Accueil / Traductions / English / Faith and Reason

Faith and Reason

A poll in 2003 for three prominent French media organisations (the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel, La Vie and Le Monde) also produced some surprising data:

• 54% of the French declare a belief in God, 33% are atheists, 52% rationalists, 51% Christians.

• 77% think that each individual should work out his own religious position irrespective of the Churches’ teachings.

• The existence of God is held to be certain only for 24% of those who declare a belief in God.

• 30% of Christians deny that Jesus is the Son of God.

• 40% of Christians deny that Jesus rose from the dead.

• 63% of Christians do not believe in the Trinity.

• 6% of Christians believe in the resurrection of the body after death.

• 47% of Christians think that the more scientific progress is made, the harder it is to believe in God.

These results reveal the gulf between the teaching of the Churches and the faith actually lived by their adherents. And yet, our modern world is clearly in search of meaning and of a spiritual dimension.

“We have stopped missing God” wrote the philosopher André Comte-Sponville in his L’esprit de l’athéisme/The Spirit of Atheism. But which God is he talking about?

A certain image of “God Almighty” has been imposed by the Church for centuries. But if God is indeed almighty, all-powerful, how can he permit the suffering of the innocent? Evil is one of the most tenacious arguments against the existence of this “God Almighty”. Fortunately, the latest revision of the “TOB”, the French ecumenical translation of the Bible, has deleted this fundamentally unbiblical term. As the theologian Raphaël Picon wrote in his Dieu en procès/God on Trial, “God is the ground and the centre of all existence and not a being above the rest. God is the foundation of all being. The call of this God is first and foremost the call to be.”

Dogmas like the Trinity have been formulated, to which the faithful are supposed to assent. The result is that churches Catholic and Protestant are empty. The words used in sermons and confirmation classes have lost their resonance: ideas of “grace”, “salvation” and “sin” are no longer understood. “The Church’s vocabulary, and to a large extent the Bible’s, are far removed from our particular historical situation” wrote the theologian Paul Tillich.

At least some theologians, especially the liberal Protestants Tillich, the Process theologians, André Gounelle, John Spong, have realised the dramatic urgency of the problem, and Évangile et Liberté exists to address it.

Don

Pour faire un don, suivez ce lien

À propos Évangile et liberté

.Evangile-et-liberte@evangile-et-liberte.net'

Laisser un commentaire

Ce site utilise Akismet pour réduire les indésirables. En savoir plus sur comment les données de vos commentaires sont utilisées.

En savoir plus sur Évangile et Liberté

Abonnez-vous pour poursuivre la lecture et avoir accès à l’ensemble des archives.

Continue reading