Pastor defends admitting atheist into membership
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, March 29, 2006
The title of the column by Jim Rigby, exonerated by his presbytery from performing weddings for same-gender couples, is “Why We Let an Atheist Join Our Church.”
There are folks in his own presbytery who’d like a clear answer to that question. Rigby’s latest snub of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) was to admit into membership at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Tex., a college professor who has declared that he doesn’t believe in God, Jesus or anything close. The professor claimed he was a Christian – or an “atheist Christian.”
The Committee on Ministry in the Mission Presbytery has notified Rigby that it wants to meet with him and the St. Andrew’s session.
In the meantime, Rigby has published a column on the Web site of CounterPunch – a left-wing group that takes swipes at the U.S. and Israel, among others. In the column, he rationalizes the reason he and the church’s ruling elders cleared the professor, Robert Jensen, for membership.
He notes first that he has received sharp criticism for accepting Jensen as a member of the congregation, but “I wasn’t surprised when many were unhappy about the decision of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, where I am the pastor, to let a self-professed atheist become a member,” Rigby says. “But the intensity and tone of the condemnations were surprising; this wave of mail feels different, more desperate, like people have been backed against a wall.”
Rigby describes his reason for Jensen’s membership: “Neither the church nor Jensen views his membership as surrendering anything, but instead as an attempt to build connections. Such efforts are crucial in a world where there seems not to be a lot of wood to build the bridges we need. And the shame is, while we fight among ourselves, the world is burning.”
He used a similar “world-is-burning” rationale for his decision to marry same-gender couples.
Rigby also says merely stating a belief in God is irrelevant, noting that Nazis who supported Hitler did that.
Saying atheists also were criticizing Jensen for joining the church, Rigby added: “It’s been interesting to see that atheists can be just as narrow-minded as believers. Some of Jensen’s critics expressed an infallible belief that religious people like me are idiots by definition. Inflexible beliefs on matters where one has no experience is superstition whether one is a believer or in an atheist.”
Then he dissected the difference between “atheists” and “rigid atheists” – the kind of dissection he has spoken of when referring to different grades of Presbyterians. He expressed an admiration for atheism as “the naked pursuit of truth …”
His discourse rambled into religious battles, “some of the worst chapters in human history;” evolution, which “helps us understand why religion is inevitable in human beings;” and saving the world, which is accomplished “because we learned how to speak about personal meaning in a way that is adaptive to natural processes and compatible with universal human rights.”
Rigby asked the question of skeptics: “What sense does it make to ask whether God exists if we don’t define what we mean by the term ‘God?'” He does not consider one of the cornerstones of orthodox belief is the understanding that God defines and reveals himself.
“Part of the apoplexy triggered by Dr. Jensen came from his statement that he was joining our church for ‘political reasons,'” Rigby said. “If one defines politics as partisan wrangling, then Jensen’s comments can be seen as calculating and manipulative, but if politics is about how we treat each other, then he is joining the church for the same reason the apostles did – to help save our world.”
He compared Jensen with the disciple Thomas and said, “Doubters are an essential part of the team. The atheism of Ingersoll and Kropotkin is very much like the mysticism of Schweitzer and Dorothy Day. In fact, I cannot help but imagine they would all join in common cause to serve our world had they lived at the same place and time.”
“‘Whoever has love has God,'” Jensen said, quoting a snippet from the John’s third letter. “That’s what the Bible says. So the question before my church was not whether Dr. Jensen could recite religious syllables like a cockatiel, but whether he would follow the core teachings of Jesus and learn more and grow more into Christ’s universal love of which the creeds sing. This he pledged to do.”