As founder and author of Doubter’s Parish, I spend a good bit of time reading articles and books by “heretics.” Google defines a heretic as “a person who differs in opinion from established religious dogma.” That describes a lot of people, including me.
Sometimes I agree with the heretics. Sometimes I don’t. Either way, I usually find them engaging. A few of the heretics I’ve been reading are atheists. Others are agnostic. But most of them are Christians who no longer affirm traditional orthodox theology. A large number of them also express deep concerns about institutional religion.
Martin Thielen
What follows is a list of 12 heretics (out of several dozen) I’ve been reading over the past couple of years. Each example includes a short excerpt from one of their books. After that brief overview, I’ll note some of the benefits that come from reading their heresies.
Some of the heretics I’ve been reading
Nancy Ellen Abrams, A God that Could Be Real: “It’s time to stop struggling with traditional views of God. … All the old views of God are demonstrably inadequate to our times. They perpetuate conflict or fail to inspire us enough to rise to the existential challenges of our complex world. … If we rethink God in light of new knowledge, it may help us to find the wisdom and bravery we need to face our future together.”
Gordon Atkinson, Foy: On the Road to Lost (fiction): Confession of a parishioner to his pastor: “I don’t believe any of this. … The God stuff. Church stuff. God comin’ to earth as baby Jesus. God becomin’ a little baby born in a manger. … Dyin’ on the cross to somehow pay a price for my sins. … It’s a great story. I love it. Brings me to tears. … But I haven’t believed in it for years.”
Jack Bergstrand, Christianity Without Dogma: “People who are deconstructing are in good company. Jesus himself was accused of blasphemy when he tried to deconstruct the Jewish law into a religion of love. At the same time, deconstruction will inevitably result in conflicts because religious leaders are paid to fight when their business models get threatened.”
Marcus J. Borg, The God We Never Knew: “By the time I was 30, like Humpty Dumpty, my childhood faith had fallen into pieces. … I have realized that one may be an atheist regarding the God of supernatural theism and yet be a believer in God conceptualized another way.”
Kent Dobson, Bitten by a Camel: “I am a heretic and an apostate, and so are my spiritual heroes, like Jesus and Saint Francis. … Jesus was killed for holding too many opinions that were dangerously inclusive, unorthodox and non-biblical. Jesus was a heretic, before we tamed him and named him Jesus Christ.”
Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: “The major leap (from man to God) was made: from seeing Jesus as his own disciples did during his ministry, as a Jewish man with an apocalyptic message of coming destruction, to seeing him as something far greater, a preexistent divine being. … This God Christ may not have been the historical Jesus. But he was the Christ of orthodox Christian doctrine.”
“In orthodox circles, heretics have a bad reputation. But I’ve found them extremely helpful.”
Jeffrey E. Frantz, The God You Didn’t Know You Could Believe In: “The God of theism … is not remotely believable. Given what we know about the universe and Darwin’s findings on evolution, belief in this God makes no sense. … The God of supernatural theism needs to be laid to rest.”
Rick Herrick, Toward a Post-Biblical Christian Future: “For the last 2,000 years, the Bible has been the anchor for the Christian faith. Sadly … the Bible as anchor has lost its footing. … The time has come to consider new approaches to anchor the faith.”
Brian D. McLaren, Faith After Doubt: “I too am a doubter. And I am a believer. And a doubter. Sometimes I flip back and forth five times in one day, and sometimes I’m both at exactly the same time. … Eventually, I came to realize that doubt was a companion, every bit as resilient and persistent as faith, and she wasn’t going away.”
John Shelby Spong, Unbelievable: “Understanding God in theistic terms as ‘a being,” supernatural in power, dwelling somewhere external to the world and capable of intervening in the world with miraculous power, is no longer believable. What we must do is find the meaning to which the word ‘God’ points.”
Tom Stella, Finding God Beyond Religion: “No longer sustained by easy answers, we may find ourselves standing before a three-pronged fork in the road: we can wander in the direction of conventional beliefs and practices, we can reject God and turn away from religion altogether, or we can embrace our uncertainty as an invitation to a more vital understanding of both God and religion.”
Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: “I cannot say for sure when my reliable ideas about God began to slip away, but the big chest I used to keep them in is smaller than a shoebox now. … My losses have been chiefly in the area of faith, and specifically in the area of being certain who God is, what God wants of me, and what it means to be Christian in a world where religion often seems to do more harm than good. When I was ordained 20 years ago, I was far surer of those things than I am now.”
Other heretics could be mentioned, including Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion; Vincent Bugliosi, Divinity of Doubt; Robert Meyers, Saving God from Religion; John Pavlovitz, A Bigger Table; Gretta Vosper, With or Without God; Sam Harris, Letters to a Christian Nation; Valerie Tarico, Trusting Doubt; Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels; Seth Andrews, Deconverted; Paul Wallace, Stars Beneath Us; Charles Templeton, Farewell to God; and many more, including John Updike’s novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies (part one). But the dozen reviewed above are adequate for the purposes of this article.
Benefits of reading the heretics
In orthodox circles, heretics have a bad reputation. Traditionalists believe they damage people’s faith. But I’ve found them extremely helpful. A few benefits of reading the heretics follow.
Heretics make a lot of good points. Their critiques of religion often are spot-on. For example, biblical literalism is untenable. Traditional theology is in need of revision. Theistic theology is a problem in a modern scientific world. The state of institutional religion is deeply disconcerting. Historic providential theology is seriously flawed. And the list goes on and on. We need heretics to challenge conventional religion, even when we feel threatened by their questions.
Heretics help doubters know they are not alone. People who struggle with their faith often feel lonely. They are afraid to tell others about their secret doubts. But when they read the heretics, they discover their doubts and questions are not new or unique. Instead, large numbers of people are on similar journeys. This realization is exceptionally encouraging for many faith strugglers.
Heretics help people deconstruct unhealthy faith. Examples abound, including deconstruction of an anthropomorphic God, exclusive religion, theological certainty, biblical literalism, the necessity of blood atonement, a literal hell, the submission of women, condemnation of the LGBTQ community, and anti-science bias. There’s a ton of unhelpful religion out there, and heretics help people jettison it from their faith.
Heretics help people reconstruct faith for the 21st century. A few heretics encourage people to recant their faith and become atheists or agnostics. But most of them help believers redefine their faith, not reject it. They facilitate robust theological debate. They explore nontraditional concepts of God. They challenge unhealthy institutional religion. They nudge people to embrace theological ambiguity. In short, heretics help believers reimagine faith for the modern world.
Other benefits of reading the heretics could be mentioned. But hopefully the point is clear. People “who differ in opinion from established religious dogma” serve an important role in religious life. They certainly do in mine.
In fact, “heretics” literally saved my faith. When I could no longer believe in traditional religion, heretics like John A.T. Robinson, John Spong and Marcus Borg offered viable alternatives, allowing me to redefine my faith rather than reject it. As a result, I celebrate the heretics and hope their tribe will increase.
Martin Thielen, a retired minister (SBC and UMC), ex-megachurch pastor and bestselling author, is the founder and author of www.DoubtersParish.com.