This was a well-written piece which clearly resonates with many of the readers — so I really do hate to be the first to cast stones. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to raise a few objections.
“Theology is the search for concepts which better explain or incorporate our deepest experiences and convictions … it is better perceived as inextricably bound together with our efforts to live a life that is more real, more coherent, and more in alignment with our highest values.”
In what dictionary is this definition to be found? It sounds more like humanistic psychology, or perhaps moral philosophy, than theology. The author’s focus is on our experiences, our convictions and our values. But theology, at least as it was classically understood, is the critical study of the divine. Yet other than asserting that Jesus taught “the general concept that God is our Heavenly Parent and that we are all, therefore, God’s children,” the author makes no attempt to explain his concept of the divine — or why we should care about it.
Like many liberal Jews and progressive Christians, I have sat in nearly empty sanctuaries for years, listening to well-crafted sermons, delivered with great sincerity, exhorting us to be good and decent people (in other words, be the people that we already are). I have almost never heard a rabbi, priest or minister — outside of orthodox or evangelical circles — honestly share with us precisely what he or she means when uttering the word ‘God.’
It is easier, it seems, to use amorphous God-language that offends no one and to focus, instead, on the personal experience of the individuals sitting in the pews. But focusing on personal experience … isn’t that what therapists, best friends and meetup groups are for? Why, then, pay synagogue dues or church tithes? Why get up early on a Saturday or Sunday morning to join an aging and shrinking group of parishioners as they talk to an amorphous something or another?
We live in an increasingly scientific age with an emphasis on data and objectivity (despite the temporary aberration on Pennsylvania Avenue). Fuzzy, feel-good talk from the pulpit cannot sustain a congregation in today’s world. The true value of theology is that it can, at its best, offer us a clear and definitive understanding of what — or whom — we are beholding to, and what or whom is worthy of our worship. It may, or may not, have anything to do with “the effort to name and more fully know the realest values that we are already able, by direct experience, to recognize.”
The first task of the theologian is to define, with as much simplicity and clarity as possible, the object of inquiry. In the progressive religious community we may end up with any number of conflicting definitions, and that is fine. Let each person adopt the one that is most compelling for him or her. As the old proverb says, there are many paths up the mountain to God.
