by A.S.K. Joommal  

            Not so long ago (November, 1964), it was reported in the local newspapers that a certain Right Reverend James A. Pike had provoked heresy charges by his bold, intrepid assertions with regard to certain fundamental dogmas of the Christian Church. 

            The Bishop had started this fierce dispute in the Episcopalian Church of America, which is the equivalent of the Church of England. Critics’ attacks had included an attempt to “unfrock” him, and he has been called an “angry, middle-aged rebel”. But the dry-humoured bishop represents “liberal” Christianity to many, the newspaper said. 

            In sermons, articles and books, he has questioned a number of doctrines believed fundamental to Christian faith, including the Virgin Birth and the Trinity. In a strong statement on the “irrelevancy” of the Trinity, the bishop called for an end to “outdated, incomprehensible and non-essential doctrinal statements, traditions and codes.” 

            “The fact is,” the bishop said in a sermon prior to the Triennial General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in St. Louis, “we are in the middle of the theological revolution.” 

            The bishop’s latest book – “A TIME FOR CHRISTIAN CANDOUR” – proposes, in essence, that the Church strip itself “of excess luggage” that, in the Bishop’s view, no longer makes Christianity relevant to the world today.

            Elaborating on the idea that the Doctrine of the Trinity is something that “man made up”, Bishop Pike has said: “Our Lord never heard of it. The Apostles knew nothing of it.” 

            He ascribes the development of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost to the influence of Greek thought on early Christian philosophers that is now causing confusion and an undesirable tendency to tri-theism. 

            In one of his latest sermons he added: “Many of us feel that it is urgent that we think and restate the unchanging gospel in terms which are relevant to our day and to the people we would have hear it; not hesitating to abandon or reinterpret concepts, words, images and myths developed in past centuries when men were operating under different world views and different philosophical structures.” 

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            Bishop Pike is not the first dignitary of a Church who finds the Christian dogmas repugnant. There have been many others before him who have spoken out fearlessly. There are many at the moment who are campaigning for a sane and rational approach to the Christian religion. And there will be many more Church leaders in the future who will add their voice of protest and objection to doctrines that just do not make any sense. There will come a time soon when the Church will be forced to rid itself of all accretion and revert to the Christianity of Christ – which was a pure, simple, unadulterated, monotheistic faith. There will come a time when Church elders would be compelled by REASON to have their faith spring-cleaned of all the “spiritual junk” – as one clergyman called the stories and events in the Bible.

            The Rev. J. C. Wansey of Woodford, Essex, was reported in The Star of Johannesburg on 10/5/63, as saying: “It is essential that our people should be fed with food convenient for them and not poison. There is so much SPIRITUAL JUNK in the Old Testament and I do make a plea for a reasonable Christian approach in the passages of scripture. Some of the Old Testament teaching about God was utterly contradictory to the Christian faith. The sooner the Church takes a bold new look at what she reads from the Old Testament, the better.” 

            Men of understanding find it extremely difficult to swallow all the Church dogmas dished out to them. Some articulate their inability to comprehend the dogmas, and are promptly branded as heretics. Others, for fear of the parish priest or for fear of being looked down upon by the congregation, go on “believing”, but silently suffering within themselves, knowing that what they are asked to believe is sheer nonsense. A representative opinion of men of intellect, who exercise the God-given power of independent thinking is quoted: 

“It is incredible to me that God should send His son to die to save man from His wrath; it is incredible to me that men should be damned for their sins. 

“It is still more incredible to me that a God, having decided on such a measure of saving men from hell or from His own wrath, should not have made the whole way of salvation plain. The very fact that after nearly two thousand years Christianity should be professed by only a small proportion of humanity -, that it should have so small an influence on the practical conduct of that proportion to permit the Great Wars and specially that sects of believers, each equally sincere, should give quite contrary interpretations of Christ’s teaching – these very facts are by themselves sufficient to make it almost impossible for me to believe that Christianity is a divine scheme of salvation. And I find many other equally great difficulties and incredibilities. 

“Personally, I find the intellectual difficulties in the way of acceptance of the dogmas and doctrines of Christianity insuperable: I think that Christianity, in the strict sense of the word, i.e. worship and imitation of Christ, is not generally practicable, that today it has a small and dwindling influence in the Western world.” 

(Dr. R.C. Macfie, THE FAITHS AND HERESIES OF  A POET AND SCIENTIST.  pp. 140-141, p.144.)