THE TEN COMMANDMENTS – ONE OF THE MOST NEGATIVE DOCUMENTS EVER WRITTEN.

Behind these was the Revd Dr Francis Macnab, graduate of the School of Theology within Ormond College at Melbourne University, minister of the kirk from 1957, appointed for life to the Independent Church (city seat of the Congregational Union) in 1971, thence to the Uniting Church upon Union in 1977 – when the church changed its title (but not its independent statutes) to St Michael’s. Macnab is also a noted psychotherapist.

St Michael’s sits on the northeast corner of Collins and Russell Streets. On the northwest corner glowers the Scots Kirk.

Media interest was instant. By mid-September there was a huge spread in The Age, followed by an interview starring Macnab on the ABC’s ‘Stateline’.

The guild elders of St Michael’s met in Session and did what amounted to their own re-write of the Big Ten.

Being the cautious kirkers that they are, however, in order to avoid any chance of being accused of blasphemy or heresy by anyone, they referred to their collection as “3000 year Engenderings”.

The last five are:
• respect for life...
• respect for our spouse...
• respect for property...
• respect for the truth...
• respect for personal integrity...

The whole lot is posted in a billboard on the Russell Street kirk fence.

Media response to this has been one of agog indiff erence.

But there’s more to this storm in a mug than just a couple of commentaries on the Big Ten. As The Age article reveals, Dr Macnab is out to start a new religion. It’s necessary, he says, because the old one (Christianity) no longer works.

“Jesus Christ (was) just a Jewish peasant who certainly was not God. In fact, there is no God, in the usual sense of an interventionist deity... At the Jesus Seminar we are inclined to think there was a real Jesus but we don’t know much about him.”

The Jesus Seminar is a scholarly but sceptical movement which reaches its conclusions by vote. (What if we learned that A Squared plus B Squared equaled (a+b)(a+b)?)

The new faith, Macnab continues, seeks the good, the tender and the beautiful, and fi nds it in Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism.

Dr Macnab is being advised by Barry Whelan, media man for Cardinal George Pell when he was in Melbourne. The October issue of Crosslight, the Uniting Church newspaper in the southern states, was awash with calls for Dr Macnab’s resignation. Letters in the November issue are more mixed: “I write to off er my thanks to Dr Macnab,” comes from the Rev John Smith of Malvern. “Many Christians, lay and clergy, have questioned the relevance of the Virgin birth, the resurrection of a resuscitated body, the miracles and the divinity of Jesus... he is one of the few who has the courage to say it openly”.

Another Uniting Church cleric observes that any stream of thought which puts humanity at the centre is “very suspicious of anything that cannot be explained. It does not believe in miracles and certainly no mysteries”.

I liked the one from the Revd Dr Bob Faser of Neerim South: “The other evening I heard a comment from Francis Macnab... that opposition to his call for a “new faith” was mainly coming from those with a “literalist” understanding of Christianity.

 

“If the relevant debate at Synod was anything to go by this is not the case... All the speakers...were people whose own faith was shaped by a critical understanding of scripture.

“In the Uniting Church and in other denominations, there are many people – laity and clergy – who affirm a number of things:

• a critical understanding of scripture.
• a conviction that there are better ways to understand the Good Friday event than as a “substitutionary blood sacrifice”.
• a belief that God isn’t going to condemn peo­ple to be fuel for an eternal barbecue just for getting their theology wrong.
• a growing commitment to develop healthy interfaith and multifaith relations.
• a desire to worship as part of congregations with a strongly inclusive ethos...

“We’re used to being on the receiving end of the ‘slings and arrows’ both of the militant fundamentalists and of the aggressive secularists. We’ve learned to ignore these attacks and even to laugh at them.

“However, it is much more damaging to the cause of progressive Christianity when a person who should know far better glibly informs us that we’ve been wasting our time.”

My own tongue-in-cheek contribution was:“What a busy time is ahead for Francis and his followers. Added to daily prayers and the fasts of Advent and Lent, there will now be every Shabbat to observe, to say nothing of all those homages to Mecca, and Ramadan; the liberating of cattle and pigs from abattoirs; the memorising of Torah and Koran; the men in yarmulkes and the women in the veil; and all that after finding somewhere to live and the means to support themselves. The Jesus Seminar has a lot to answer for.

“But first a challenge! I dare my ex-fellow theolog – as he obviously hasn’t yet done so – to read that very scholarly but beautifully written tome by Rowan Williams’ good mate Tom Wright: The Resurrection of the Son of God.”

Developments will unfold. As Wendy Podger of Bairnsdale wrote to Crosslight: “I look forward to Synod’s encouragement and support for St Michael’s Church in its ministry to the many people who want to live the Christian life in a new way”.

Well, yes, but for those on a journey too much navel gazing is neither a good nor safe idea.

Kay MacLennan is a graduate of the same theological college as was Francis Macnab. She was for 25 years a broadcaster with ABC’s Religion department.