Atheist minister with United Church of Canada keeps her job after an agreement in lieu of a heresy trial

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God...Psalms 14:1a (also Psalms 53:1a)

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. II Timothy 3:5

It comes as no surprise to this blogger that a hopelessly apostate church that long ago abandoned any objective, biblical standard of orthodoxy has no basis for properly pursuing a charge of heresy. The United Church of Canada is not only not in any biblical sense a Christian church, but is so far gone into apostasy that it's completely beyond the possibility of satire. As reported by Colin Perkel of Canadian Press, November 9, 2018:

A United Church minister who had faced an unprecedented ecclesiastical court hearing over her professed atheism is no longer in danger of a defrocking after the two sides reached an agreement in the long-running case.

In an unexpected development this week, Rev. Gretta Vosper and the church settled ahead of what some had dubbed a “heresy trial,” leaving her free to minister to her east-end Toronto congregation.

“It’s going to be wonderful,” Vosper said in an interview Friday. “We’ll be out from underneath that heavy cloud. Now we’ll be able to really fly.”

The settlement, the terms of which are confidential, came during what was supposed to be a week of routine preliminary motions ahead of the full hearing later in the month.

The church did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday but said in a statement that the formal hearing had been called off in light of the agreement, while the Right Rev. Richard Bott, who was elected in July to lead the United Church in Canada, said in a public message that he was pleased with the resolution.

At the same time, Bott acknowledged the controversy that has been swirling around Vosper and the church’s initiative to fire her. In a message to adherents, Bott referenced the church’s core values of faith in God and inclusiveness.

“The dance between these core values, how they interact with and inform each other, is one that we continue to explore as followers of Jesus and children of the creator,” he said. “As a Christian church, we continue to expect that ministers in the United Church of Canada will offer their leadership in accordance with our shared and agreed upon statements of faith.”

Vosper, 60, who was ordained in 1993 and had served as minister of West Hill United Church since 1997, has been upfront about her atheism and non-belief in the Bible for years.

Most of her current congregants are supportive of her views but some have been critical, saying her beliefs are at fundamental odds with the doctrine and values of the United Church, Canada’s second-largest religious denomination.

Things came to a head after she wrote an open letter to the church’s spiritual leader following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in January 2015 in which she pointed out that belief in God can motivate bad things.

Following complaints, the Toronto Conference interview committee conducted a review that found in a split decision in 2016 that Vosper was unsuitable to continue in ordained ministry because “she does not believe in God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit.”

Vosper’s lawyer, Julian Falconer, called it an important day for the United Church that his client no longer was risk of sanction.

“Both parties took a long look at the cost-benefit at running a heresy trial and whether it was good for anyone (and) the results speak for themselves,” Falconer said. “They recognized there’s a place for Gretta, and that there is no reason to separate the minister and the congregation.”

Vosper, who was allowed to keep her position pending outcome of the aborted hearing, is free to continue her ministry without any restrictions. She calls herself an atheist to describe her non-belief in a theistic, interventionist, supernatural being called God.

Critics have called it appalling that the church would allow an atheist to stand in a pulpit and not proclaim the Gospel of Christ. Either way, Vosper said it’s been a long road to clearing her name.

“There have been times of elation when I have felt the incredible support and energy of that support and love and affirmation from my congregation and across the country and around the world,” she said. “And there have been moments of incredible despair.”

The chairman of the West Hill church board, Randy Bowes, expressed delight at the outcome, saying Vosper was a product of the church and that her ordeal had been challenging.

“West Hill’s non-exclusive language provides a church experience that draws participants across a wide spectrum of belief and unbelief,” Bowes said.

Even some secular journalists have noticed the connection between the United Church's increasing liberalism and its increasing irrelevance and declining membership, and in the case of Rosie Dimanno of the Toronto Star, referring to the support for Ms. Vosper as a cult. As reported by Ms. Dimanno on November 11, 2018:

They brought her flowers. They gave her a standing ovation. They repeatedly professed it “a great day.”

This is the cult of Gretta Vosper.

A United Church of Canada minister who doesn’t believe in God.

An atheist — outed herself before the congregation five years ago — rather than the less radical non-theist term, which is a person who doesn’t think of God as a being, thereby avoiding some of the more negative baggage associated with the A-word.

A heretic, frankly, as Vosper herself shorthands it on tweets with the hashtag #heresytrial.

There will be no trial, no formal ecclesiastical hearing, no defrocking. After three-and-a-half years of preparation and internal controversy, the United Church swallowed its theological opposition, last week announcing that Vosper is free to continue her ministry without any sanctions or restrictions, thus aborting a much-anticipated “trial” that had been scheduled to begin next Monday.

Carry on deleting all reference to God or a supernatural being in all sermons and rewritten hymns. Carry on expunging the Lord’s Prayer. Carry on with a fundamentally humanist dogma. Carry on conducting services as a community-centred attestation where everybody gets a shot at the microphone.

But what a cross to bear that gigantic wooden crucifix at the front of the Church of the Master must be, constant reminder of everything this parish rejects. Church of the Master in far-flung Scarborough is only a temporary landlord, of course, providing worshipping space for West Hill United because their building has a leaking roof and other structural issues.

It came as a shock to the wider United Church — Canada’s second-largest religious denomination (and dwindling fast) — when the “inquisition” (the General Council) halted in its tracks on Wednesday, declaring in a joint statement with Vosper and the Toronto Conference that they’d settled all outstanding issues between them.”

Immediately disappearing was the threat hanging over Vosper’s head that she, ordained minister, would be placed on the Discontinued Service List (Disciplinary).

Curiously, illogically, on the United Church of Canada website appeared a further statement, stressing that the decision “doesn’t alter in any way the belief of The United Church of Canada in God, a God most fully revealed to us as Christians in and through Jesus Christ.”

Except, you know, for the exceptional.

The heresy trial would have been the next big step following a 2016 report that found Vosper unsuitable for ministry because she was no longer in “essential agreement” with church doctrine; was “unwilling and unable” to reaffirm the vows she made when she was ordained in 1993.

I don’t know how big the congregation was when this scandal bubbled to the surface in 2015. Vosper, oft inclined to “pseudo-controversial pronouncements,” as described by one critic, had objected to a prayer published on the United Church website by then-moderator Gary Paterson, following the massacre by Islamist militants at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office in Paris. In an open letter, Vosper wrote that she was offended by a prayer that espoused belief in some sort of transcendent entity, pressing Paterson to denounce all religion and eradicate religiosity from the public sphere.

“I urge you to lead our church toward freedom from such idolatrous belief …”

But on Sunday morning, there were fewer than 100 congregants at interim West Hill United. All but a handful white, most of them grey, plus two children, one baby and one mutt. As 60-year-old Vosper noted regretfully in her sermon, the church needs to take risks to make it a more welcoming place to the non-traditional, the minorities and the marginalized. “That’s what the United Church right now is — it’s a great white wall of seniors.”

I would characterize their embrace of Vosper as idolatrous.

They may not believe in God — some still do — but they clearly believe in the virtue of Vosper. Those who don’t have already peeled away, distressed with where Vosper has taken the congregation.

As one introductory speaker reminded: They are “aggressively progressive” and their focus is not on theology.

If I understand correctly, Vosper promotes the rigidly secular, the gospel of get-God-out. Which is stunningly oxymoronic for a church. There are myriad ways to do good work — as this parish, like so many others, is in the process of sponsoring a refugee family. But to strip faith out of doctrine, to go God-less (or godless) is intrinsically, profanely sacrilegious and anti-spiritual. It is what Vosper exalts: Apostasy.

Which is fine. But how can an individual, a minister, wrap herself in the mantle of a formal church while simultaneously repudiating its ethos? Right Rev. Richard Bott, elected this past July to lead the United Church in Canada, hasn’t explained that. And there will likely never be any explanation because the agreement contains a confidentiality clause.

What Bott did say, in a message praising the resolution to church adherents, stressing core values and inclusivity: “The dance between these core values, how they interact with and inform each other, is one that we continue to explore as followers of Jesus and children of the creator. As a Christian church, we continue to expect that ministers in the United Church of Canada will offer their leadership in accordance with our shared and agreed upon statements of faith.”

How can anybody in the United Church take that contradictory statement, in its Vosper hands-off, on faith?

Christian religion, except in charismatic and evangelical interpretations, is losing traction globally, churches shuttered and sold off as attendance plunges. The United Church in Canada, perhaps the quintessential Protestant faith in this country, making a virtue out of easy-peasy belief — the church that stands for nothing which requires rigour or temperance — has tumbled more than most. From its founding in 1925 as a merger of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, when it boasted 6.25 per cent of the Canadian population as members — peaking at 1.06 million in 1967 — its adherents have fallen to 1.5 per cent, according to its own published figures. Between 1968 and 2009, it lost more than half its membership.

Relevance is the matter. When you hold nothing sacred, then nothing is relevant.

When you take the God out of religion, as Vosper has done, then you are innately irreligious. Doesn’t make you a bad person but definitely makes you a subversive outlier within the hierarchy of church and theology. Or Vosper could have found a more amenable place in the Unitarian Church, which is post-theist and professes no creed.

“There’s no gloating in this,” Vosper told her congregants. “There’s no waking up in the morning and saying it should have been different, we shouldn’t have had to go through that three-and-a-half years. There’s only gratitude.’’

Swear it on a Bible? Probably not.

Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun seems a little more sympathetic to the United Church of Canada than Rosie Dimanno (and this blogger), but even Mr. Todd is critical of the United Church's constant self-abasement. As reported by Mr. Todd on November 15, 2018 (links in original):

“Worm theology” is used to describe people of faith who perceive themselves as fundamentally flawed, guilty and unworthy.

Based on Biblical references to humans having no more status than lowly “worms,” the term is relevant to last week’s long-awaited decision by the United Church of Canada’s large Toronto conference, which ruled that a high-profile atheist could remain as a clergywoman.

Rev. Gretta Vosper, who heads a small Toronto congregation within what has arguably been called Canada’s biggest Protestant denomination, has long accused her oppressive United Church of Canada employer of persecuting her for writing books that declare the superiority of atheism over belief in a God.

Skilled in marketing through social media, Vosper trotted out the Twitter hashtag #heresytrial to denounce the United Church investigation into a completely legitimate question: Should an avowed atheist be clergy in a Christian church? Vosper and her vociferous backers compared the review committee to the torture-mad 15th-century Spanish Inquisition.

With Vosper celebrating her victory, the decision fits a long-standing pattern in the denomination, which places supreme value on being “inclusive”. The downside is that the denomination increasingly lacks an identity and, judging in part from the United Church Observer magazine, has a relentless habit of lamenting what it perceives as its many moral failings.

It is unfortunate that Toronto conference is not stating the reasons for its ruling. Whether it is confidentiality concerns or something else, the silence means the denomination’s lack of clarity about what it stands for will insidiously drag on. Its 400,000 remaining active members, as well as the almost two million Canadians who tell the census they still identity with the church, will continue to be confused. Many will find the denomination’s leadership increasingly hard to fathom, and most likely irrelevant, in the way it so assiduously mirrors this secular age.

There is nothing wrong with being an atheist, as 4.5 million Canadians will attest. There is no doubt atheists can be highly ethical people. But is it wise to give a long-proud atheist a formal role as clergy in a Christian church, which has historically put theism, in its diverse forms, at its core? What’s next: Self-declared Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews and neo-pagans as Christian clergy?

A disturbing thing about the Vosper case is that the denomination’s policy and leadership seem unable to actually spell out what it stands for. That is a sign of an institution without a definition, which lacks confidence, and may even believe, like the Biblical worms: “We’re not worthy.”

It’s good for people and institutions to be self-critical. But just as it’s hard to spend time with human beings who psychologically internalize external criticism and constantly belittle themselves, who wants to be part of a self-defeating organization that doesn’t seem to think much of itself?

To broaden the question for a moment, how much does the United Church, which in its much larger heyday in the 1960s was viewed as the culturally prototypical Canadian church, reflect what is happening to English-speaking Canada in general?

One just has to read The United Church Observer to see how often its editors and others beat up on themselves, or more precisely, the membership.

This year, The Observer has featured key articles about allegedly widespread intolerance, racism, sexism, hetero-normativism, ableism, colonialism and more that the editors seem to believe infects the church body.

Despite the United Church of Canada being arguably the most liberal, tolerant and “progressive” major Christian denomination in the world — it ordained women and homosexuals, for instance, decades before others — the denomination’s magazine continuously tries to expose how its members fall short, especially on identity politics (the key 21st-century source of “worm theology”).

The cover story of the November issue of The Observer maintains anti-black racism is pervasive in the church. June’s #MeToo cover gave prominence to nine cases of alleged sexual harassment within the church. The May cover story chastised United Church church members for supposedly marginalizing pregnant clergy. The magazine has prominently featured a disabled clergyman claiming members treat him as invisible. And the Observer’s readers are frequently taken to task for failing to properly reconcile with Indigenous people. The scolding goes on.

In regards to spiritual topics, readers of the magazine, which is devoted to “faith, justice and ethical living,” usually have to go to the back pages to find more than fleeting references to Jesus or Christian theology. At the same time, The Observer often sympathetically covered Vosper’s atheistic stance, letting her camp overwhelm its letters section. An ongoing series in the magazine supportively highlights the beliefs of non-Christians, especially the fashionable “spiritual but not religious”.

It’s worth noting the last two three-year-term national moderators of the United Church of Canada have been a gay and a lesbian. So, when the new moderator was elected in July, in the midst of repeated conference floor allegations that the church was racist and “exclusive,” The Observer approvingly reported on how the man who received the most ballots, Vancouver Rev. Richard Bott, immediately issued an apology for himself.

“I stand before you tonight as a person who has exactly one set of lenses,” Bott told the national delegates gathered in Oshawa, Ont. “I am a white, middle-class, university-educated, able-bodied, middle-aged, cis-male settler who grew up and lives on unceded territory of the people of this land. I am the epitome of privilege.”

Not to take the parallel too far, but I wonder how the United Church’s contrite approach to its own existence mirrors that of many other Canadians? Justin Trudeau says Canada is the world’s first “post-national country”. An Angus Reid Institute poll found one-quarter of Canadians think the country does not have a “unique culture”. The pollster has also found Canadians roughly splitting on whether our leaders apologize too often.

To be fair to Bott, it should be noted he at least didn’t apologize for being a Christian, that is, one who believes in God in some form. And after thanking the Toronto conference for its decision on Vosper, Bott explained its move comes out of ongoing tension between the church’s stated faith in God and its commitment to be “open and inclusive” and to show “all are welcome”.

While a psychologist might worry that, if the denomination was a person, it has loose boundaries that make it vulnerable to manipulation, and others might see signs of “worm theology” in its self-flagellation, Bott appears to recognize his exceedingly nice church has a possibly fatal weak identity. He has cautioned that he is “not sure that, as a denomination, we could articulate our communal purpose.”

Even though some individual United Church congregations around the country are managing to thrive, Bott, with that admission, seemed to capture the feeble larger reality of his denomination, which was once-inspiring, once-proud, once-healthy.

Will the United Church of Canada again find its reason for being, its soul?

The answer is no, since the United Church of Canada rejected the truth and authority of the Bible decades ago.

August 11, 2023 update: She's a speaker at a convention of atheists and agnostics; as reported by Protestia, August 11, 2023:

The United Church of Canada (UCC) is the spiritual sibling of the wretched PCUSA and ELCA, functioning less like churches and more like temporary pens to house hordes of goats and false converts. Pro-LGBTQ, Pro-choice, and pro-every theological perversion you can think of, they’re populated almost entirely of senior citizens and the occasional blue-haired queer 20-year-old, and their membership reflects this. Between 2011 and 2021, the denomination lost nearly 40% of its members, a trend that reveals no sign of slowing down.

With 2,711 congregations, they’re also the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada, showing what sort of sick shape our neighbors to the north are in. (The second biggest, the Anglican Church of Canada, are hardly any different.)

This is why it should surprise no one that West Hill United Church Pastor Gretta Vosper is headlining a conference for atheists and skeptics.

Vosper is notorious within the UCC for being a vocal and outspoken atheist who is still allowed to remain an ordained minister. Six years ago, there was a half-heated attempt to defrock her via an ecclesiastical court. However, Vosper had too much denominational support, and devils and cowards populated the institutional leadership. Instead, she and the UCC settled.

They would allow her to continue preaching and retain her congregation and building, with the then-Moderator saying she could keep her job so long that she continues to offer her leadership “in accordance with our shared and agreed upon statements of faith.”

Upon hearing the news that the UCC was going to let her be, Vosper’s lawyer was ebullient, saying in a statement:

“Both parties took a long look at the cost-benefit of running a heresy trial and whether it was good for anyone (and) the results speak for themselves. They recognized there’s a place for Gretta and that there is no reason to separate the minister and the congregation.”

Vosper will be joined at the convention by the who’s who of pagans and atheists, including Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Seth Andrews of the Thinking Atheist, Hemant Mehta of “The Friendly Atheist” and Matt Dillahunty.

See also my posts:

Calgary Herald blasts United Church of Canada for advocating a boycott of Israel (May 15, 2012)

Canadian Senators warn United Church of Canada over proposed boycott of Israeli goods (July 6, 2012)

A secular columnist accurately assesses Canada's declining liberal churches (July 30, 2012)

United Church of Canada elects its first openly sodomite moderator (August 16, 2012)

50 years ago: United Church of Canada unveils Sunday School curriculum denying the truth of the Bible (August 1, 2014)

80 years ago: United Church of Canada ordains Canada's first female minister (November 7, 2016)

Amalgamation of congregations in Edmonton provides more evidence of the continuing decline of the United Church of Canada (January 31, 2017)

30 years ago: New Ager Matthew Fox delivers keynote lecture at Queen's Theological School (October 11, 2017)

50 years ago: United Church in Calgary experiments with modern music (June 15, 2018)

Mainline church leaders 50 years ago advocated methods used by "evangelical" churches today (November 6, 2018)