The Rev. Vosper Again

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What? That you guys are content to have atheists in the pulpit, as long as they stay quiet? Isn't that obvious enough?
 
Simplistic take on a complex situation, @chansen but I agree with your assessment to some extent.

This whole fiasco would have played out differently if the church had acted many years ago.
 
chansen said:
I'm going to start by pulling this out, because it insults the senses:

No, you don't. You wish them homeless.

Why do people mindlessly say things like this that clearly are not true? Just because it's the nice thing to say? Because "wishing them the best" is the expected thing to say?

No, you clearly want to see them turfed out, which means they will lose their building at the least. It is what it is.



If you want to use math, use it properly. To get anywhere close to that comparison, first take the population of Scarborough, and divide it by the number of United Churches that serve it. Now you have a ballpark approximation of the local population West Hill can be expected to serve. My nine-year-old daughter would know to do this. To skip this obvious first step is to skew things in favour of your argument so transparently that you're either completely innumerate or you think you can put one over on us.

Besides, by "growing", I mean that, year over year, West Hill is currently gaining members. That's growing. It shrunk before. I get that. It shrunk bigly. But now it's growing.

I think the UCCan assumed she would fail and they wouldn't have to do anything. West Hill would just be another United Church in the GTA with regrettable architecture in a neighbourhood with a growing recent immigrant population that has existing connections to different chuches, that can not hold on and closes or amalgamates with a neighbouring church, and that's that. Didn't happen. Now the UCCan has to force the issue.

As for the "...existence of God, His son Jesus, who is the namesake of their faith, (that is Christ...Christian) and the Holy Spirit as revealed to us," you can't reveal it at all. You talk about it. You make proclamations that are as fact-based as the Trump administration's inauguration attendance figures. But you have nothing revealed, and everything concealed. You believe on faith alone. And while many are saying how wrong Gretta Vosper is, I think it's important to point out that the standards you wish to impose on her are not based on anything you can reveal to anyone else.
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Hi Chansen, I stated initially that I am uncomfortable talking about Ms. Vosper specifically, and in my second post I stated I do not want to engage in specifics regarding her or West Hill United, as It would only involve assumptions and conjecture. I will respond to your upset over my wishing her and West Hill United well. I worshipped with a reform Baptist Church at one time. While there, I came to the point where our faith stance diverged, and the divergence was so fundamental there could be no agreement. I left the Baptist Church and returned to the United Church where I was baptized and confirmed. My wonderful Baptist brothers and sisters wished me well. I wished them well. We have remained close and I worshipped with them this past summer. The United Church of Canada is a Christian faith community that requires ministers to be in essential agreement with belief in the Triune God. It may be that the faith stance of Ms. Vosper and the United Church of Canada have diverged to the point where Ms. Vosper cannot be in essential agreement and she and the United Church must part ways. If this is this is the case, I will wish her well on her life journey, just as I wished my friends in the Baptist Church well. Sorry if this insults your senses.
 
Dave Henderson said:
Hi Chansen, I stated initially that I am uncomfortable talking about Ms. Vosper specifically, and in my second post I stated I do not want to engage in specifics regarding her or West Hill United, as It would only involve assumptions and conjecture. I will respond to your upset over my wishing her and West Hill United well. I worshipped with a reform Baptist Church at one time. While there, I came to the point where our faith stance diverged, and the divergence was so fundamental there could be no agreement. I left the Baptist Church and returned to the United Church where I was baptized and confirmed. My wonderful Baptist brothers and sisters wished me well. I wished them well. We have remained close and I worshipped with them this past summer. The United Church of Canada is a Christian faith community that requires ministers to be in essential agreement with belief in the Triune God. It may be that the faith stance of Ms. Vosper and the United Church of Canada have diverged to the point where Ms. Vosper cannot be in essential agreement and she and the United Church must part ways. If this is this is the case, I will wish her well on her life journey, just as I wished my friends in the Baptist Church well. Sorry if this insults your senses.
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Much like my departure from the UCCan. My faith diverged from what I perceived was the faith of the church so I went elsewhere. No hard feelings and I still wish them well and darken their doors from time to time. Chansen is really making this out to be more confrontational than it needs to be. If there are hard feelings on either side, that's on them and that's not how it should be. It is a sign of how badly this has been played by both sides (yes, that is important enough to be emphasized).
 
Mendalla, you play nice with everyone. And that's great. We need people like you to bridge divides. But we also need people to mock hypocrisy and inconsistencies and wrongs, or at least call them out. Though it's more entertaining to have fun with them.

I don't like how this is going down. I don't like the cowards at the UCCan who I strongly suspect tried very hard to do nothing because they expected Rev. Vosper to fail, pressed into acting now because she did not fail. To me, they bet on her failure, they lost, and they still want to collect. That's wrong. They tacitly approved of her, but not openly, so they could keep this option available.

And we have Dave here proposing that post-Christians are "welcome", which is a strange way of saying "second class members".

That is what I see. And I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but when people keep quoting the same beliefs from the same parts of the bible, I'm not sure why the response needs to change.
 
chansen said:
Mendalla, you play nice with everyone. And that's great. We need people like you to bridge divides. But we also need people to mock hypocrisy and inconsistencies and wrongs, or at least call them out. Though it's more entertaining to have fun with them.

I don't like how this is going down. I don't like the cowards at the UCCan who I strongly suspect tried very hard to do nothing because they expected Rev. Vosper to fail, pressed into acting now because she did not fail. To me, they bet on her failure, they lost, and they still want to collect. That's wrong. They tacitly approved of her, but not openly, so they could keep this option available.

And we have Dave here proposing that post-Christians are "welcome", which is a strange way of saying "second class members".

That is what I see. And I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but when people keep quoting the same beliefs from the same parts of the bible, I'm not sure why the response needs to change.
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If you were a member of Vosper's church or even of the UCCan, I'd get your response here. But you're not even a former member like me. I have deep roots in that church going right back to the original merger (Grandad was ordained shortly after that event and I grew up in a UCCan). I have a reason to care about it and where it is going even though I've left it. In fact, arguably I should be the one battling for Vosper since her being accepted means I could return and even seek ordination. I don't because I don't think she belongs in that church any more than I do, perhaps less than I do (I could probably defend my beliefs as being in essential agreement if I really wanted to make the effort). She's a UU, pure and simple, who just doesn't seem to want to be seen as such. For one, it would take the spotlight off of her since there is no controversy in being an atheist UU.

You, by contrast, don't have a stake, even an emotional one. You don't really even understand UCCan polity or how it works, it's just another atheist-theist battle to you. Even if she won, you'd still stay outside the church so it's not like you're trying to make a church home for yourself. You're just trying to push your agenda on an organization without regard for its established principles or polity. I honestly wish you'd just walk away and let the UCCan deal with it in its way. If you really want a say in how the UCCan is run, join the f***ing church. Otherwise, you're just an outside commenter with a whole shitload of opinions about something that ultimately has 0 impact on you personally. You're no better than Jae or Pontifex or others who hammer them for not being "real Christians". Yes, I just put you on a plane with Jae and Pontifex. Your faith may be different but your approach is similar.

Dave, Paradox, Steven, Gord, and others who have spoken in favour of the review process who actually have a personal stake in this and in the future of the church. Ditto someone like Bette who soldiers on in the church as she views this process with trepidation for her own position in the church and for her church's fairly progressive approach. Again, she has a stake. Their opinion counts for far more than yours. Let them do the work they need to do to pursue their visions for the United Church and go try to reform Humanists Canada or something. I admire them. I think you're being an ass.
 
Mendalla said:
If you were a member of Vosper's church or even of the UCCan, I'd get your response here. But you're not even a former member like me. I have deep roots in that church going right back to the original merger (Grandad was ordained shortly after that event and I grew up in a UCCan). I have a reason to care about it and where it is going even though I've left it. In fact, arguably I should be the one battling for Vosper since her being accepted means I could return and even seek ordination. I don't because I don't think she belongs in that church any more than I do, perhaps less than I do (I could probably defend my beliefs as being in essential agreement if I really wanted to make the effort). She's a UU, pure and simple, who just doesn't seem to want to be seen as such. For one, it would take the spotlight off of her since there is no controversy in being an atheist UU.

You, by contrast, don't have a stake, even an emotional one. You don't really even understand UCCan polity or how it works, it's just another atheist-theist battle to you. Even if she won, you'd still stay outside the church so it's not like you're trying to make a church home for yourself. You're just trying to push your agenda on an organization without regard for its established principles or polity. I honestly wish you'd just walk away and let the UCCan deal with it in its way. If you really want a say in how the UCCan is run, join the f***'ing church. Otherwise, you're just an outside commenter with a whole shitload of opinions about something that ultimately has 0 impact on you personally. You're no better than Jae or Pontifex or others who hammer them for not being "real Christians". Yes, I just put you on a plane with Jae and Pontifex. Your faith may be different but your approach is similar.

Dave, Paradox, Steven, Gord, and others who have spoken in favour of the review process who actually have a personal stake in this and in the future of the church. Ditto someone like Bette who soldiers on in the church as she views this process with trepidation for her own position in the church and for her church's fairly progressive approach. Again, she has a stake. Their opinion counts for far more than yours. Let them do the work they need to do to pursue their visions for the United Church and go try to reform Humanists Canada or something. I admire them. I think you're being an ass.
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Take that back or I ramp up my game!
 
Mendalla said:
Dave, Paradox, Steven, Gord, and others who have spoken in favour of the review process who actually have a personal stake in this and in the future of the church. Ditto someone like Bette who soldiers on in the church as she views this process with trepidation for her own position in the church and for her church's fairly progressive approach. Again, she has a stake. Their opinion counts for far more than yours. Let them do the work they need to do to pursue their visions for the United Church and go try to reform Humanists Canada or something. I admire them. I think you're being an ass.
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And, actually, most of us who have spoken in favour of the review have done so with a degree of reluctance and have expressed the wish that there were some other feasible way to proceed that's in keeping with what we feel the practices, polity and doctrine of the church are concerned.

Chansen takes the comments of a relative handful of people and makes it sound as if the entire United Church is lusting for blood, when in fact I would say the vast majority of people I know in the United Church don't really think too much if at all about this because it doesn't affect them in their own congregations, and many others (as I noted above) wish there were some other reasonable and faithful way to proceed. It's only a very small handful who are passionately supportive of DSLing Greta.
 
Mendalla said:
If you were a member of Vosper's church or even of the UCCan, I'd get your response here. But you're not even a former member like me. I have deep roots in that church going right back to the original merger (Grandad was ordained shortly after that event and I grew up in a UCCan). I have a reason to care about it and where it is going even though I've left it. In fact, arguably I should be the one battling for Vosper since her being accepted means I could return and even seek ordination. I don't because I don't think she belongs in that church any more than I do, perhaps less than I do (I could probably defend my beliefs as being in essential agreement if I really wanted to make the effort). She's a UU, pure and simple, who just doesn't seem to want to be seen as such. For one, it would take the spotlight off of her since there is no controversy in being an atheist UU.

You, by contrast, don't have a stake, even an emotional one. You don't really even understand UCCan polity or how it works, it's just another atheist-theist battle to you. Even if she won, you'd still stay outside the church so it's not like you're trying to make a church home for yourself. You're just trying to push your agenda on an organization without regard for its established principles or polity. I honestly wish you'd just walk away and let the UCCan deal with it in its way. If you really want a say in how the UCCan is run, join the f***'ing church. Otherwise, you're just an outside commenter with a whole shitload of opinions about something that ultimately has 0 impact on you personally. You're no better than Jae or Pontifex or others who hammer them for not being "real Christians". Yes, I just put you on a plane with Jae and Pontifex. Your faith may be different but your approach is similar.

Dave, Paradox, Steven, Gord, and others who have spoken in favour of the review process who actually have a personal stake in this and in the future of the church. Ditto someone like Bette who soldiers on in the church as she views this process with trepidation for her own position in the church and for her church's fairly progressive approach. Again, she has a stake. Their opinion counts for far more than yours. Let them do the work they need to do to pursue their visions for the United Church and go try to reform Humanists Canada or something. I admire them. I think you're being an ass.
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I never claimed to have a direct stake. I'm interested in this stuff, and even I can't explain why. It must be a trinitarian interest.

But I do think the UCCan occupies an important place in Canada, between the nones and the uber-faithful. In a world that is rapidly polarizing, we need people occupying that middle ground. And I see it moving away from the middle, because some people insist the answer for a diminishing faith is to become more uniformly faithful. In a society that is becoming less faithful. I don't get it.

If you want to put me on par with Jae and PG13, you can try. I think the content of my body of posts refutes that pretty effectively, so I won't put any effort into doing so here.
 
revsdd said:
It's only a very small handful who are passionately supportive of DSLing Greta.
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Best case scenario is her lawyers negotiate some sort of settlement with the United Church and she leaves voluntarily. Best for everyone including Gretta, in my opinion.

If the hearing proceeds I don't see how the church can do anything other than DSL her. Not after everything that has taken place to date.
 
revsdd said:
I would say the vast majority of people I know in the United Church don't really think too much if at all about this because it doesn't affect them in their own congregations,
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There may be more impact on the clergy and congregations in South East Presbytery. But I don't have the impression the Vosper review is the biggest fish in the ocean these days.
 
paradox3 said:
There may be more impact on the clergy and congregations in South East Presbytery. But I don't have the impression the Vosper review is the biggest fish in the ocean these days.
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I'm a bit surprised that there isn't more interest in my own congregation. We're not in the same Presbytery (or even Conference) but still we're sort of a neighbouring congregation. I could drive from PVUC to WHUC in about 15 minutes, maybe less if the traffic was good. But she barely registers with most of my parishioners as far as I see, except the odd time when someone who's had a past connection (either through family or friends or personally on occasion) with WHUC pops in.
 
I guess i could have visited Gretta's church this past Sunday since I was in Newmarket at the time, visiting my sister. It would be interesting to see one of her sermons. Anyway I had a gift certificate for The Bass Pro shop so I made it as far as Vaughn and I figured that was enough excitement for one day.
 
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