Article in Stretton Focus, August 2014
There are those in the Church today who are calling for a new Reformation. It will need to be radically different from the 16th century Reformation where, as John Milton quickly realised “New Presbyter was but old Priest writ large”. They were still playing the same game of denouncing one another as heretics.
It’s not a ‘re-formation’ as such that we need. That would just be the equivalent of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The changes needed will have to be more radical than just tinkering with the liturgy, doctrines and statements of belief.
Many people today are looking for a new sense of freedom from ecclesiastical control, and from religious domination. Whatever is meant by the word God will have to be different from what is currently on offer. Your God is too Small was the title of a book written by J B Phillips in the 1950s, but as a statement it is true for all time.
The mystery of what God is will always be out of our limited reach: but that has not deterred religions from making exclusive and exaggerated claims on God’s behalf. This has led to long years of warfare and religious persecution, which have been (and still are) a blight on the development of wholesome ways of living together on our planet earth.
But there is hope! It is possible to detect stirrings of that required ‘reformation’. There are those who are wanting (and even hungry for) a change of direction: the change will be from ‘up there’ to ‘down here’. It will be from the sky Gods of primitive religion to the life-giving Spirit that pervades the whole of creation.
There will be a call to celebrate the diversity of life, and in doing so find the Unity which holds all things in one (and may be called God). We shall be urged to develop a greater sense of what is sacred: to look more determinedly for ways of living in peace and harmony with one another, and with the rest of creation.
There will have to be a paradigm shift from Religion which is divisive, to Spirituality which is inclusive. The challenge will go out for all people to realise their spiritual potential: to tune-in to that all-pervasive Spirit which holds the secret of who we are, and of what we have to do to become what we have it in us to be.
Donald Horsfield