It
was reading part of Michael Harrington’s book “The Politics at God’s Funeral:
The Crisis of Western Civilization” (1983) that got me thinking about the
provocative words used as the title of this article. (I am still reading, and
increasingly impressed with, Harrington’s book.)
Come
to find out, “God’s funeral” has been used several times in the past 100+ years.
Between 1908 and 1910 the English poet Thomas Hardy wrote a 17-stanza poem with
that title.
Hardy’s
poem is introduced, and printed in full, in A. N. Wilson’s 1999 book titled “God’s
Funeral: A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western Civilization.”
In
contrast to Hardy and Wilson, who were agnostics/atheists, David Tyler, a
Baptist pastor and “biblical counselor,” has more recently written “God’s
Funeral” (2009), a book which deals with psychology and “trading the sacred for
the secular.”
Although
I don’t know that he said anything about a funeral, perhaps the best known statement
about God’s demise was made by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who declared “God is dead” in his
1882 book “The Gay Science” (with “gay” being the translation of the German fröhliche=cheerful,
happy).
Actually,
though, according to Harrington, “God’s death has been announced in every
generation for about three hundred years” (p. 11).
Many of
us remember that in 1966 Christian theologian Thomas Altizer penned a book
titled “The Gospel of Christian Atheism.” And in April of that year Time magazine published
a provocative issue with the cover having only the words “Is God Dead?” in bold red letters on a black background.
In
my previous article I referred to a book by Harry Emerson Fosdick. Most of you
know the story of Fosdick’s talk with a young man who came to confess that he
could no longer believe in God.
The
young man was a student at prestigious Columbia University, a short walk from Riverside
Church, where Fosdick was the legendary pastor from 1925 to 1946.
Fosdick
said, “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in.” After hearing the young
man’s explanation, Fosdick remarked, “Well, son, I don’t believe in that God
either!”
So
perhaps God needs to be buried—at least some understandings of God, such as the
God of imperial Christendom, the God of “manifest destiny,” the God of exploitative capitalism, and the God who supposedly sanctions male supremacy and who
condemns all homoerotic activity (even between consenting adults).
But
there are other, truer, concepts of God. And there are many who remain
thoroughly convinced that there is a God who is certainly alive and well today.
For
example, think about the current Pope, who reportedly has some fairly close
ties to God. He seems to be in tune with a living God who is quite different
from the dead God that Harrington wrote about.
Pope
Francis appears to have considerable concern for God’s “preferential option for
the poor,” a phrase that Harrington did not use, to my knowledge, but one he
would have fully affirmed.
And
now Pope Francis is also calling on the world to take action against global
warming. And that pro-active position is based, of course, on his unwavering belief
in the Creator God.
Even
though it came out before this week’s Pew
report on the serious decline of religion in America, an earlier article
this week advised, “Don’t
plan any funerals for religion just yet.” (The Baylor conference covered in that
article referred to the worldwide situation, not just the 5% of the world’s
population in the U.S.)
And
it is also still far too early, and far too presumptuous, to be talking about
God’s funeral.
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