Entries in Life

True, there are those who try to prove to us that religion is a comforting escape, a refusal to struggle, man’s self-betrayal, dead and immovable dogmatism leading us away from hard questions and searching. However, those who make such claims invariably supress words which describe the very heart of religious experience and religious faith: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…”; “Seek and you will find…”; “I came not to bring peace, but a sword…”.

It is significant that those who hate religion always base their attack on this crude and elementary deception, for without this lie their assault on religion would be impossible to sustain for even a single day.

— Fr Alexander Schmemann, I Believe

This seems so true today. “Those who hate religion”, though, would be right to say that some purveyors of faith offer a simplistic view of faith with “immovable dogmatism leading us away from hard questions and searching”. I suspect this dogmatism is what is creating the latest Anabaptist Movement in the form of the Emerging Church.