On Mon, 12 Apr 2010, Mike Beggs wrote:
> I think this is probably pretty common and something that goes a long
> way back in history. Maybe it's still scandalous in the US, but the
> non-believing minister is a pretty old character type and not that
> shocking to the flock, in certain circles of liberal Protestantism at
> least.
It's not at all shocking here either. This kind of vague unitarian pantheism is basically the core of liberal religion. Most friends I know who go to church go to churches which openly profess these sorts of ideas. The idea it was hard to find these people is kind of hilarious.
A friend goes to Lake Street Baptist Church in Chicago. They decided to have a committee draw up a short summary of their religious views, and it got surprisingly acrimonious: there was some people who thought it was very important that there be no mention of god, and others who thought it was important to mention god. The other stuff didn't really figure. IME that's a common span of views in a liberal church. In such churches, these ministers wouldn't count as "non-believing." That's a kind of archaic term in these environs.
Atheists have funny views about pantheism (or, as they prefer to call it, using another archaic term, deism). They seem to think it is inherently unstable, rather than that it's the stable norm of liberal religion that has been spreading in the west ever since Spinoza and which is now widespread and dominant.
It would be nice someday if atheists just decided they had no trouble with pantheism -- that their difference was a quibble -- and that therefore they weren't at war with religion, just illiberal religion, the sort that wants to impose views rather than let you believe what you want. Then atheists and liberal religionists would be allies on the same side and would probably be a majority, and a very American majority, rooted in religious freedom. But that's probably dreaming. IME most atheists, unlike most pantheists, are sectarians.
Michael