Can Progressive Christianity make a positive difference in the world? – Video
Rev. Gretta Vosper, of The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity weighs in on our question: Can Progressive Christianity make a positive difference in the world?
We asked several authors, pastors, theologians, and scholars questions about their beliefs, progressive Christianity, church, Jesus, social activism, spirituality, etc. We received this awesome answer from Gretta Vosper.
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Gretta Vosper trained for ministry at Queen’s Theological College where the foundations for her post-theistic work were laid. There, she learned that the Bible was a human construction. For the past thirteen years, she has applied the extrapolation of that truth to her work within and beyond the church. In 2013, she came out to her congregation as an atheist; few were surprised. For the most part, her denomination – considered to be one of the most progressive in the world – tolerates her as she continues to irritate it toward publicly stating what so many who lead within it believe: god is a metaphor for goodness and love lived out with compassion and justice, no more and no less.
She has been speaking publicly on the forefront of this work since 2004. Her first book, With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe, became a national bestseller within days of its publication in 2008. In 2009, she was named one of the most compelling women in Canada by More Magazine and With or Without God was placed on Amazon’s Top 25 Books to Cause a Commotion alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.
She has spoken across Canada, in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States presenting keynotes and workshops at conferences and leading congregational events and Sunday services. She has appeared on programs on the Canadian, Australian, and British Broadcasting Corporations’ radio networks and talk and magazine shows across Canada. For six years, she was a weekly panelist on the Culture Wars segment of the John Oakley Show on AM640, Toronto’s most listened to Talk Radio program. She has participated in online lecture series, the most notable hosted by Michael Dowd and including thirty-seven spiritual leaders from across North America and been interviewed by numerous online media channels. Her work is regularly addressed in the national magazine of her denomination, The Observer, and fuels controversial conversations on Facebook. Twice, she has narrowly avoided heresy trials, once by a margin of three votes.
Her second book, Amen: What Prayer Can Be in a World Beyond Belief applies the reality of a godless world to a spiritual practice that holds incredible meaning for so many. Current scientific discoveries regarding the effects of prayer on the brain bring surprising elements to the fore and we recognize that belief is not as important in our spiritual nurture as we have thought it once was. Amen has become an important book in congregational study groups.