic News.
While I may have in turn been dissatisfied with some of the key content of the conference, certainly the opening pre-program presentation by Don Evans of Our Place, the United Church’s social service centre here in the city proved exemplary.
He confirmed my impression of the centre from recent experience as well designed, well run and well focused on self-enabling as the personal solution to the plight of the poor.
As well his words did nothing to contradict the need for a macro-analysis solution, for structural change to eliminate the need for much of the band-aid solutions that pass for social equity. His was not ‘the poor you will ever have with you’ tone or attitude.
PROBLEM OF CHANGE
The underlying theme of the 2015 Epiphany Explorations, ‘change in its manifold aspects’ as it effects the church and the world today, was tackled but not overwhelmed during the four days here January 22-25. The problem seemed to be vision.
The issues and problems of the ‘spiritual but not religious’; church leaders suffering from dogmatic doubt; and the paradoxical nature of the parabolic teachings of Christ were among the issues and challenges framed but not resolved for the participants.
It all seemed quite preliminary, the framing of the questions, more a listing of the difficulties rather than an actual identified way ahead. There was a certain degree of punches being pulled as one would expect in a liberal protestant context, while the radical dimensions were indicated but not pursued.
Siobhan Chandler, a scholar specializing in the shadow side of religion, ‘what it is not,’ (or rather lacking) and Peter Rollins, who has published books on The Trickster Christ, were poised to present radical insights into what is ailing ‘organized religion’ but both seemed to stop short of jumping in the deep end.
Chandler, a research scholar at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, leads discussion on the fast emerging category of ‘spiritual but not religious’ (SBNR) which is estimated at more than fifty per cent of the west coast, or Cascadian, population. (see related story "Spiritual But Not Religious Proves a More Than Tricky Category" in our "Features" section)
Close scrutiny of the underpinnings of this phenomenon approximates a Bultmann radical critique of Christianity; where it is failing in what it offers the contemporary sensibility, shaped as it is by the digital revolution, secular political correctness, and new age sensibility.
Unfortunately she was teamed with Lois Wilson, a figure from the past who can hardly be expected to identify with SBNR. She must have represented to the planners an interesting juxtaposition of sensibilities, but not now, not yet. At any rate it did not work.
Siobhan Chandler would have her hands full covering the implications of the subject if she had been given the whole time to herself.
Peter Rollins is something of a charming Celtic wizard figure but no visionary teacher. He does a nice job of applying Freudian psychological insights as spears into the church body politic (with hardly a nod to Jung’s more spiritually suited tools.)
He dissembles nicely with ready wit and self-mocking humour but his suitability to the demographics of his audience was a question, one that peaked out of his own eyes at critical conversational moments.
He could be very effective lampooning easy targets for a younger more physically energetic audience but the depth of his analysis left me hungering for more satisfying insights into the way ahead. His Celtic sensibility teased out the paradoxes without landing blows to the teetering conventional wisdom he unbalanced nicely with style, content and delivery.
Peter Rollins’ droll manner and Irish Celtic charm, and Siobhan Chandler’s searching persona and intriguing subject matter may have promised something revolutionary but it was Bishop Mark MacDonald who manifested the visionary revolutionary.
The first Canadian Aboriginal Anglican Bishop seemed to have a master plan, the long term patience rooted in experience and an approach based in faith on how to proceed to bring constructive change out of what seems to the secular eye a dismal scene and scenario.
He displayed the wisdom and experience, patience and fortitude to bring about the change he wanted to be in the world, combining spirituality, environmentalism and First Nations recovery.
GREEN WEAVER
The final disappointment of delivery at the conference was reserved to the final evening. Andrew Weaver, member of the provincial legislature and the first provincially elected Green Party member, presents himself as a politician who espouses to represent a new vision of society. Unfortunately he has a hard time emerging from the professorial classroom motif in his inability to even frame a working solution. He recently won a court case against the National Post who distorted his meaning. I don’t wonder that they had a hard time understanding what he was saying.
Full of pseudo-scientific baffle gab and the inability to translate his important knowledge into understandable common language, Andrew Weaver is more of a dream weaver than a weaver of solutions at this juncture.
Fundamentally he misread his audience, he was not still speaking to climate change scientists, and did not demonstrate that he has yet learned the political or spiritual art of framing a question in the exact terms of his audience. No matter how profound your knowledge of a problem, you have to be able to translate it into an understandable issue to proceed to the solution.
He might explain that he was trying to bring them along, but he seemed too much to the side, not way out ahead. Politicians have to be able to size up their audience and communicate properly to their level of comprehension in order to bring to he situation to a solution. He failed.
Just as the conference did not make the grade of achieving the level people like Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan were able to teach in years past.
Overall the conference from my experience seemed preliminary and transitional to the overwhelming question – how can we proceed when the very ground we stand on seems to be in upheaval.
It’s a heavy question and no conference can be blamed for standing aside from the fray, but the framing of the question in clear insights of analysis is the necessary starting point to any sound strategy.
No hard feelings and better luck next year.